As much as we and everyone else love Coachella, we can all cite one big issue: the Sahara. The Sahara tent is the de facto dance, electronic and hip-hop tent at the festival, and everyone from Daft Punk to Marshmello has played it. As EDM and dance music got bigger in America, the Sahara grew with new, bigger stages. But, even the massive mega structure used last year couldn’t safely accommodate the crowds.
We learned last week that the Sahara would expand and relocate for this year’s festival. Now, we may know what the new Sahara will look like. A sleuth on the Coachella subreddit investigated another user’s claim of Coachella using a bigger mega structure that was used during the recent Super Bowl events in Houston and San Francisco Bay Area.
The user found some interesting details about AG, the company that owns the old Sahara mega structures seen at Ultra, EDC Las Vegas and more. On March 23, AG posted the news of the Sahara’s expansion and relocation on their Facebook page with the caption, “It looks like the cat’s out of the bag.”
It looks like the cat's out of the bag.
Posted by AG Production Services on Friday, March 23, 2018
AG’s most recent post after that was made on February 4, flashing back to a video of the massive mega structure used at Super Bowl 50 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Last year at this time AG Production Services was in the middle of building one of the largest temporary structures ever for the pre game events associated with Superbowl 50. AG used our brand new and larger #Megastructure system to build a venue in the parking lot of Levi's Stadium. the venue was about 900' long, 360' wide and 140' tall. In total, there was over 200,000 sq ft of covered space for this massive event. The main structure featured a fully load bearing floor and 80' windows so guests could see the stadium. AG also provided all lighting, video and rigging services for the event. Thank you to all the crew that helped us build this monster and to PPW and NFL for involving us.
Posted by AG Production Services on Friday, January 27, 2017
The most interesting tidbit? AG captioned the Super Bowl 50 video with “Get ready for an appearance by [the mega structure] again this year.” If Coachella will end up using this mega structure, it’d mark one of the largest mega structures ever used at a music festival. The Super Bowl 50 mega structure is apparently 200 feet wider than the previous Sahara mega structure, and is nearly 140 feet tall. It remains to be seen if the mega structure will be used exactly or adapted to fit Coachella, but we will find out in two weeks when weekend one of the festival begins.
Cover Photo: Roger Ho
