Features
Peace And Tough Love?
German promoter
Bravalla (June 27-29), which has confirmed
It’s on a massive site with a huge potential capacity at Norkopping, about three hours’ drive from the Peace & Love site at Borlange, where
“The announcement that Bravalla was to be on our weekend seemed a bit underhanded and upset us a bit,” said Peace & Love research and development chief Mark Berryman, who admits FKP Scorpio had made contact and suggested that his festival switch dates.
FKP chief Folkert Koopmans says he had to choose that particular weekend because it was the only one when both Green Day and Rammstein were available.
Last year the Hamburg-based promoter is also believed to have approached Peace & Love with an offer to become a partner in the festival.
Although Berryman admits the arrival of Bravalla has caused stress at Peace & Love, he plays down the idea that his festival is “at war with Scorpio.”
“We have had contact with them and I just spent a few days in Holland [for the Eurosonic-Noorderslag weekend] in the light-hearted company of many of the Scorpio team,” he explained.
However, what makes matters worse for Peace & Love, which is Sweden’s biggest festival and regularly pulls crowds of 40,000-plus, is that the new competition has arrived at a time when it’s really stumped for money.
Despite a succession of record-breaking crowds that culminated with it selling more than 45,000 per day in 2011, last autumn it agreed to payment terms with creditors to avoid going bust with debts of around 13 million Swedish krona ($2 million).
The 2012 ticket sales dropped to 38,000 as P&L suffered from the terrible weather that affected all of Europe.
“We had a few problems,” Berryman explains, “It was not as a result of the festival part of the company, really, although last year it was hard booking for us and we would liked to have sold a few more tickets.
“But the festival is very much on track for this year. Some of our creditors have long-term contracts in place now in gratitude.”
The most recent casualty in the Swedish outdoor market was Arvika Festival, which went down after a calendar clash with an FKP festival.
In 2010 Arvika had gone into administration before agreeing to pay its suppliers about 25 percent of what they were owed.
The following year the suppliers became wary of the festival and wanted advance payments, and so in July 2011 – three weeks before it was to happen – Arvika went bust owing “millions of krona.”
Asked if FKP Scorpio had harmed sales by scheduling its recently acquired Hultsfred Festival on the same weekend, Olov Hallberg of Galaxen, the nonprofit organisation that had run Arvika since it started in 1992, said: “It was a factor but not the biggest factor.”
Apart from Bravalla, FKP Scorpio’s other Swedish outdoors are Getaway Rock Festival at Gävle (Aug. 8-10) and Hultsfred Festival (June 13-15), which FKP bought out of receivership at the end of 2010.
FKP has more than a half-dozen festivals in Germany including major events such as Southside, Hurricane and Highfield, plus relatively new outdoors in Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands.
It’s also entered the Scandinavian market as a promoter and has upcoming arena shows with