Skive’s Happy Campers

Skive Beach Party broke records when 25,000 per day turned up to the small coastal resort at the bottom of Denmark’s Salling Peninsula, and 7,500 of them camped there for the whole four days.

Knud Bjerre, who books the bands and does marketing for what’s now the country’s third-largest festival, says both figures are records and he’s confident the Jutland site has the scope for the event to continue growing,

"We want to expand even further and hope to get an even stronger lineup next year," he said, adding that negotiations for 2009’s headliners have already begun.

Only Smukfest, the 30,000-capacity event at Skanderborg (August 6-10), and the 75,000-capacity Roskilde Festival (July 3-6) can put bands in front of bigger festival crowds.

The increased demand for camping is underpinning Skive’s growth. The site opened five years ago with space for 5,000 people but this year festival organisers decided to make room for more tents. All 7,500 spots were filled.

"We sold the extra capacity very fast and could have sold more if we had more space," Bjerre explained. "Next year we hope to have room to accommodate a minimum of 9,000 at the camp, but hopefully it will be 10,000.

"Despite the record attendance everything went smoothly and the only people who were bored were the police," he added.

The demand for camping can be measured by the June 4-7 festival selling all 19,000 of its four-day tickets, which is another record.

The bands making sure that Skive campers were happy campers included Linkin Park, Queens of the Stone Age, Nephew, The Raveonettes, Kashmir, Spleen United and Beth Hart.