Global dance music production company Insomniac Events claims in a bombshell new lawsuit that a trio of Miami club operators is trying to “bully” its way into total control of two of the city’s dance venues — including by threatening to launch a “smear campaign” against Insomniac CEO Pasquale Rotella.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 4 in Florida federal court, targets promoters David Sinopoli, Davide L. Danese and Jose Gabriel Coloma Cano. The three men, referred to in the lawsuit as “CDD,” are longstanding figures in Miami nightlife who assumed control of the city’s famed Club Space in 2016. They are also half of a now-soured partnership with Insomniac for the joint operation of the Club Space venue and upstart club Factory Town. At the heart of the lawsuit are allegations that the trio failed to meet agreed-upon obligations regarding the operation of Factory Town — claims the trio refutes.
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“This is not a case of how David stood against Goliath. Rather, it is a case about how no good deed goes unpunished,” Insomniac’s lawyers wrote in the legal complaint. “Insomniac invested in and elevated the enterprise of three relatively unknown event promoters, and, after making millions of dollars, those three promoters simply got too big for their britches.”
But speaking to Billboard on Tuesday (Aug. 19), a person with an interest in Club Space says it’s actually Insomniac that soured the partnership, by changing the terms of the Factory Town deal. CDD is now preparing a counter-lawsuit against Insomniac, this person says.
“Insomniac is not acting like a partner that you can do business with,” this person continues. “The things that they are doing at this business don’t make sense for anyone other than Insomniac. CDD are good stewards of capital, and they don’t want to do things that are going to harm Club Space. And it seems like Insomniac is prioritizing itself over Space, over basically everything.”
Insomniac’s lawsuit alleges that before the company got involved in Club Space in 2019, CDD was “cruising in mediocrity” and operating the legendary Miami venue “on a whim without so much as an ownership interest in the very name and brand that the business relied upon for its success.”
Insomniac, a company in which Live Nation has a 50% ownership stake, says it rescued CDD by buying a majority stake in Club Space in 2019, licensing these important IP rights and negotiating a long-term lease with the venue’s landlord. Club Space’s revenue increased by 700% over the next six years, according to the lawsuit.
In the wake of this success, Insomniac and CDD decided to work together on a second Miami venue: Factory Town. That’s when the trouble allegedly began. Insomniac says it committed $40 million in funding to the Factory Town project, only for CDD to back out in 2024 and start making “outrageous demands” for millions of dollars and increased ownership percentages. (The person with an interest in Club Space refutes these claims, saying that Insomniac attempted to go behind the back of CDD and independently negotiate a long-term lease with the Factory Town landlord.)
“Tellingly, the CDD parties did not raise any credible misconduct or violations of contract, common law or statute as the basis for their demands,” reads the complaint. “Instead, CDD threatened to file a lawsuit containing a thirty-page smear campaign against Insomniac’s CEO and founder — Pasquale Rotella — along with a pre-planned press campaign to go with it.”
Insomniac and CDD took their contract dispute to private mediation, which also quickly soured, according to the lawsuit. Insomniac alleges that CDD then falsely started telling industry players — such as a “reputable promoter” in Ibiza — that they had “won their lawsuit against Insomniac” and now had exclusive control over Factory Town.
According to the lawsuit, CDD is now trying to wrest control of two upcoming Miami events — the Halloween party Hocus Pocus and programming during Art Basel Miami in early December — from Insomniac. The company says it has the contractual right to spearhead these events, but CDD has been selling tickets and making offers to talent without its approval.
“What has become evidently clear is that CDD’s intentions throughout the dispute were never to find a resolution,” write Insomniac’s lawyers. “Instead, CDD has been working to bully Insomniac and push it out of the parties’ partnership.”
Insomniac’s exact legal claims against CDD are redacted, as is much of the publicly filed complaint. But the company says it’s bringing the lawsuit to protect its operations at Club Space and Factory Town and get recourse for “millions of dollars in damages and irreparable harm to its business.”
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