Member-only story
The Same Homophobic, Anti-Cannabis Owner of Coachella Is Behind SF’s Newest Music Festival
Philip Anschutz has donated well over a million dollars to anti-LGBTQIA+ organizations and conservative academic institutions since 2014
When I first glanced at the lineup for Portola — a new music festival slated to descend on San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood in late September— I was smitten. Unlike the current lineup for Outside Lands this year, I didn’t cast a disappointing sigh. Aside from Green Day, Anitta, SZA, and Phoebe Bridgers, the 2022 roster for this year’s Outside Lands festival is underwhelming.
Portola’s collection of performing artists actually elicited a smile (M.I.A.! The Chemical Brothers! Flume!). But, alas, the wrinkle-inducing facial exercise quickly relaxed after I noticed that the same homophobic owner behind Coachella was also spearheading SF’s newest music festival.
His name, if you need a reminder? Philip Anschutz.
Anschutz’s history with contributing funds — millions of dollars, in fact — to “family-oriented” nonprofits that criticize queer lifestyles is historied.
As recently as 2014, Coachella owner Philip Anschutz, whose company Anschutz Entertainment Group (AGE) organizes the festival under its sister corporate entity Goldenvoice, has donated large amounts of money to homophobic organizations like Promise Keepers and The Navigators, according to Spin magazine.
Much like any such issue, Anschutz’s otherwise commendable philanthropic can cloud judgment around his more discriminatory good doings. With a net worth estimated at nearly $12 billion, he heads the self-named Anschutz Foundation, which Anschutz and his wife have used to funnel over $100 million toward projects like the medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy campus of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado — now named the Anschutz Medical Campus in their honor.
