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Inside Marshmello's $60 Million Las Vegas Megadeal

This article is more than 5 years old.

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Traditionally, dessert is the last part of a delicious meal. For the freshly renovated Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, it’s the starter: Marshmello will open the hotel’s new Kaos Dayclub and Nightclub with a performance on April 4.

The gig will be just the first taste of an expansive residency pact worth $60 million over two years, according to sources close to the negotiation; Marshmello should play several dozen gigs at Kaos annually, putting his average nightly haul a bit short of $1 million. Representatives for Marshmello and the Palms declined to comment on the financial details, but the two sides spoke glowingly of their agreement.

“We’re really excited about the partnership with Marshmello and the team that works with him,” says Jon Gray, general manager of the Palms, pointing out that Marshmello’s show will boast custom touches including a 360-degree rotating stage. “We have an opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind show that you can only see here.”

“Not many other dayclub and nightclubs in the world can compare to the amount of detail, quality and craftsmanship” that went into Kaos, added Moe Shalizi, Marshmello’s manager and a fellow 30 Under 30 honoree, in a statement.

The deal will cover more than Kaos, whose combined indoor and outdoor space should make it the biggest in Sin City. According to Gray, Marshmello-branded items will be scattered throughout the Palms, which has undergone a $690 million renovation over the past two years. The masked DJ’s likeness will appear on poker chips, table felts and menus throughout the property’s restaurants. There’s even talk of a Marshmello-themed dessert store on the premises.

For Marshmello, who recently appeared on the cover of Forbes, the deal all but guarantees a continued climb among the ranks of electronic music’s highest-paid acts. Clocking in at No. 5 with pretax earnings of $23 million last year, Marshmello could easily double that sum thanks to the Palms pact and additional gigs on top of heady music and publishing numbers.

Just don’t expect to see an army of Marshmello clones fanning out across the country to play simultaneous shows.

“Sometimes we talk to people, and they’re surprised we aren’t doing that,” the DJ explained to Forbes last year. “And I’m like, ‘That’s not why I did this.’”

For more on the business of music, check out my Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind and follow me on Twitter.