No Holiday For Exit

Exit Festival admitted to being hit by the Balkan economic crisis as the crowd was 15 percent down on the 50,000 sellout it achieved at last year’s 10th anniversary bash.

Festival press chief Rajko Bozic says the event may have suffered from the crowded market that caused Romania’s B’Estfest to skip a year, but believes the problem is mainly down to the lack of money in Serbia and the neighbouring Balkan states.

“The biggest loss was from the Balkan regions of Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia,” Bozic told Pollstar. “These countries and also Serbia are on the edge of an economical crisis.

“For many people in this region Exit is as much of a holiday as it is a festival. Plenty of young people are coming to Exit instead of going to the coast. I know many of them from Bosnia and Croatia who this summer stayed at home.”

Unlike Spain’s Benicassim Festival, where a near 50 percent drop in foreign visitors helped cause overall attendance to drop by more than one-third, Exit still attracted the usual numbers from outside the immediate neighbourhood.

Bozic was even able to report a significant increase in the number of visitors from the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries.
The acts helping Exit try to brighten the Balkan economic gloom July 8-11 included The Chemical Brothers, Faith No More, Placebo, Mika, Missy Elliott, Pendulum, LCD Soundsystem, Röyksopp, and DJ Shadow.