Why Coachella could be fined thousands of pounds every time an artist breaks major rule

There’s still another week left of influencers flocking to the desert to see some of the biggest names in music perform live.

Yep, while us Brits simply stick to a weekend festival lasting for just that, one weekend, Americans have Coachella run over two.

And it’s pretty much the same acts, with Lady Gaga taking to the stage again on Friday (18 April) and Green Day back on the Saturday (19 April).

But while Benson Boone hits out at fans for not knowing who Brian May is, the Kardashian-Jenners do some brand pop-ups and festival-goers pay eye-watering prices for drinks, the festival itself faces some huge potential costs.

Every time an artist breaks one of its major rules, Coachella could be fined thousands (and thousands) of pounds.

There's another weekend to go. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Coachella)

Essentially, it all comes down to curfews and licensing.

Rather than the mad all-night parties that might go on at Glastonbury until the early hours of the morning, there’s none of that at Coachella. Well, at least not officially.

Instead, it’s basically bed time as the festival has a noise curfew of 1am.

On the Friday and Saturday, it’s all got to be wrapped up by then according to the site’s FAQs with the curfew set for midnight on the Sunday.

This is apparently part of an agreement that Coachella has with the city of Indio, California where the Coachella Valley is.

Back in 2023, this agreement stated that the festival has to fork out a penalty of $20,000 (£15,100) for going past the curfew by five minutes on each day.

And then, for every little minute the act goes on past that mark, they have to splash out a further $1,000 (£755).

So, you can imagine things can look pretty expensive if the act even decides to go over by two songs and a chat with the crowd.

Frank Ocean famously ran over in 2023. (Taylor Hill/WireImage)

Back in 2023, the operator of Coachella ended up facing a fine of $117,000 (£88,336) just from the first weekend alone thanks to three of the sets breaking the city-mandated curfew.

Bad Bunny went over by 25 minutes on the Friday, Calvin Harris had 22 extra minutes on the Saturday and Frank Ocean ran over 25 minutes on the Sunday.

His act in particular came to quite the end when he had been informed he’d hit the curfew and he hadn’t even sang one of his most popular hits ‘Thinkin Bout You’.

Back in 2009, the promoter had to pay a whopping $54,000 (£40,770) fine when the fine was set at $1,000 a minute and Paul McCartney went a mega 54 minutes over.