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Not Quite A Sell Out: Why Festivals Are Struggling With Ticket Sales

The bastion of the live arena, the festival, seems to be firmly under fire this year.

Posted 11th July 2011, 1:07pm in Blogs by Stephen Ackroyd
Stephen Ackroyd

Stephen Ackroyd

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Not Quite A Sell Out: Why Festivals Are Struggling With Ticket Sales Music (or at least the business of music, if you want to be a grumpy so-and-so) seems to be in a bit of a mess. When the recorded industry started to see those halcyon days of multi million selling records and big fat pay cheques slide away, it was only going to affect the labels, we were told. Ignore the fact that said institutions have always been a filter - the internet, blogs and social networks will replace that. And anyway, we'll always have live music. Ticket sales, merch - they'll never replace that with a download, right?

Well, maybe not. There's been anecdotal evidence of less people going to your average gig for a while now - but that bastion of the live arena the festival seems to be firmly under fire this year.

Want proof? Mr happy clappy upside-down head chappy himself, Sir Michael of Eavis is even a bit worried, claiming King of Festivals Glastonbury may be on borrowed time. "Partly it's economics," he explains, "but there is a feeling that people have seen it all before. We've probably got another three or four years. Womad and Latitude are not selling out."

And it's not just a couple of events. Oxegen, taking place in Irish Ireland this past weekend, was apparently 'half empty'. One estimation in The Times (where Eavis' quotes originally appeared) this weekend suggested there's up to 40% of tickets still available for Reading & Leeds. That's a festival which always sells out, usually in the space of five minutes.

So why are people staying away? Could it be that staying in a muddy field while Tarquin and his BFF Henry piss on your £20 Argos tent as some misguided sense of post-GCSE result rebellion isn't the most fun you can have for £200? Might it be that, while your favourite band is a festival 'headline exclusive' in August, they're actually second on the bill somewhere else in July, as well as that headline tour in October? Have we all finally realised that a few trees, a person dressed as an elf and some pine nuts on your rat burger don't make for the 'premium festival experience' claimed on the press release? Well, maybe. Or maybe we just don't like leaving the house.

There are so many festivals, so many bands playing so many tours, being covered on so many websites, blogs and everything in between - it's pretty much impossible to impress everyone. If you're an average music fan, whatever your latest crush, they'll be playing everywhere - there's no exclusivity to be had, and chances are it'll be on the BBC's red button anyway. If you're the infuriatingly named 'Blogeratti' (seriously, Blog Squad would have been so much better), your current fad won't be playing to more than three men and a disinterested dog yet - and a spotty kid playing samples off a Macbook Pro probably isn't what the 'festival experience' is all about.

When there's a slew of new music crashing around the internet, are people really feeling the need to head out into the wilds - it seems more and more would rather stay at home, raiding the chillwave tag on Bandcamp than getting muddy for The Vaccines. Festival season becomes more and more about a sense of escapism for casual fans wanting to 'discover themselves' than the hardcore wanting to watch bands. And booking your average stadium rocker for a headline set doesn't come cheap. It's safe to say Matt Bellamy might be shopping for a yacht come the end of August. If you're paying those rates and don't sell out, you're looking at trouble; as Eavis puts it: "We sell out only because we get huge headliners. In the year Jay-Z played we nearly went bankrupt."

There once was a time it was simple. An unglamorous weekend - unheralded by the media - at Glastonbury, Reading, V or T In The Park. You went for the music, to get away from the parents, to see bands who didn't pass through your town. Festivals are something different now. Whether different is sustainable or not - only time will tell.
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