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TOMORROWLAND

Our idea was to have one ticket that enabled you to go to every club . We contacted all the clubs , and all the student associations and had them sell tickets to their members . We were very creative with the marketing and convinced the local newspaper to make a special announcement that on this night , for the first time ever , all the students associations and all the clubs in Antwerp would work together .

“ We called it The Night of The Students , and it was a really big success . Around 8,000 people showed up , which we didn ’ t expect in our wildest dreams . Not everything went super well , we also did three other club nights that were a complete disaster , but we thought if we can do this on a Wednesday , maybe we should also try it on a Friday . Back then , Friday was a really busy night in all the clubs , but we convinced them .

“ It was the same concept , five clubs in Antwerp on a Friday . We had Bob Sinclar in one club , DJ Pippi from Ibiza in another ; it was a very broad programme , and a real success – 8,000 people showed up . Suddenly we had two successful events in Antwerp . In the years that followed we kept them growing by adding venues and locations around the city .

With the business building and the income stream flowing increasingly strongly as the brothers worked day and night organising and promoting events , Michiel took the decision to give up on being a university student and focus his

Transforming De Schorre park

energy entirely on building the events operation . Believing their youth and relative inexperience might hold them back , the brothers decided to team up with a partner .

“ We wanted to have a thriving company , but we were young and we felt that we were not being taken seriously enough by the local government , by sponsors , and by a lot of our partners ,” says Beers . “ So , we looked for somebody else to join us and to give us a bit more credibility . Very soon we found somebody who had come back from Cape Town in South Africa . He was a guy I had played soccer with , when I was aged six or seven , on a small field in our little village . I knew him from back then and hadn ’ t seen him for many years . He came back with big stories from Cape Town about running events with the likes of Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold for 20,000 people at clubs out there .

Fired up “ It felt good , so we teamed up with him . Our Antwerp Is Burning became a really strong event brand , and we decided to do a bigger edition of it in a place in Antwerp called Het Eilandje , the little islands , where there were two big old hangars . We put some tents outside and booked big names like Tiesto and Roger Sanchez .

“ We had an accountant who came from a very small village near Antwerp , they specialised in working for the local bakery and grocery store . So , we asked our partner , ‘ hey , maybe for this event , you can do the invoicing via your accountant , and they can guide this ’. We started organising the event , and of course we forgot to tell the suppliers that we had switched accounts companies , so we got invoices in from artists and paid them . Then the event happened . It was successful , 12,000 people

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