AC Entertainment, co-creator of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., has acquired Nashville-based concert promotion company Great Big Shows.
This move will strengthen AC Entertainment’s Nashville presence and expand its resources for event creation, management and production nationwide. The Great Big Shows name will remain in place, with Great Big Shows owner Rick Whetsel at the helm. Ashley Capps is president of AC Entertainment, based in Knoxville, Tenn.
The first major Nashville event to be announced under the new venture is a co-headliner concert featuring the Allman Brothers Band and Widespread Panic at Riverfront Park on Oct. 14. Tickets go on sale April 17.
Visit acentertainment.com for more information on the Allman Brothers Band and Widespread Panic concert, as well as other upcoming events.
Bonnaroo, which AC Entertainment co-produces with Superfly Presents, is the highest-grossing festival in North America and has won Top Festival honors at the Billboard Touring Conference four out of the last five years, including 2008.
Rick Whetsel, who founded Great Big Shows in 1998, had previously worked with AC and Capps on Live On Penn in Washington, D.C., in 2003. And Great Big Shows has managed production for AC Entertainment’s Sundown in the City in Knoxville since 2004.
Whetsel was briefly director of special events for Nashville-based promoter Outback Concerts in a deal that ended in December of last year.
