So, my husband and I did what any sane EDM-loving couple would do: we bought our overpriced tickets (more on that later), slipped into something vaguely party oriented, and headed to Zagreb Fair Festival. Pavilion 15 (the so-called Pyramids). Which, by the way, is about as Egyptian as a parking garage, but fine, branding is branding.
Steve Aoki. The man, the myth, the airborne pastry delivery system. Globally, he fills stadiums. He headlines Tomorrowland. He makes people risk neck injuries just to be near the cake trajectory. So of course, when he comes to Zagreb, one expects: chaos, bodies pressed like canned sardines, Instagram stories overloaded with flashing strobes, and at least one lawsuit from someone who slipped on frosting.
Instead: around 300 people. Give or take. Aoki descended on Zagreb like Zeus with a USB stick, and Zagreb responded with the crowd size of a high school graduation.
But then Thompson.
Ah, Thompson. Croatia’s favourite nationalist crooner, patron saint of “patriotism but make it karaoke.” A couple months before Aoki, he staged his mega-concert in Zagreb’s Hippodrome, where half a million people (allegedly) turned up. Five. Hundred. Thousand. That’s not a concert, that’s a biblical census. The numbers sound so inflated they should come with a warning label: Side effects may include skepticism, traffic collapse, and spontaneous flag-waving.
Let’s do the math. That means for every one person who showed up to Aoki, roughly 1,666 people showed up for Thompson. Statistically, if you threw cake into Thompson’s crowd, it would never land. It would just disappear into a nationalist Bermuda Triangle of hands, flags, and beer foam.
So why the discrepancy?
Let’s start with the obvious: ticket price. Zagreb Fair Festival priced itself like it thought it was Coachella, but forgot the small detail that Croatians don’t exactly swim in disposable income. You want to bring EDM into this market? Great. But don’t set your ticket prices so high that people are forced to choose between seeing Aoki and paying their electricity bill. Spoiler: HEP always wins.
Then there’s marketing. Or rather, the stunning absence of it. Did they advertise this at all? Was it just a few posters on Trg bana Jelačića, half-hidden behind graffiti? Meanwhile, Thompson’s concert was practically a state-sponsored affair. Posters, TV coverage, friends-of-friends whisper networks. His marketing wasn’t marketing – it was mobilisation. Like if a military draft came with fireworks.
Aoki, by contrast, felt like a secret gig. If you weren’t already following him, or obsessively refreshing EDM forums, you’d never know he was even in Zagreb. And that’s tragic, because the show itself was amazing. Organisation: flawless. Sound: top-notch. Lights: retina-searing. The man gave everything. He deserved a sea of people, and instead got a puddle.
Scooter: The Middle Child
Now, I will give credit where it’s due: the next day, Scooter played and drew a bigger crowd. Which makes sense. Scooter is Eurotrash nostalgia on legs. Every Balkan wedding DJ has blasted “How Much Is the Fish” at least once in their career. People come for Scooter the way they come for ćevapi: it’s comforting, greasy, and always there when you need it.
But Aoki is a global phenomenon. He should not be outdrawn by a guy screaming “HYPER HYPER” into a microphone like a possessed aerobics instructor. And yet, here we are.
Culture, Cake, and Context
The hard truth: Thompson pulls crowds because he’s not just about music. He taps into identity, nationalism, the whole who we are as a people thing. For better or worse, his concerts double as rallies. Aoki, on the other hand, offers escapism, spectacle, and an international flavour. He’s about forgetting borders, not reinforcing them. He’s about fun, not flags. And in this city, in this economy, that doesn’t pull quite the same numbers.
But let’s be honest: which show would you rather be at? The one where you lose your hearing to bass drops while covered in frosting, or the one where you lose your hearing to chants of “Za dom spremni” while covered in beer? If you pick the latter, we’re not friends.
Final Thoughts: Zagreb, You Missed Out
Here’s what kills me: Aoki was brilliant. Everything was there – the lights, the sound, the spectacle, the energy. The organisers delivered on the experience, but forgot the basics: make it affordable, tell people it exists, don’t book it in a venue you can’t pay off.
Instead, the crowd was a fraction of what it should have been. It wasn’t embarrassing – it was heartbreaking. Because you had one of the world’s greatest DJs, and you let him play like he was hosting a private rave for the Zagreb ping-pong club.
Meanwhile, Thompson’s half-million zombies shuffle on, claiming the title of “biggest crowd in Croatian history.” And that, my friends, is the cruel irony of our cultural moment.
And after this debacle? Let’s be brutally honest: no big EDM name will ever set foot in Zagreb again. Why would they? They can fill the biggest stages all over the world, but in Zagreb, they play for three rows of kids in bucket hats and a lost German tourist who wandered in by mistake. The scene deserved better. Aoki deserved better.
He gave us cake. Zagreb gave him crumbs.
Erika Matić is a writer, semi-professional cynic, and occasional festival-goer who believes the number of people at a concert is inversely proportional to the quality of the music. She is currently petitioning for free cake at all future EDM events as reparations for what happened to Steve Aoki in Zagreb.
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