The C3 Presents promoted Innings Fest 2024 kicks off this weekend in Tempe at Tempe Beach Park & Arts Park, and it’s now separated into two back-to-back weekends as Extra Innings Fest 2024 follows on the first weekend in March.
We’ve covered Innings Fest a couple times in years past but this marks my first time making it out to the festival myself! But the lineups have often appealed to me and this coming weekend was one I couldn’t miss seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hozier, Jimmy Eat World, Third Eye Blind, Phantogram, a bunch of acts that are all among my favorites.
The festival brings together baseball and live music, taking place not far from where MLB spring training will be in full swing. A little about me, I am a currently wayward fan of baseball, a sport that used to be my absolute favorite sport for the first three decades of my life as an Oakland A’s fan before current ownership decided to try and take the team away from the city it has been home to for more than 60 years in an attempt to go to Las Vegas. But who knows? Maybe being around a bunch of baseball fans and former stars for a couple days will renew my interest.
Former A’s great Dave Stewart as well as Oakland born Dontrelle Willis are set to be among the MLB legendary names set to appear in various capacities among the baseball-themed things to do around the festival such as speed pitch and batting practice.
C3 Presents is responsible for my favorite festival Bonnaroo, so I have high hopes for a good experience this weekend. I like that in separating things to two weekends, they seem to have stacked a lot of the more country flavored stuff to the second weekend and the more alt-rock tinged stuff to the first, allowing people to pick one or the other if they are genre-favoring music fans.
A couple other things to like: You get an opportunity to see every band play if you so choose as there is no overlap between acts. Another positive is that many of the performers get an hour or more to perform. One of my criticisms of lineups that have almost TOO many names on it is that it often means you’re lucky to get more than 35 minutes out of them OR they overlap with another act you really like and you are faced with a tough decision. That isn’t the case at Innings Fest 2024. Every act that performs from 3 PM or later gets at least a full hour, with headliners getting an hour and 45 minutes.
I am quite curious why the move to Friday and Saturday when going to two days on consecutive weekends rather than two days over one weekend. You would think Saturday and Sunday would do better ticket sale wise. I will be curious how many people turn up Friday as opposed to Saturday.
Innings Fest 2024 and Extra Innings Fest 2024 tickets are still on sale, with 3-day general admission passes starting at $310 including fees. Children 7 and under get in free, making this a very family-friendly festival. No teens running around because they took too much molly at THIS festival.
Main photo by Kelsee Becker
Check out the full weekend Innings Fest 2024 schedule below!
