Why so many festivals cancel.
Hi mates
Jayden here, the organiser of Loch Hart Music Festival.
I am writing this to remove a taboo. I am going to openly tell you about the financial side of running a music festival.
I started working on this in 2016 with some experience in events and a love for live music. The festival was my passion project, I did it at night and on weekends while working full-time as a lawyer.
It took two years to get the first festival off the ground, and who knew 2018 would be such a bad time to launch a new music festival (lol).
Loch Hart 1 – Nov 2018
The inaugural festival went extremely well in many respects. I lost a stupid amount of money. But through personal loans and my full-time income, I managed to pay everyone involved.
Loch Hart 2 – Nov 2019
The Farmer financially backed the festival. I didn’t know the owners of Kangaroobie before sending them a cold email the year prior. But they saw the potential, believed in it, and were willing to help make it happen. We doubled in size from year 1 to 2, and the vibes were high!
2020. Cancelled.
2021. Postponed.
Loch Hart 3 – Jan 2022
We sold more tickets than ever before. Things were finally financially sustainable. I quit my job to dedicate myself to the festival. Then, Omicron popped up. Previously, as vax numbers went up things were getting back to ‘normal’. We ran 14-16 January 2022, the peak of Victorian Omicron. We refunded approximately 30% of all tickets in the week before the festival. We went from turning our first profit to losing money again.
Loch Hart 4 – Nov 2022
Optimistic about how LH3 would have gone if not for Omicron, we ran two festivals in one year. Retrospectively, this was a mistake. Sales didn’t go well, and costs soared on everything - insurance doubled, we spent more on artists, production, and all contractors. The industry talk was that people ‘buy tickets late’. However, when the forecast for the weekend was rain, those late ticket sales never came. We went ahead, and for the fourth consecutive festival, we lost money.
Loch Hart 5 – Jan 2024
I started planning with a more sceptical, perhaps just more educated, mindset than in previous years. I knew we had to do things differently. We:
Moved our dates to January – after that was our best previous festival
Dropped the ticket price to $199 – with a cost of living crisis happening
Booked a lineup featuring more electronic acts – thanks to Milo Eastwood, PBS
Created better social content – thanks to Andy O’Connor, Sandy Dish
Engaged a new designer for a fresh look – thanks to Leesa Westwood
To some extent, this has worked! We’ve doubled our social media following and never had more engagement across our content.
But, the industry has changed. It is my belief that people only purchase tickets in advance when they think a show will sell out – Meredith, Taylor Swift etc. Most other events have a slow grind.
Well, for an event such as Loch Hart that is just not feasible. We hire pretty much everything, and the quantities depend on the ticket numbers. Plus, there are huge delivery costs to Princetown.
On Tuesday 12 December, we did a call out seeking people to purchase their tickets early, hoping to sell 300 tickets in the next 7 days or we may have to cancel the festival.
The reality is that if Loch Hart ran last weekend, we would have lost $100,000. That’s the number we are looking at.
You can do the maths from there, $200 tickets x 300 sales is $60,000 income. So even if we reach our 300 ticket target we will be risking a $40,000 loss. However, we are hopeful that we will sell another 200 tickets in the final three weeks leading up to Loch Hart (pending weather forecasts!).
At the time of writing this, our post has received an eye-watering 600 shares. An amazing response!
Since posting, we have sold 131 tickets. Approximately 40% of our target in 40% of the time. So it is really difficult to know where this is going to land. Perhaps it won’t be sustainable for another 4 days, perhaps group chats are just firing up – I don’t know anymore.
So that’s where we are at. Unsure. Hopeful. Sceptical. But filled with love from the response.
If you’re thinking about coming, please purchase your ticket in advance. Not just for Loch Hart, but for all shows.
Jayden
