The organizers of the 2018 Go Cedar Rapids festival gave away thousands of complimentary tickets so the musicians wouldn’t have to perform to half-full crowds. The concert lost $2.3 million and cost $3.8 million to stage, officials said at the time.
The former heads of an Iowa tourism board are set to plead guilty to defrauding lenders who backed a money-losing 2018 concert festival featuring acts like Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson.
Messages left with attorneys for McCreight and Hargrave weren’t immediately returned. A spokeswoman for Bankers Trust declined to comment. When Go Cedar Rapids initially approached Bankers Trust for financing, it projected that it would make a profit on sales of 11,000 tickets to both the Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson concerts, plus 4,000 three-day passes that cost $375 each, prosecutors said.By June 2018, however, fewer than half the projected tickets had been sold and organizers were projecting a $1.
The bank was led to believe that 9,000 tickets had been sold for the Maroon 5 concert and 6,000 for Kelly Clarkson’s performance, when fewer than 6,000 had been sold for Maroon 5 and just 2,000 had been sold for Clarkson, according to court filings. McCreight and Hargrave also told the bank that the event was slated to draw $250,000 more in sponsorship revenue than had actually been sold, prosecutors said.