A big U.S. beach festival is making its way to Australia next year

Australia has come one step closer to getting a big new festival on its calendar next year, as TEG Dainty has almost sealed approval build a local version of huge U.S. festival Hangout on Queensland’s Gold Coast, which would potentially be named ‘SandTunes’.

As News Corp reports, the Australian promoters have teamed with AEG in the U.S. and Cross Promotions locally for the proposal, which will now be voted on by council this Friday following a 7-1 preliminary vote yesterday.

The two-stage, 35,000 capacity festival would run for two days in December 2018, and the proposal already has the backing of Gold Coast Tourism and the Live Music Taskforce. If it goes ahead, it’s believed it would bring tens of millions of tourist dollars flooding back to an area that has suffered from the loss of big-name festivals like Big Day Out in recent years.

The U.S. version of the festival has been operating for nine years on the Gulf Shores of Alabama, and has boasted names like Kings of Leon, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters over the years, with this year’s lineup boasting Mumford & Sons, Twenty One Pilots and Chance The Rapper.

President and CEO of TEG Dainty, Paul Dainty, proposed a five-year deal to councillors yesterday, with the option for a five-year extension, promising that the Australian edition of Hangout would remain a Gold Coast exclusive – although News Corp reports that other locations in Byron Bay, Fremantle and St Kilda are also possibilities if the current proposal falls through.

With a positive 7-1 result ahead of the next round of voting this Friday, Mr Dainty was pleased with the outlook for the festival’s future on the Gold Coast.

“This is a mega event,” he said. “Once the Commonwealth Games are over, it will build on the city’s strong profile for staging international events.

“This is big. We’d be bringing 40 or 50 bands into the country plus locals, plus 500 or 600 staff. An event like this touches everyone in the business community. Economically it’s brilliant.”

We’ll have to wait until Friday for confirmation, but it seems very likely that we’ll be making a trip to the Gold Coast for SandTunes next December.

A recap of the recent Hangout festival lets us know what to expect from SandTunes

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.