THE BIG BEAST

Stageco helps The Big Beast break prestigious Guinness World Record

S ZE MATTERS!

It’s official! Stageco has earned the rare distinction of building the world’s tallest temporary stage, as recognised by Guinness World Records... not once, but twice!

Measuring 41.268m (135ft 5in) in height, the main stage – known as The Big Beast – at the MDLBEAST SOUNDSTORM 2021 EDM festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on December 19th broke its own world record for the classification after setting it at the event’s début outing at the end of 2019.

Already one of the largest music festivals in the world, with over 700,000 attendees reportedly attending across four days, SOUNDSTORM hosted eight distinct stages covering a myriad of dance genres, from mainstream to underground electronic programming, but it was The Big Beast that attracted the most attention.

Still coming down to Earth after what he described as “one of the biggest projects I’ve ever done”, Stageco crew chief Hendrik Verdeyen talked about his time in Riyadh. “All the equipment came to us in something like 84 sea containers – 75 were for our black steel, while the rest carried scaffolding and decking materials,” he said.

“We spent about three weeks building the whole structure and compensating for terrain that had a 3.5m height difference between the ends of stage right and stage left. The stage itself was about 230 metres wide,

so we are talking BIG. A lot of the XXL gear was used for the centre part which included a tandem lift with 300 tonne cranes.”

As well as delivering expert support from head of R&D Gert Hulsmans, Stageco fielded three teams on-site.

“Since every other crew boss was busy at the time, I did most of the site preparation with [project manager] Dirk De Decker,” commented Verdeyen. “After we completed the build, production loaded in for another good month, but they were out within 10 days and we followed a week later. All in all, it was a great experience.”

The success of entertainment production company MDLBEAST, and its celebrated events, mark a positive development for Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 program, which includes several wide-ranging goals broadly aimed at social reforms that will open up the country to the rest of the world.

mdlbeast.com