Radar Homes In On Right Market

Harry Jenner’s second Radar Festival (Croatia) pulled twice as many as the first and came close to selling out.

The Austrian promoter saw 12,000 people turn up to see a June 13 bill headed by Bob Dylan and Manic Street Preachers, compared with the 5,000 that came to see Placebo, Kaiser Chiefs and Queens Of The Stone Age in 2007.

Jenner, whose MusicNet works closely with Nova Music on Austrian festivals, believes the keys to the success have been moving the event away from what can be an overcrowded Zagreb market and pitching it at an older market.

Dylan’s first show on Croatian soil may well have been another factor.

Jenner is so pleased with the result that he’s planning for next year’s Radar to be a two-day camping festival. That would require moving out of the stadium at Varazdin, about 40 miles north of Zagreb and very close to the Hungarian and Slovenian borders, to one of three local greenfield sites he’s looked at.