Boes Caught In The Middle

With the German and Swiss festival markets suffering most from the World Cup, Dieter Boes soon realized it wasn’t good to be stuck in the middle of them.

Eight weeks before the festival, he realized sales for Rock Am See – on the Swiss-German border at Lake Konstanz – weren’t going well and the September 2nd crowd tallied at about 15,000.

Coming on the back of five consecutive 25,000 sellouts, he said the 40 percent drop was because the World Cup hit hard and he didn’t have a headliner that was exclusive to him.

“I wasn’t so concerned when sales were slow during the football, but then they didn’t pick up afterwards,” he said. “By the middle of July, I realized it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as good as the last five years.”

Although the crowd was poor, the weather was good. Boes said he draws some consolation from the fact that – after a very wet August – the sun managed to shine all day.

The show got great reviews from the national and local media.

Among the acts hanging out on the shores of Lake Konstanz were Placebo, Mando Diao, Maximo Park, Pennywise, and Rise Against.

– John Gammon