Boardroom caught up with Broccoli City Co-Founder Marcus Allen about the brand’s new venue for its musical festival that comes with new content aspirations, experiences, and more.
The Broccoli City brand is elevating once again, taking its annual music festival to a new venue with new content aspirations and experiences in mind.
This year’s Broccoli City Festival in DC will be held at local soccer stadium Audi Field instead of at it’s usual location at RFK Festival Grounds. Audi Field is home to the D.C. United and Washington Spirit soccer teams. The stadium seats 20,000 people, but Broccoli City introduced new ticket tiers that include stadium seating options and floor access on the field. Broccoli City Co-Founder Marcus Allen told Boardroom that the brand switched venues because fans were asking for new experiences they would never be able to deliver on at RFK. The moves were made as Broccoli City set their sights on elevating the festival to the next level. With a new vision of what was possible, a venue change made the most sense.
“It was a lot of infrastructure-related stuff, like how could we get a better VIP lounge with AC and more seating to create an elevated experience,” Allen said. “So far, the response has been great.”
Slated for July 27-28, this year’s lineup includes Megan Thee Stallion, Kaytranada, Victoria Monet, PartyNextDoor, Gunna, Lil Yachty, Key Glock and more. Other familiar stars will appear throughout the weekend including Issa Rae, who will be hosting the kickoff party, and Bryson Tiller, who will be hosting the Trap Soul Karaoke experience during the festival.
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Audi Field isn’t the only new thing that will become a part of the Broccoli City Festival this year, as the event brought on Converse as its first-ever presenting sponsor. When it comes to presenting sponsors, Allen said, there are typically a select few brands to work with due to the funding amount, but that wasn’t the case for Broccoli City. Live Nation Urban helped foster the connection between Broccoli City and Converse as the sneaker brand works to win more consumer support through an expanded cultural approach.
“It’s a perfect partnership, and that’s rare,” Allen said. “This is the first time we’ve ever even allowed a presenting sponsor, and it was a no-brainer for Converse across the board.”
With elevation comes new tech and content opportunities, a few things that Broccoli City has been itching to level up.
New Approaches
Broccoli City will have various technological advances in play at the festival, including seamless integration with digital wallets via a partnership with Chase, LED screens throughout the stadium, content-focused micro stages, and more. The brand also introduced a mobile app last year that provided various offerings like updates on set times, maps, and a list of experiences.
One thing Broccoli City has been leaning into more this year ahead of the festival is expanding its brand on social platforms through original content.
“We’re rolling out this live experience concept, and one thing we want to accomplish with this is shooting the festival like it’s an award show,” Allen said. “Think Oscars-style, off-shoot conversations to create a full-production to make the in-betweens of the festival that much bigger and dynamic.”
This year, more than ever, Broccoli City is solidifying its social media presence. The brand has been dropping various types of original and curated content across its social channels in the lead-up to its main event. Allen said this has posed a challenge in the past since Broccoli City restarted its social campaigns every year leading into the festival. Now, Allen said the brand has a skilled social team in place that has come up with year-round concepts that have changed how Broccoli City shows up online.
“The difference between being a festival and a year-round brand is really what you see now,” he said. “It’s really about us being a full-time brand now.”
With this new social shift, Allen said his team is focused on capturing as many cultural moments as possible to elevate Broccoli City’s post-festival coverage. The brand’s biggest goal is not just to drop your typical recap videos but to share content segments you can’t find anywhere else. Allen said he doesn’t want to lean on recaps to tell the story of the festival after it wraps up.
In past years, the Broccoli City Festival has been cursed by rain showers and bad weather, but Allen said the brand’s fanbase remains strong, even if they are critical. This makes capturing content and doing more on the ground vital this year to extend the festival’s reach.
“Our fans are a gift and a curse because they are Black Twitter. They don’t watch Black Twitter because they are at our festival,” Allen said. “That’s good, and that’s bad because when it’s up, it’s up, but when it’s off, they are on our necks.”
Another big thing Broccoli City had to tackle at RFK was mobile connectivity and WiFi. Each year, Broccoli City was tasked with building out WiFi connectivity, but Allen said since Audi Field has a fiber-optic infrastructure, they shouldn’t run into those issues this time around.
“The venue changes the whole game,” Allen said. “Navy Yard is built for this. That area is set up and dense enough to handle the influx of people without a problem.”
The Future of Broccoli City
Allen said he’ll be watching for how the dynamic changes between attendees purchasing seated or standing tickets in years to come. I took this as confirmation that the festival will return to Audi Field in the future, though Allen expressed that there are space constraints in the area since there is a lot of development happening in DC’s Navy Yard neighborhood, where the stadium is situated.
“For the next couple of years, I think we have found something that could be valuable,” Allen said. “I think what the stadium model is going to do for us is give us the ability to possibly go to other smaller stadiums like Audio Field and replicate this experience.”
Since the inaugural iteration of the festival, Allen said he’s had to calm his ambitions down to be more intentional about rolling out new offerings and experiences each year.
“There is nothing else out there like what we bring to the table for the young Black experience,” Allen said. “This is a different kind of experience, and I’m looking forward to resetting the market.”
Rest assured, we can expect new event concepts, experiences, and more from Broccoli City in the future. In the meantime, check out Allen, featured in an episode of “Michelai Money Talks” sponsored by Coinbase.
