FKP’s Summer Takes A Dip

Major festival producer FKP Scorpio’s summer season took a slight dip as the crowds at its Highfield and Area 4 festivals were both down 20 percent from last year.

Company chief Folkert Koopmans told Pollstar he’s very happy with the way his 2012 festivals have performed, despite the results of the Aug. 17-19 weekend.

At Highfield, on the waterfront of the Hohenfelden Reservoir near Erfurt, the crowd dropped from 25,000 to 20,000, while the crowd at Area 4 Festival at Lüdinghausen fell from 20,000 to 16,000.

“It hasn’t spoiled a good summer but festival promoters want it to be good all the time,” Koopmans explained, balancing the latest disappointments against the sellouts at his larger, 50,000-plus Hurricane and Southside festivals.

With temperatures approaching 38C (100F) at Highfield, many festivalgoers were off to the beach at Hohenfelden, which meant bands with afternoon slots found the crowd further depleted.

This year FKP’s specialist events such as the gothic M’Era Luna Festival (Aug. 11-12) came close to selling out its 25,000 tickets, while the same-sized Chiemsee Reggae Festival (Aug. 24-26) has already sold out.

Koopmans says the disappointing results at Highfield and Area 4 are probably due to the lack of availability of genuine headliners at the back end of the season.

Both Placebo and Sportfreunde Stiller, who headlined a night at both festivals, are doing their second round of European outdoors since releasing their most recent albums.

The other acts to play Highfield and Area 4 included Broilers, The Wombats, and Me First And The Gimme Gimmes.