Smeets Warns Of
Crowded Market

Pinkpop chief Jan Smeets has warned that the Dutch festival market may be getting too crowded and offered a note of caution to some of the newcomers.

“We have by far the best lineup,” he told radio station 3voor12, making it clear his words weren’t motivated by the fear of increased competition.

Asked how German promoter FKP Scorpio’s arrival in the market has impacted his business, he said, “It goes very well with Pinkpop, so good that the artists themselves are saying so on Twitter.

“If you do something 44 times it makes you stand in the premier league with Rock Am Ring (Germany) and Rock Werchter (Belgium),” he explained in an interview that was littered with soccer analogies.

He said newcomers such as Best Kept Secret, a new fest produced by FKP and Dutch concert booking agency Friendly Fire on the event site at Beekse Bergen (June 21-23), are taking a “huge risk” in the crowded festival market. He warned that it’s only logical to say some of the new festivals will fail.

Smeets told Pollstar he’s also concerned that the sheer number of festivals may prompt the country’s police and emergency services to want extra money to cover them. The Netherlands’ population totals 16.6 million, whereas Germany’s is 81 million and the UK 62 million.

“A police officer recently told me that it now seems there are festivals every weekend,” he said.

Although many in The Netherlands feel Smeets has been dismissive of the new fests springing up like Dutch tulips, particularly when saying he’d turned down most of the acts on their bills, Utrecht-based Friendly Fire isn’t taking offense.
In fact, the Friendly Fire staff is considering sending Smeets a good bottle of wine in appreciation of the publicity he’s given their events.

Last year FKP Scorpio and Friendly Fire, which has been 25 percent-owned by FKP since last January, began growing the 30,000-capacity Indian Summer Festival at Broek op Langedijk.

Mojo Concerts, which has a large interest in Pinkpop, has recently started some new festivals such as Into The Great Wide Open and Where The Wild Things Are.

Indian Summer, which is over the same June 15-16 weekend as Pinkpop, has The Prodigy, Keane, dEUS, Guus Meeuwis and Within Temptation among headliners.

The new Best Kept Secret, which is one week later, has Arctic Monkeys, Sigur Ros, Alt-J, Portishead, No Age, Swim Deep, and Skaters.

The lineup for Pinkpop, which the Guinness Book Of Records has as the world’s longest-running festival, was announced Feb. 22 and includes Green Day, Kings Of Leon, The Killers, The Vaccines, The Gaslight Anthem, Alt-J, Ben Howard, and Thirty Seconds To Mars.