The Counder Podcast

85,000 Metal Fans in a Village of 2,100 and the One Thing You Can't Buy

with Holger Hübner

A pub idea in a village of 2,100 people. Thirty-five years later, 85,000 metal fans from more than 90 nations show up on the same field. Holger Hübner joins Tobi to share how Wacken Open Air went from that first edition in 1990 to a temporary city built across almost 500 hectares and ten municipalities. He talks about booking the early bands on a fax machine and his employer's copier, the near-collapse in 1993, and why they still run their own ticketing and merchandise to this day: nobody in the industry wanted to work with long-haired metalheads, so they built it themselves. He and Tobi get into how the festival actually works as a business, why they brought Superstruct on board in 2019, and what the 85,000 guests leave behind in the region. Holger's answer to the investor question is unambiguous: you can buy infrastructure, market rights and event capacity, but you cannot buy the feeling on the ground. The same conviction runs through how he sees live experience in an age of AI, and through the motto he has kept for 35 years: authentic, honest and loud.