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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > July > 24 > Entry
C3 hitches hopes on 2016 Olympics
While they’re watching Kings of Leon onstage, Austin City Limits Festival organizers C3 Presents hope they’ll soon be Lords of Lycra.
The day the 8th annual ACL Fest kicks off at Zilker Park, C3 will also have its mind in Chicago, which is one of the finalists to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Oct. 2 is when the International Olympics Committee will announce the lucky city that will host the event and C3 has been lobbying hard for the Windy City, where it’s built a stronghold after turning Lollapalooza into a destination fest at Grant Park and taken over co-management of Soldier Field. Grant Park is also where “Charlie Company,” co-owned by Charlie Jones, Charlie Walker and Charles Attal, staged Barack Obama’s Election Night celebration in November.
At this year’s Lollapalooza, which runs Aug. 7- 9, the main stage will have a big banner that says “Chicago 2016.” After AT&T dropped out as a sponsor this year, C3 donated naming rights to the group trying to bring the Olympics to Chicago.
Chicago is one of four candiadates, going up against Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, for the 2016 games.
C3 has made no secret of its desire to help stage the Olympics, even executive-producing the official dinner when the IOC visited Chicago. “They’ve been helpful to us, and they do very good work, but we haven’t considered anything past Oct. 2,” Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky recently told Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times. “It would be presumptive of us” to name C3 as a prospective producer.
C3 Presents grew out of sporting events. Originally named Capital Sports & Entertainment, with Lance Armstrong as its cash cow on wheels, the concert promoters began their winning streak with a free concert at Auditorium Shores to celebrate Armstrong’s first Tour de France victory in 1999.
Capital Sports started working with booker Charles Attal Presents in 2002, when ACL Fest was launched. Walker left competing promoter Live Nation in 2007, merging with CSE and Charles Attal Presents to form C3 Presents.
This weekend C3 is co-producing the Wanderlust “music and yoga” festival near Lake Tahoe, Nev.
AT&T’s contract with Lollapalooza ended last year and they decided not to renew, a spokesman told the Sun-Times, “based on a variety of business goals and objectives.” AT&T is also no longer a sponsor at ACL Fest.
Comments
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By turd ferguson
July 25, 2009 9:51 AM | Link to this
The only thing(s) that will be missed by the average ACL goer from AT&T being absent, is the free air conditioning, the free internet and the live college football in the Blue Room. Oh yeah, the AT&T blue room stage with the live feeds will also be missed; as will the portable cellular towers that almost make it possible to send and recieve calls and text messages during the festival. Not to mention the free “goodies” that big name sponsers like AT&T provide. Hmmm, I guess I’m glad I’m not going afterall!
By Charles in Charge
July 25, 2009 2:14 PM | Link to this
Maybe we should just give them Zilker park permanently, as it’s been closed this entire year to set up C3’s cash cow ACL festival. Can’t even count on jeff ward to do anything about it. Maybe we can pave the springs for some C3 headquarters.