Legislators sign off on measure that should draw more concerts to Baton Rouge

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Legislators sign off on measure aimed at drawing more concerts to Baton Rouge

Business Report

Legislation aimed at attracting more large concerts and festivals to the Baton Rouge area has won approval in both the state Senate and House of Representatives.

Filed by Rep. Barbara Freiberg, R-Baton Rouge, HB 450 allows East Baton Rouge Parish to offer a local sales tax rebate on admission to major live music and entertainment events that meet minimum paid attendance requirements.

The original bill specified that events would be eligible for the sales tax rebate if they took place in a publicly owned facility with seating for 10,000 or if the event had an average daily attendance of at least 25,000. The bill was amended in early May to lower those thresholds.

When reached Monday afternoon for more information, Freiberg said that the Baton Rouge Area Chamber requested the amendment to allow for more venues to be eligible for the rebate. BRAC, along with the city-parish and Visit Baton Rouge were key supporters of the bill.

David Zoller, manager of governmental relations for BRAC, declined to discuss the bill with Daily Report this afternoon and forwarded comment to BRAC’s senior director of communications, Morgan Almeida, who confirmed that BRAC requested the changes to the thresholds.

The bill targets large concerts held in venues such as the River Center, LSU or Southern University, or multiday, outdoor concert events, according to a prepared statement released by BRAC. The legislation supports one of BRAC’s key legislative priorities for 2023—to attract more headline concerts and entertainment acts to Baton Rouge.

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I think they realized how big of a downstream impact that the Garth concert was last year for hotels and restaurants. And they don't need to clear so much from the event itself with the massive revenue boost from sales tax and hotel taxes they get out of these events.
Figured they'd have learned that with football season by now. But either way, I'm glad this is happening.

I think they need to target massive acts like Garth or Taylor Swift (or whoever the hottest stars are at the time) to keep the restaurants and hotels busy outside of the traditional college sports seasons.

I know a lot of you didn't like Bayou Superfest because of the traffic or because you don't like the acts, but it definitely was a huge win for the local restaurants, hotels, and retailers during a normally slow part of the year. The region would be well served if they can attract more acts like that. Not just local government, but local businesses as well.