For Allianz Field director of events and guest experience Zacharia Litzelswope, this weekend’s Breakaway electronic dance music (EDM) festival is just the first step in a new direction for the St. Paul soccer stadium.

“It’s a big deal,” he said. “It’s not quite that full stadium leap, but we think Breakaway is going to be one of those great opportunities to at least step into that music space.”

This weekend, Allianz Field will welcome thousands of eager concert-goers for Breakaway, a two-day outdoor festival featuring big-name EDM artists, like Illenium and Slander. Although the festival won’t technically be happening inside the stadium but outside on its Great Lawn, officials still count this as Allianz Field’s first break into the music industry for non-gameday events, a goal since its inception in 2019.

The St. Paul market has been one of the best-selling events in the Breakaway line-up and is slated to be the largest event of the year for the multi-city festival. Currently, 24,000 people are projected to attend.

For those who aren’t fans, EDM might seem pretty niche. But it’s a music genre that has amassed millions of fans, with hyper-popular event fixtures like the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) held annually in Orlando and its flagship city, Las Vegas, and the North Coast Music Festival in Chicago.

Breakaway’s model goes against the grain; instead of planting a festival stop in one core urban area that fans fly out to like Chicago’s Lollapalooza, Breakaway organizers actively seek out markets that are typically overlooked in the EDM space. In addition to adding Minnesota as a new market to the line-up, Breakaway has added Tampa and Nashville to its biggest tour yet of 10 cities. Its other stops are in North Carolina, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Breakaway, which made its inception in Columbus, Ohio in 2016, has made accessibility for both artists and fans core to the mission. “The model of the larger promoters is to build these mega properties that are a destination for consumers, which is really great for the economy that these markets take place in,” said Jarrod Fucci, president of Breakway.

“Artists are so eager to engage with us because we’re giving them an opportunity to speak directly to fans that they otherwise would not get an opportunity to see,” he added. “There’s a lot to be said about creating that access for consumers and also creating that access for artists to come and perform in these underserved markets.”

A win-win partnership

Allianz Field is one of seven Allianz venues in the world and the first in North America. Although it’s aiming to be a premier soccer-specific stadium in the country, it’s still a young stadium finding its footing.

Intentionality and versatility have been top of mind for the Allianz Field team when it comes to planning non-gameday events around the Major League Soccer (MLS) schedule, said Litzelswope. It can be a daunting task. “How are we selling the whole stadium throughout the entire year? How are we activating the building year-round, both inside and outside the stadium–it’s just a work in progress right now,” he said.

Not long after Allianz Field opened in 2019, any effort to break into non-soccer events was quickly curtailed by Covid-19. In the wake of the pandemic, the Allianz Field team began connecting with other MLS stadiums in the same boat, as well as organizations that could connect the stadium to other event organizers. Terrapin Station Entertainment, a California-based company, helped Allianz Field make the connection with Breakaway organizers.

“Ultimately, the goal is just to put our best foot forward regardless of the size and scale of the event,” Litzelswope said.

But beyond just making sure the stadium is activated on non-gameday events, having more stadium activity could also be a boon to the Midway neighborhood, an area still being developed, and the city of St. Paul at large. This all plays into Breakaway’s model of pursuing typically overlooked markets, according to Breakway’s president Fucci.

“We know the economic impact of bringing events like ours to underdeveloped areas of a city, and then you add just the hundreds and hundreds of staff it takes to run an event,” he said. “It just helps ignite further development in communities like this.”

Breakaway festivals can also act as a catalyst to attract other big-name events. “We hope we’re sparking an appetite for other promoters and events to say ‘Oh wow, if a two-day giant festival can do this, I certainly can with my one-day event or my community event,’” said Fucci.

But make no mistake, if Breakaway didn’t enter the market, another promoter would have, he added. “There is a really strong dance music community that gets underserved in [Minnesota], the market was screaming for a two-day festival,” said Fucci. “We just feel really fortunate that we got the opportunity to be that group that brings a multi-day dance music festival to the market.”

Fucci said Allianz Field and the city of St. Paul have been good partners. That hasn’t been the case everywhere the festival has landed, he noted.

“Dance music fans are very sophisticated festival goers,” Fucci said. “They are very well-versed in the festival, and so they expect access to plenty of restrooms, expect access to complimentary water, they expect to understand how to enter and exit the event very clearly.”  

What’s next for Allianz Field?

There aren’t any other music events on deck for the stadium in the near future, but Litzelswope said he’s keeping an open mind. “Anything’s up for conversation,” he said. “The answer is never going to be flat-out no. It’s going to be, let’s talk about it and see if we can make it work.”

He added: “We’re not the arena that can just churn and burn shows in and out every single night. It’s a lot more customized, but at the same time it lends to a unique experience that people like to pay for.”

Litzelswope said his team aims to be “purposeful and strategic when having other events.”

“At the end of the day, we are a soccer club and we have the nicest 100,000 square feet of grass in the state of Minnesota–that’s our first and foremost priority,” he said. “We’re a little more selective, maybe so more than other venues, but we’re going to find the right fit and figure it out.”