3A Buys Into ‘Poshstock’

3A Entertainment has bought into Cornbury Festival, the Oxfordshire outdoor nicknamed ‘Poshstock’ because its upmarket audience has included UK Prime Minister and local MP David Cameron.

The financial details haven’t been made public but the London-based promoter has set up a new venture with festival chief Hugh Phillimore, who started it in 2004 and has grown it to the point of pulling crowds of 15,000.

He says 3A is the perfect partner because it’s an “independently minded” company that will have the integrity not to try to change the unique nature of the festival.

“Having created the Route of Kings concert series in Hyde Park, we understand the special place Cornbury occupies in the festival landscape and we look forward to nurturing it for years to come,” said 3A director Pete Wilson.

He and fellow 3A director Dennis Arnold described the event as “one of the crown jewels of the live music calendar.”

The UK’s leading independent promoter – 11th in Pollstar’s Top 100 promoters for 3Q with 2010 ticket sales approaching 850,000 – plans to develop the festival but so far the only fundamental change is that the site will be switched.

For 2011, Cornbury’s moving to a new location. It’s a 10-minute drive from the Charlbury, Oxfordshire, site that’s staged such headliners as Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Joe Cocker, Robert Plant, Jackson Browne, Amy Winehouse, Crowded House, Texas, KT Tunstall and jazz legend Humphrey Lyttelton.

Phillimore – who will remain the event’s creative director – says the new setting, which is also a 20,000-capacity space, will make the festival even better. He’s keeping quiet about the details until the 2011 edition goes on sale in December.