Wireless Stays In Tune

Live Nation U.K. managing director Stuart Galbraith said he’s more than happy with his company’s start to the summer, after Wireless Festival followed on the success of last week’s Download Festival.

White Stripes (June 14), Faithless (June 15) and Kaiser Chiefs (June 17) all pulled more than 22,000 to London’s Hyde Park, but the Saturday night show from Daft Punk drew closer to 30,000.

He wasn’t surprised or that disappointed at the three nights at Leeds Harewood House, where it’s harder to pull a crowd and bucketing rain made it worse, as White Stripes (June 15), Kaiser Chiefs (16) and Daft Punk (17) still did about 15,000 each.

His view that the previous week’s Download is the best festival Live Nation U.K. has ever produced was borne out by the number of hits on the company’s Web site.

It attracted 961,000 visitors in the month leading up to the event, the highest monthly figure that any European Live Nation Web site has ever achieved. The usual U.K. average is about 500,000 hits per month.

Other acts on the London and Leeds Wireless bills included Queens Of The Stone Age, Editors, Air, The Rakes, Klaxons and CSS.