Acts Announce Alt-Fest Canceled

The organisers of what would have been the debut of Alt-Fest in Northants, England, subsequently confirmed the Aug. 15-17 event was costing too much money and selling too few tickets. The Northants Telegraph reported the organisers as saying Alt-Fest was costing £1.7 million ($2.87 million), while ticket sales were said to be around 7,500.

Organisers Missy and Dom Void, who’d been planning the event for a year, admitted to a “costing error” and “poor advice in the early stages.”

They said they had the idea for the fest when they were on holiday and “probably after one too many Sangrias.”

Another reason for the cancellation was said to be the departure of one of the festival’s investors.

At the end of July, Marilyn Manson and Combichrist posted on Facebook that Alt-Fest had been scrapped, although it took another two or three days for the organisers to apologise for their lack of communication with fans and artists about the status of the festival.

“If we had sold just 3,000 tickets more, then we would have been over the breakeven line,” they told New Musical Express. If 10,500 tickets were enough for Alt-Fest to break even, each ticket would have needed to have been sold for £161 ($270) each to make up the reported £1.7 million in expenses.

Apart from Manson and Combichrist, ticket-holders could also have seen The Cult, Gary Numan, Arch Enemy, Cradle of Filth, Covenant, Fearless Vampire Killers, Fields of the Nephilim, Killing Joke, and Peter Hook & The Light.

There’s also worries that the acts and suppliers won’t get paid, which are made more controversial by £60,000 ($101,000) of the festival’s budget being raised on Kickstarter.