Summer is around the corner. What do DIY youth culture, sun-soaked festival weekends, and global investment portfolios have in common? In 2025, the answer is: more than you might think.
If you’ve danced in a field anywhere in Europe over the last decade, there’s a good chance your wristband was backed—at least indirectly—by private equity. Music festivals, once homes for grassroots experimentation and community, have become prime targets for large-scale financial investment.
Why? Because youth culture is valuable—and increasingly, it scales.
Who’s Buying the Culture?
Take Superstruct, for example. In their own words, “one of the leading live entertainment groups in the world,” with a portfolio spanning major music festivals like Sziget, Sonar, and Flow. In my words, a company that has been buying up everything it can in independent European festival culture over the last few years. Their portfolio is impressive. The company is backed by KKR, and their strategy is clear: acquire and optimize. In many instances it has also meant shutting down festivals that are passion projects and never managed to make financial sense.
Superstruct was recently in the hot seat after their acquisition of Boiler Room, and a resulting few disgruntled mgmt members. The opposition makes sense; the private equity backed ownership is in direct opposition to the underground music platform that helped define a generation of digital club culture.
This isn’t about Superstruct specifically—this is about the broader pattern. Financial players are buying into cultural spaces once rooted in rebellion and self-expression. And they’re doing it with scale.
Why It’s Happening
Live music can be a valuable asset. Festivals offer revenue, loyal audiences, rich data, and lots of opportunities for sponsorship and brand integration. Live Nation and Goldenvoice are two poster children of what successful scale can bring. Add the post-pandemic surge in demand for IRL experiences, and you’ve got a textbook private equity play.
Culture That Scales
Youth culture has always driven trends, shaped industries, and pushed boundaries. But now, it’s also a high-growth asset class. There’s power in that, but also risk.
The question is: can culture be scaled without losing its soul? When the driving force behind your favorite festival isn’t a crew of music obsessives but a boardroom targeting ROI—does it still feel the same?
And yet, scale isn’t inherently bad. Bigger platforms can offer more resources, better infrastructure, and longer-term survival. All alone, a single festival is not a good business – weather, or low ticket sales make the already slim margins worse, and lead to losses.
The tension is in how it’s done.
And who decides.
So What Do We Do With That?
This isn’t a call to gatekeep culture from business. But it is a call to ask better questions:
- What happens to creative risk when cultural spaces become corporate assets?
- Can the grassroots still exist inside a scaled ecosystem?
- And most importantly: do the people creating the culture get to participate in its upside?
If youth culture is going to keep getting bought out, let’s at least be honest about what’s being sold—and what’s worth protecting.
We don’t need no education—just a little transparency on who’s running the show.
