Isle Of Wight: Giddings Clarifies Media Reports

John Giddings, the festival’s founder, who has successfully been staging the event in conjunction with Isle Of Wight Council for the past 15 years, was simply looking for ways to reduce costs. One of those suggestions – waiving or reducing the fee for the use of Seaclose Park, where the festival is staged – was interpreted by a couple of media outlets as meaning that the event was threatened.

In reality, those were only options discussed to find ways of staging the festival in a viable manner. Staging festivals is getting more and more expensive, Giddings says, with artists, police and security taking up most of the budget.

Costs for both policing and security further increased after the recent terrorist attacks on European live events. Giddings told Pollstar that he did not want to forward those costs to festivalgoers.

He had approached Isle Of Wight Council with some ideas to cut costs so he wouldn’t have to raise the ticket prices.

The council has since clarified the situation, and stated that Isle Of Wight brings about £10 million per year to the Island’s economy, and that it will work with Giddings “to look at other alternatives to help reducing the costs of staging the event.”

No lineup or date for the 2017 edition of Isle Of Wight Festival, which is nominated as Best Major Festival at this year’s UK Festival Awards, has been announced yet.