Insomniac & ADE Partnering on New Dance Music Summit Coming to Las Vegas in May
Billboard ·
Map Point Summit was announced by Insomniac Events founder Pasquale Rotella and ADE managing director Jan-Willem van de Ven during Rotella's keynote conversation at ADE.
Insomniac Events is partnering with Amsterdam Dance Event for a new dance industry gathering set to happen this May in Las Vegas.
Called Map Point Summit, the event will take place at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas between the between the two editions of EDC Las Vegas 2027, which next year will happen on consecutive weekends (May 14-16 and May 21-23) for the first time ever.
The Summit will focus on providing a gathering place for creators, independent promoters, artists, entrepreneurs and professionals to focus on the future of the dance scene. Registration is open now, with the full program to be announced in the coming months.
Map Point Summit was announced during ADE 2026, the dance music industry gathering happening this week in the Dutch capital. The news came at the end of a keynote conversation with Insomniac Events founder Pasquale Rotella , who revealed Map Point Summit alongside ADE managing director Jan-Willem van de Ven . The three-day Summit will be ADE’s first partnership of this kind and its first event outside of Amsterdam as an exclusive partnership in North America. Map Point Summit is aiming to combine ADE’s established network and experience with Insomniac’s strong North American presence and create a new meeting point for the international electronic dance music community.
Map Point Summit is named for the method of finding parties during the early days of rave culture, an era Rotella spoke about at length during his keynote. In front of a packed room, he reflected on his early days throwing illegal underground raves in Los Angeles and ultimately parlaying those parties into Insomniac Events, which is now the biggest dance event producer in the world.
During this conversation, Rotella spoke about partnering with Live Nation in 2013, a year that marked a high point of the U.S. EDM boom. Rotella noted that there had been several such partnership offers on the table in this era when dance music was exploding in popularity in the United States, and that because he took his time deciding with whom to partner, the offer amounts just getting higher. He added that partnering with Live Nation was the right move given how much freedom the company provides Insomniac to operate independently. “They don’t even know our office address,” Rotella joked during the talk.
The conversation also touched on Insomniac’s own partnerships with brands including German festival Time Warp, Miami festival III Points, German hard techno event Unreal and other promoters, with Rotella stressing the importance of grassroots brands in keeping true rave culture alive. He said that he thinks of these promoters and others like them “like bands” that are coming with their own unique vibe, and that each vibe is important to preserve for the longterm health of dance music.
When asked about the markets Insomniac has expanded into and avoiding saturation, he noted the company brings events like EDC to markets where nothing else like it exists — there are currently editions of EDC in Las Vegas, Mexico, Colombia, Thailand and South Korea — and that the company wouldn’t attempt to do a festival in a market where there’s already something similar.
With the struggles independent promoters often face in booking talent, he also posited the idea that big name DJs could do a certain number of shows a year where their fees are lowered, which would make such independent promoters better able to build lineups and strengthen dance culture overall.
Map Point Summit was the second partnership announced by Insomniac this week, with the company deepening its relationship with Time Warp by launching Time Warp Records . This new imprint will exist as part of Insomniac Music Group, an arm of Insomniac Events.