Lollapalooza co-founder predicts no concerts until 2022

Lollapalooza co-founder Marc Geiger predicts there may not be concerts or festivals in the U.S. until 2022 due to the coronavirus.

“My guess is late ’21, more likely ’22,” Geiger said on “The Bob Lefsetz Podcast,” adding that insurance is one of many reasons for the delayed return to the festival pastime.

Geiger said the reasoning for the long delay in the return to the festival circuit could be up to “the government” or “testing,” but added that deliberating the exact reason is “too infinite of a well to go down.”

“In my humble opinion, it’s going to be ’22,” he said. “It’s going to take that long before what I call the ‘germaphobia economy’ to be slowly killed off and be replaced by what I call the ‘claustrophobia economy,’ which is where everybody wants to go out and go back to dinner and have their life and go to festivals and go to shows.”

The music exec said any “super-spreader” event such as concerts, sports or festivals would not do well economically while COVID-19 is still a present threat.

“So my instinct is the world has a very long, forced timeout,” Geiger said. “A lot of people see the positives in it, whether it’s climate, whether it’s pollution, whether it’s traffic, whether it’s nature, whether it’s animals, whether it’s our own beings and taking a pause.”

Geiger also said any form of insurance policy for the coronavirus would be complicated to implement and would be difficult for most festival promoters to obtain.

“There is no insurance against COVID-19 currently offered … and even normal insurance policies are pretty scarce and hard to come by,” he said, adding that the liability would be too high for most organizers.

As the U.S. grapples with rising cases in numerous states throughout the country, England announced Friday that theater shows and concerts would return at full capacity beginning in August, while American Broadway shows have been canceled through the rest of 2020.