The Status Quo In Portugal

A study by Aporfest, the country’s festival association, put the number of Portuguese festivals at 210 in 2015. Those include urban festival Nos Alive, Super Bock Super Rock (Portugal’s biggest rock festival), OutJazz, a series of free summer concerts that take place in Lisbon’s parks, as well as Nos Primavera Sound up north.

Milhões de Festa is the right address for alternative and new music, Boom Festival and Lisb/On lure in the dance folk, Bons Sons offers Portuguese music, while Med Festival and FMM Sines are the right destinations for world music. Pollstar spoke with Ricardo Bramão, founder and president of Aporfest. He said, that “over the last years main artists have included Portugal in their tours, and a lot of brands/companies support a lot of the big events.

Tourism has provided international audiences as well.” The audience benefitted from a large number of cheap and even free festivals staged by the government. This poses a problem for promoters who cannot compete with government money. And if they lowered ticket prices they would, of course, not be able to cover all their costs. The fact that Portugal has high marketing costs, a lot of bureaucracy and expensive licenses exacerbates the problem. “For that reason, promoters are dependent on governmental funds and/or sponsors,” Bramão said. Others simply organized events with a non-professional attitude, which limited future growth and development of the sector.

He emphasizes, however, that “things are changing in Portugal and there is a lot of potential of growth and sustainable development of the entertainment business.” Many festivals, especially the smaller ones, only survived because of government funds.

“There are some programs for events that have a great impact on tourism or in the communities, events that help the development and economy of a small region for example.”

The country’s main promoters are Better World (Rock in Rio), Ritmos (Paredes de Coura, Primavera Sound), Everything is New (Nos Alive) and Música no Coração (SBSR, Sudoeste). According to Bramão, “newer players have been conquering the market, such as Lovers & Lollypops.” The new entrants in particular realize “the advantages of interaction, networking and partnerships with other stakeholders as a way to develop and achieve a sustainable growth” without losing a healthy competitiveness.

As opposed to the old-school, which “tend to be self-centered.” Aporfest “has been trying for the last six years to change the mindset and promote a community that shares, learns, develops and grows together to increase professionalism, capabilities, information and knowledge,” Bramão said. “Events such as Talkfest or the Iberian Festival Awards are great opportunities for reflection and debate between all players and to promote sustainable development of the music festivals industry.”

While Portugal has a good infrastructure for concerts, festival and other events, Lisbon could be in need of another medium- to large-sized venue in the coming years. Right now, Meo Arena is the only place to stage concerts/indoor festivals for more than 10,000 people.