A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: VIP Rave Culture Is Peaking

Andy Crysell’s book Selling the Night opens with a story about Miami’s Ultra Music Festival and DJ Colonel Sanders. In 2019, KFC sponsored one of the USA’s most respected dance music events, and as part of their campaign, opted to have DJ Colonel Sanders spin a few tracks on the main stage. 

It’s a story that opens up questions around the financialisation, commercialisation, and extraction of rave culture by businesses. 

Andy’s book came out a month before I launched Lab.Club in May 2025. This story, and the book itself, would set the scene for much of my own research into the commercialisation of the UK rave scene. 

The commercialisation of the whole world is taking place right now, and I’m sure you’ve noticed…

Apps you once got for free are double the price; gig workers are getting squeezed on fees to barely make a living, and that Black Mirror episode where healthcare is tied to human-delivered adverts feels like it’s slowly coming true. 

But that’s not true for all; the K-shaped economy is in full effect, and when the stock market is at an all-time high, and corporate profits are at their biggest ever, there will of course be those in want of a VIP experience. 

COVID had a profound impact on the global rave and electronic music scene, in my opinion. Firstly, it bottled up huge demand which was ready to pounce on live music experiences. Secondly, reels platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and live streaming platforms propelled the raving experience to a new level of stardom. 

This is especially true with the younger generation, whose love of house music and DJs like Josh Baker, Omar+, and Max Dean has come to define the sound of the UK and a new generation of ravers. 

I’m sure we’ve all seen the abundance of VIP tickets starting to pop up, queue jumps to ensure a more pleasant experience getting in, proper toilets instead of portaloos, and a nice stage pass to take some selfie videos.

Inevitably, ‘VIP’ is only really offered once something becomes cool and popular, and when people are prepared to pay hundreds or sometimes even thousands on a night out. 

In my experience, VIPs come in two flavours:

A few friends and I have had a VIP table a couple of times, once at Amnesia, and once at Sonus festival in Croatia – both occasions were due to overcrowding and wanting a more comfortable experience (I promise!). 

There are many reasons to hate VIP, especially in rave culture, but it also gives organisers an incentive to make their core product, GA, worse, or at least not better. 

So when the mysterious lost nightclub, run by one of the founders of Secret Cinema which sold for $100 million, started offering VIP memberships for £1,000 to their club which might open soon… it piqued my interest.  

There are many reasons to conclude that ‘VIP culture’ in rave is peaking, but mostly it comes down to the fact that everything has a shelf life. 

Oh, and there’s the fact that this happened before 1999-2003, a time when the stock market was also at an all-time high, before the subsequent dotcom-bubble popping and throwing the world into a global recession (sounds like AI in 2026!).

'The superclubs thought they could produce the same thing and sit still for 10 to 15 years. We are now learning, like rock music, about constant reinvention.’ – Guardian, 2003

Luckily, the underground is where constant reinvention happens, and this is something corporate rave companies can’t replicate. But back to Lost…

Lost is a project that was set up in recent years to reuse old spaces and transform them into a club – a model used by Broadwick. It has a secret DJ lineup, rooms playing films, and even some jazz, I hear. Overall, it has received great applause from mainstream media.

One of the reasons it got credited as the most mysterious club in London is its phone policy. With no phones, you have to see things with your own eyes – no social media. This was a similar model used by Secret Cinema back in the day too.

No phones have obviously come to light in recent years with the problems social media is causing the rave scene. In some ways, you might have said Secret Cinema was ahead of its time. 

When I posted about this via a reel on Instagram, a few people commented that their £25/£50/£1000 membership fees were normal fundraising for a new independent club. 

But are they really independent, and how far can you really stretch that word? 

For a start, I’m not sure many co-founders of a $100 million business would go out to the market and call their next venture “independent”, and then ask future customers to help them with planning permission, and pay in advance for something that doesn’t even have a license yet.

Usually, if a company was expanding, they would generate the profits or investment to do so, not ask their social media followers for help. 

During my research, other stories have come to light about a failed, Lost nightclub project in Croydon, with liquidators moving in, and ultimately people left out of pocket.

The £1,000 VIP membership doesn’t really give you much for only a year. Tickets held on the door for you (you still have to pay), an invite to the opening party, and more promises of features coming in the future. 

The funniest thing is, like many companies at the moment, they are running this as an “application”, so only if you are cool enough, do you receive the £1K membership. 

Like Andy and DJ Colonel Sanders being great figureheads for how far commercialisation had come by 2019, lost’s vague VIP membership has become that for me in my journey into the depths of London nightlife. 

Overall, it comes down to whether someone is adding or extracting from the scene. Whether someone is jumping on the bandwagon of no phones for PR or allure purposes, or whether they are doing it to create a more liberating environment. 

But if a £1K membership isn’t enough to convince you that we’ve peaked, Amnesia has just announced that it’s sold out of their €14,000 lifetime VIP membership.