Positivus Bucks Baltic Trend

Latvia’s Positivus Festival continued to challenge the view that the Baltic region doesn’t have a festival market by attracting 25,000 per day to its picturesque site at Salacgriva, where the River Salaca flows into the Baltic Sea at the Gulf Of Riga.

That’s not huge by European standards but the festival has grown rapidly since 2007, when it started by pulling 3,000 per day.

This year’s figures are up 10 percent on last year and the organisers will be particularly pleased that around 90 percent of the crowd bought two-day tickets. About 10,000 stayed on the festival campsite.

Festival promoter Girts Majors appears to be closer to his goal of expanding the event to three days.

Positivus is also developing something of an international flavour as 2,000 of the visitors came from neighbouring Estonia, possibly due to Ewert & The Two Dragons being so high on the bill, while a further 2,000 came from either Lithuania, Finland, Germany, the UK and The Netherlands.

The other acts on the bill July 20-21 included Keane, Manic Street Preachers, Friendly Fires, Instrumenti, SBTRKT, and The Vaccines.