THIS weekend's Let's Wing It Country Music Festival has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.
The two-day festival at Scone was headed for financial disaster before Newcastle promoters Dusty Edwards and Phill Doring made the decision on Monday to postpone the event.
Edwards said only 500 tickets were sold for the Let's Wing It, far below the 3200 required to break even.
"People are just waiting to buy their tickets and in all honesty we can't walk into a $300,000 festival if we can't see how we're gonna cover it," Edwards said.
"We can't walk into a show like that hoping on walk-ins.
"We so wanted to do this and it was a festival for all the right reasons."
Slow pre-sales have been problematic for various parts of the live music industry since the pandemic, which a large number of punters waiting until the last minute to purchase tickets.
Let's Wing It was supposed to run from Saturday to Sunday at Scone's White Park and featured a line-up of Golden Guitar-winners Fanny Lumsden, Brooke McClymont & Adam Eckersley, Andrew Swift and Catherine Britt, plus The Bushwackers, The Sunny Cowgirls, Melody Moko, Good Corn Liquor, Gretta Ziller, Piper Butcher and Matt Cornell.
Edwards said the winter time slot and competition from other Upper Hunter events like Smoke in Broke BBQ Festival and Merriwa's Festival Of The Fleeces was also a factor in the sluggish ticket sales.
Despite the disappointment of the cancellation, Edwards said he remains committed to persevering with Let's Wing It Festival.
"We're trying to lock in a new date, it looks like it'll be in the new year," he said. "We've got a meeting later in the week to discuss all that."
Ticket-holders can elect to receive a refund or carry the ticket over to Let's Wing It's future date.
