Prague Czechs Into Conference Circuit

The Capricorn Promotion chief, who also books international acts for the country’s Rock For People festival, assembled an impressive-looking lineup of speakers for Nouvelle Prague’s debut.

They also had what appears to have been a pragmatic list of topics.

Martin Elbourne from Glastonbury’s booking team, Kem Lalot from France’s Eurockeennes Festival, Angus Baskerville from the UK’s 13 Artists agency, Yourope chief Christof Huber and Michal Kašcák from Slovakia’s Pohoda Festival pondered of whether booking a band is only a question of money.

They also considered whether eastern and central Europe are still considered emerging markets.

The two questions are linked in the sense that they both raise the nebulous discussion on whether acts should reduce their fees in markets where the economy means the ticket prices need to be much lower.

The counter argument says why should an act drop its fees to visit a country that doesn’t have a legitimate recorded music market. The gig money is the sole financial reason for bothering to go there. 

The internal market also had a slot as an all-Czech panel including David Urban (DSmackU Promotion), Petr Choura (Divadlo Pod Lampou), Lukáš Stara (Fléda Club, Brno) and Premysl Cerník from Mighty Sounds Festival.

They discussed whether there is any economic sense in trying to run a music club in the Czech Republic.

This led to whether festival and club promoters should bother to bring in new acts or just please the crowds with already well-established artists. There was a sense that the Czech club scene isn’t doing well, and also that the problems don’t stop there.

The Czechs went on to discuss whether the country has too many festivals.

Suchochleb, who created the event with Elbourne, who also works on the UK’s The Great Escape, put in his own panel appearance to discuss running “sustainable events.”

He was joined by Fruzsina Szép from Hungary’s Sziget Festival, Clare O’Neill from the UK’s A Greener Festival, Glastonbury lawyer and green activist Ben Challis and Julia Gudzent from Germany’s Melt Festival.

The question of whether Nouvelle Prague is financially sustainable is still open, although Sucholeb remains confident.

“Of course we lost money but we expected that and we are fine with that, we are thinking in a long term, we know this is not primarily a thing that can make money – at least not when it starts,” he said.

Although there were only 100 or so paying delegates, which was above Sucholeb’s expectations, major Czech brewer Staropramen – which allowed its premises to be used for the conference – also covered half of the costs.

The evening concerts staged in a heated tent in a Staropramen brewery courtyard attracted a little more than 1,000 paying customers.