Tickets Now on Sale for the 14Th Annual Business Excellence

AHEAD OF SPLIT'S ULTRA EUROPE ELECTRONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL Joe Bašić's Croatian Dream Toronto native Josip Joe Bašić, the president of the Canadian-Croatian Business Network, has lived in Zagreb for the past two decades and has conquered the peaks of the creative industry in Croatia with his entrepreneurial spirit, in particular with the organisation of the Ultra Europe electronic music festival in the heart of the Dalmatia region. The festival draws visitors from one hundred forty countries to Split at the height of the tourism season and sees a growth in spending of some 300 million kuna (about 40 million euro). Bašić has a wealth of communication and marketing skill. When he decided to move from his native Ontario in 1997 at the age of 26 to live in Croatia, the homeland of his parents, Bašić had no idea he would achieve the American Dream in Zagreb. He started his family in Croatia and launched the MPG company for event organisation, merchandising and BTL marketing, employing a number of young people. He has affirmed himself as one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the creative industry in the area of the presentation of contemporary music. Born in 1971 to a family of emigrants from Croatia's Lika region that moved to Toronto in the 1960s, he earned a degree in marketing in Canada at the University of Western Ontario's Ivey Business School. The entertainment branch During his studies he was fortunate enough to set up encouraging contacts with promotion experts whose clients included multinational corporations the likes of Pepsi, Lays, IBM, Gillette and Visa. He set up a company in Croatia and began doing what he was educated for – promotion. Thanks to his Canadian education he possessed know-how that was quickly noticed by Croatia's biggest companies and by global business giants operating in this part of the world. His first jobs were with the tobacco industry, beverage manufacturers and other producers of the leading brands on this market. He organised many events and concerts and his work gradually moved towards the entertainment branch and the growing creative industries. In the music industry he saw his first success with a Fat Boy Slim concert in Umag. Josip's ambitions grew over time towards mega-events like the Ultra Europe festival. The first Ultra event was held in Split in 2013 as the result of seven years of negotiations with Ultra Worldwide (UWW), the owners of the licence from Miami in the USA, that saw Croatia host the spectacle in honour of its accession to the European Union five years ago. Right away the Ultra festival saw a stunning half a billion euro make its way into cash registers in the Dalmatia region, and Split saw over 150 thousand visitors arrive over a one week period, putting it on the map of global top destinations. The tourism ministry has awarded a prize to the Ultra festival for the past two years, declaring it the largest international event ever organised in Croatia. Along with Croatia the Ultra festival is staged in a handful of global destinations, including Tokyo, Miami, Singapore, Rio and other entertainment empires of the modern world. Youth tourism hub Joe Bašić was spot on in forecasting that after five years of the Ultra Europe music festival Split would become a major global youth tourism hub, which he feels the millennial heart of the Mediterranean deserves. The fifth Ultra Europe event, the largest festival of electronic music in Croatia, will be staged at the Poljud stadium in Split from the 14th to 16th of July, the event organisers announced in early May, quashing rumours that the jubilee reincarnation of the festival was in question. Last year the Ultra event was led for a brief period by Nikola Bušljeta, who worked with Bašić from the first to third event, but who failed to establish positive communication with the event hosts. This brought entertainment maestro Bašić, who originally brought the festival to Croatia, back in the focus, encouraging the hosts and Split tourism professionals when he noted that, "Ultra Europe has achieved over a billion impressions a year on social networks and I don't know of another event in Croatia that could be organised to achieve this kind of effect. Besides that, with this festival we have succeeded in achieving great affirmation among youth, a population that is hardest to draw. Young people are not interest in the usual commercials, they go to where they see something challenging, and the Ultra festival has for the second year running been declared the best festival in the world." The festival stays in Split Happily, the licence owner Ultra Worldwide has confidence in Bašić, announcing recently that the festival will in fact stay in Split and that they will continue with preparations with Joe Bašić's company MPG Live that will see the jubilee reincarnation of the event be the best ever. Since the Croatian premiere in 2013 the festival has every year been attended by thousands of passionate music fans from around the world, and thanks to Ultra Split's Poljud stadium has now been positioned as one of the leading festival destinations in Europe. Visitors can look forward to this year's edition of the festival and future events under the Ultra brand to be staged in Our Beautiful Homeland. Bašić's MPG Live, the exclusive organiser and promoter of the Ultra Europe festival, has said it will work with partners at Ultra Worldwide to see the festival remain in Split for another five years. Most important of all, of course, is the music that will this July be played by some one hundred fifty performing artists, including DJ stars (admittedly, still to be confirmed) the likes of Above & Beyond, Adam Beyer, Afrojack, Alesso, Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox, Dash Berlin, David Guetta, Hardwell and others. By: Vesna Kukavica .

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