QUEENS — Their hope is no longer alive.
A group of Pearl Jam fans who have raised more than $140,000 in an effort to get the band to play at the recently renovated Forest Hills Stadium decided to end their year-long campaign, saying that “it is extremely unlikely that this crowd funded event will ever happen."
“The Pearl Jam Forest Hills movement will be over in 40+ days and as it stands we will not be renewing the crowdfund campaign with Tilt.com, barring anything unforeseen,” the organizers wrote in an email over the weekend.
Dan Sheffer, 34, who started the campaign on crowdfunding platform Tilt.com last November, also said that the group gave up their hope because they realized that "this was not a realistic endeavor as PJ's management would not talk to us directly and openly.”
In May, Pearl Jam's manager Kelly Curtis cautioned fans that their campaign might fail.
"We love the passion and enthusiasm of the fans who have spearheaded Pearl Jam Crowdfund efforts,” Curtis said in an email back then. “However, with more and more of these crowd-funded show proposals cropping up, we want to be clear before fans invest their hard-earned money into these efforts that they are unlikely to happen.”
The idea to start the campaign came from successful crowdfunding by Foo Fighters fans, who raised about $70,000 last year and persuaded the band to play in Richmond, Va.
Sheffer, who in the past year also organized various charity events, underlined that some of the group's efforts paid off.
"We ... raised over $5,000 over several events for such great charities as EB Research Partnership, Team Gleason, Wounded Warrior Project and the National Kidney Foundation."
According to Sheffer, credit cards of those who participated in the crowdfunding drive can only be charged if the campaign is successful.
