Coachella started its first weekend on a high note… managing to rack up a total of $0 in curfew fines, which seems in line with how many tickets were still up for grabs.
A representative for the city of Indio – where Coachella takes place – told TMZ… no curfew rules were broken during the first edition of the festival, and everyone followed the 1am curfew for Friday and Saturday. . while closing things end at midnight on Sunday.
In other words… there was no reason to fine anyone for exceeding the deadline – and considering the lackluster response to this year’s schedule …we suppose this makes sense.
The fact is… there were TONS of Coachella passes that were readily available for this year’s event – despite being sold out in previous years – and now that we know that all the musical acts were able to start and stop on time, this kind of speaks to that.
It looks like it was pretty boring and all by the book, which we’re sure city officials are happy about. The more people there are… the harder it will be to calm everyone down.
It was the opposite last year… as we reported, curfew violations in 2023 (for weekend 1) resulted in a total of $117,000 in fines – with a daily fine of $20,000 being issued for the first 5 minutes after curfew, and another $1,000 being added for every minute after that.
Clearly, lessons have been learned for organizers to adjust their programming to avoid costly overruns this time around. In 2022, curfew fines totaled $61,000 for the three weekends of music (2 Coachella weekends and one Stagecoach weekend).
That hasn’t been the case in 2024, at least so far… I hope it stays that way!