Warped Tour Founder Kevin Lyman Dismisses Roll-Out Criticism

06-08-2025

The Vans Warped Tour will be making it triumphant return this year to celebrate their 30th anniversary with three special shows. Founder Kevin Lyman discussed the return of the famed touring festival and brushed off criticism over the roll-out of the lineup announcements during an appearance on the Late For Load In Podcast.

Kevin said, "I think we'll end up doing, you know, people are pretty excited 'Warped' is coming back as a brand right now. Will it go on? We think so, maybe, who knows? But you know what? It's been fun to come back and kind of show that I can do it this way, and hopefully we give everyone a great show. And I think we are, I mean, you look at that lineup, and right when it comes out, it's piece[meal]... I like how we roll it out, you gotta have strong will to do that, you know.

"And then the people I'm working with even were like, 'Oh my God, you know, you [are getting] negative comments.' I go, 'Well, if you don't get a negative comment in our world, then you're not successful.' And then as that lineup started coalescing, as we were announcing more bands, and then I'm in the background watching those videos getting viewed.

"And you could take the smallest band on that lineup, and, you know, I'm just they're not the smallest, but there was a young girl named Megg who's playing in Long Beach. She basically was funny. She was sending me these videos about, why she should be on 'Warped Tour'. I listened to her music. She's got no manager, she got no record label. I put her on.

"She's gonna put on a great show. But I watched her video, and it has 171,000 views for her announcement. I can't think that if there's 171,000 views, she's probably gonna have 500 or a thousand people watching her in Long Beach. That could kick off her career. Pulling all those numbers on those videos, just, they've been viewed like 25 million dimes or something."