The Prisoner
Member
- Joined
- 22 Aug 2012
- Messages
- 334
I posted at the start of this thread - I run a festival - around 10,000 over a weekend. If we aren't back to normal by Easter we won't have much choice but to postpone because our ticket selling window would be too small and there would be too much uncertainty.If social distancing is still required and capacity at festivals being severely limited, then for almost all festival organisers this will just be completely financially unviable for their festivals to go ahead! It's either no social distancing and festivals being able to accommodate their usual intended capacity, or not atall. And if many festivals have to cancel again this year, then I expect a fair number of them will not return again.
As mentioned Oliver Dowden said that he expects the events industry to be back to normal by Easter. Let's see if he turns out to be right on that. I and many many others are really hoping so.
We have sold around 25% of our capacity so far having gone on sale on Valentines Day of this year - the sales were flying for three weeks and then we have been impacted by Covid ever since, firstly moving 2020 to 2021 (thankfully we kept all of our artists, but we had to bribe the punters to "keep their ticket" by adding more headliners - that was actually cheaper than having a run on refunds).
I've made a submission to a parliamentary commission on what needs to be done for the sector to come back for 2021 - major concerns are that events will be uninsurable as both venues and promoters will want to be insured against covid risk (and that doesn't exist right now), that social distancing and festivals are not compatible (any social distancing still needed and that's the festival season gone folks - the best we can do is a temperature zap), lack of punter confidence and lack of government support (take a look how many festivals were helped by the turd that was the Culture Recovery Fund - there were about three).
Mine isn't a major festival and we are only in our third year (although we have got 2-3 household names). It costs a six figure sum to put on. If there is ANY remotely significant doubt in March/April we have no choice but to postpone to 2022 on safety, logistical and commercial grounds
And you are right about it being the death knell for so many of these events. I know 2-3 that are clinging on for dear life. We will be OK because the event isn't my day job, but if it was we'd probably have given up by now.