It seems barely a week goes by without some worrying new stat about how tough it is for grassroots promoters and musicians. So here’s this week’s: since the pandemic 204 UK festivals have closed, been cancelled or quietly disappeared.
The figure comes from a new report from the Association for Independent Festivals (AIF) and it shows that if anything the problem is getting worse. Last year, 36 festivals were cancelled in the UK. In 2024 that figure doubled to 72.
“This has been a devastating period for the UK’s festival organisers, says AIF CEO John Rostron. “Ours is a highly important sector that offers opportunities to artists, audiences, and develops creative skills and volunteering opportunities across all of the UK.”
The reasons aren’t hard to work out – inflation, Brexit, the cost of living crisis yadda yadda yadda. But the more pertinent question is what can be done to avert this decline? The AIF are campaigning for VAT on festival tickets to be lowered from its current rate of 20% to just 5%. They feel that this would be enough to encourage sales. Indeed Rostron claims that it “would have saved most of the events that have closed this year”.
“The festival sector generates significant revenue in and around local economies as well as to the Treasury every year,” he says. “We have campaigned tirelessly for targeted, temporary government intervention.”
“It is sad to see that this erosion has been allowed to continue under this Government. We have great events, with great demand, and we’re doing all we can. They need to step up, and step up now.”
To take a long-term view, it should also be pointed out that perhaps what we are seeing is, in some sense, a market correction. After all, the Noughties brought a huge explosion in both the sheer number of festivals, as well as a proliferation in varieties, sizes and demographics they cater to.
From being a market that largely serviced the 16 – 24 age group whose whole identity is (or more accurately was) constructed around music, festivals came to be something that were embraced by everybody, no matter your age or musical preferences. The UK festival market is nowhere near back to the size it was in 2000, when no more than a dozen or so had any kind of national profile.
But that is no compensation to the many promoters who are currently struggling to make ends meet. This summer just gone saw Riverside Festival, Standon Calling, El Dorado and We Are FSTVL all cancel their 2024 editions. Many more will doubtless follow in 2025.
