Belgium’s Outdoor Boom

After the tragedy of two years ago when five people were killed in a freak storm that cut the festival short, nobody would begrudge the 66,000-capacity event at Kiewit a sellout.

But most of Belgium’s major and mid-size festivals are doing close to sellout business, with some breaking a few records along the way.

“It was almost as if we had started the summer,” Rock Werchter chief Herman Schueremans told Pollstar after his event did 85,000 per day July 4-7, although the subsequent festivals have made a decent job of continuing it.

The 25th edition of Dour Festival drew an average of nearly 37,000 per day to the Plaine de la Machine à Feu site near the French border.

The five-day crowd was nearly 40,000 up on the recent average, but Dour also broke the record for its biggest daily crowd by doing 42,000 on a couple of the days.

The Dour lineup July 18-21 included The Smashing Pumpkins, Amon Tobin, Kate Nash, Klaxons, and Wu Tang Clan.

Tomorrowland, Belgium’s award-winning dance music extravaganza, also broke records by selling out its 60,000 capacity in eight minutes.

The acts attracting the fans to Antwerp for Tomorrowland July 26-28 included Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, Sebastian Ingrosso, Hardwell, Steve Aoki, and Avicii.

Over the same weekend in Tienen, Sting, Joe Cocker, Katie Melua, and Kaiser Chiefs were among the acts keeping things sweet for Suikerrock.

Five or six years ago, the festival that takes place in the city’s two main squares was averaging crowd between 15,000 and 20,000, but this year equaled last year’s record breaking 30,000 per day.

The other acts at Suikerrock included Within Temptation, Gabrielle Aplin, and James Morrison.