Gen Z is finding a workaround for the high price of live events, skipping Coachella for the affordable Breakaway festival.
For years, the blueprint for a dream music festival, from Coachella and Lollapalooza to the infamous Fyre Festival, has involved expensive travel to a remote location, hotel stays pricier than monthly rent, and a multi-day pass costing over $1,000.
For Gen Z and millennials navigating social lives amid persistent inflation, this ideal is often financially out of reach. Consequently, many are reshaping the experience economy by devising methods to enjoy large-scale festival excitement without the steep price tag.
This is where Breakaway comes in: an expanding dance music festival brand founded on the goal of restoring accessibility and affordability to live events. Launched by promoters Adam Lynn and Zach Ruben in 2016, Breakaway’s touring model is based on a central idea: deliver a Coachella-level production to accessible, secondary cities, with ticket prices low enough for students and young professionals. (The founders report the average attendee age is 26). In 2025, a significant number of people attended a Breakaway festival.
Ruben emphasized that accessibility is the cornerstone of their operation. They have established what Lynn refers to as “a price point for every consumer,” featuring daily tickets for college students starting at approximately $40. The founders intentionally label these tickets “affordable” rather than “cheap” to attract students and young adults who might otherwise only experience events through their phone screens. Other options, like two-day passes, generally cost between $150 and $300, varying by city and ticket level.
To contextualize these prices, the average resale price for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets surpassed $1,550, not including additional travel costs for a single day. A 2024 survey of 1,000 Gen Z respondents by Merge revealed that 86% confessed to overspending on live events. As Melissa Rohman of The New York Times noted: “The live music industry has put today’s young adults in an impossibly expensive position.” Therefore, festival tickets priced at a tenth of the cost of a single major concert could be a relief for many Gen Zers and millennials (provided they enjoy dance music).
For Breakaway’s founders, accessibility also involves selecting venues near city centers, ensuring a quick 15-20 minute Uber ride for attendees. Once inside, guests can engage with brand partnerships, interactive activations, and artist access. The concept is that attendees avoid massive ancillary expenses for travel and accommodation. In fact, Ruben stated that 60% to 70% of their audience resides within a 60-mile radius of the venue, eliminating the need for flights or hotels for most.
This year, Breakaway is scheduled to tour 12 cities, such as Dallas, Tampa, Grand Rapids, and Worcester, Mass.—sizeable urban areas that major artists often bypass. Despite this, Breakaway secures top-tier dance music lineups, with current headliners like Marshmello, Kygo, Tiesto, Fisher, Disclosure, and John Summit.
Breakaway’s background and success
Lynn and Ruben initially addressed a similar access issue while in college, identifying a gap where rising artists toured major cities but ignored college towns.
They each started independent concert ventures (Lynn’s Social Studiez and Ruben’s Prime Productions), bringing performers like Wiz Khalifa, Steve Aoki, Kid Cudi, and LMFAO to underserved markets. The two later combined their efforts to form Prime Social Group, which launched the Breakaway festival in 2016 with a Chance the Rapper headline show that sold roughly 16,000 tickets in Columbus, Ohio. The festival then expanded to include cities like Grand Rapids, Charlotte, and Nashville.
A unique aspect of Breakaway’s journey is witnessing repeat customers from their early days a decade ago.
“People that attended when they were in college are now close to 30 or even in their 30s,” Lynn said. “So what we’ve done a really good job of—and I think sort of the success of our business model—is we have a price point for every consumer, and we try to make it a very inclusive event.”
“It’s been fun to kind of see our audience grow up a little bit,” he added.
Lynn estimates that Breakaway’s initial sponsorship revenue in 2016 was only in the tens of thousands, a number that has since multiplied “almost 20 times” following a partnership with energy drink brand Celsius. This influx of sponsor support, along with other funding, helps mitigate rapid increases in ticket prices despite rising costs for artists and production. Reports from CB Insights indicate Breakaway has secured close to $50 million through several investment rounds.
Fundamentally, Breakaway’s popularity is bolstered by Gen Z’s increasing desire for in-person experiences and a conscious reduction in screen time. This trend is visible in their preference for real-life interactions and studies suggesting the generation is socializing more offline. Additionally, many Gen Zers are embracing analog hobbies and buying items like DVDs for their tangible nature.
Music festivals represent “one grand experience,” Ruben said. “Part of these dance music festivals is the community of everyone being there.”