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Unprecedented Welcomes & Permanent Goodbyes – Highs & Lows Of Europe’s Festival Season
It’s the middle of the festival season, and never has it been harder to gauge the health of the sector in Europe than in 2024. Major success stories on the one hand; major struggles on the other.
In the UK, Morgan Wallen performed what was billed as one of the biggest country music shows ever to take place in Britain on day three of BST Hyde Park in London, July 4, to a sold-out crowd of 50,000 people. It marked a return to the English capital for Wallen, who previously sold out The O2, Dec. 3, 2023, moving 18,046 tickets at a $1,870,421, according to Pollstar’s Boxoffice reports.
This year’s BST lineup also featured SZA, Kings of Leon, Andrea Bocelli, Robbie Williams, Shania Twain, Stevie Nicks, Kylie, and Stray Kids, who closed out three weekends of concerts, June 28-July 14, with more than 500,000 in attendance across all shows, according to promoter AEG Presents.
Up north in Scotland, Regular Music, part of the newly formed KMJ Entertainment Group, celebrated another successful edition of the Edinburgh Castle concert series: seven shows, selling a total of 55,000 tickets at the spectacular 8,500-capacity venue, making it Regular Music’s “best-ever year,” according to CEO Mark Mackie. This year’s lineup included Madness, JLS, Manic Street Preachers/Suede, The National, Skipinnish, Paul Weller, and finished with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
KMJ parent company DEAG has also been doing great in Germany with its many EDM festivals, Airbeat One being one of them. The festival closed out its 21st edition at 6 a.m. Sunday, July 14, having welcomed more than 200,000 guests across three days – or 70,000 guests per day, July 10-14, who had the choice of more than 220 DJs across seven staged, led by Charlotte de Witte, Scooter, Timmy Trumpet, Boris Brejcha, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, Tiësto, Paul Kalkbrenner, and more.
Also in Germany, twin festivals Hurricane and Southside welcomed 75,000 and 65,000 visitors per day, respectively, June 21-23, who enjoyed a mostly shared lineup led by Ed Sheeran, K.I.Z, Avril Lavigne, Bring Me The Horizon, Deichkind, and many more. Both festivals’ 2025 presales kicked off June 25, and it took fans less than 24 hours to snatch up 60,000 tickets for both events, beating last year’s record of 50,000 presales in 24 hours, according to promoters FKP Scorpio and DreamHaus, which are part of Eventim Live.
High up in Germany’s north, in Hamburg to be specific, Elbjazz welcomed 22,500 guests to its 12th edition, June 7-8, surpassing the attendance figures of the past two years with a lineup that proves the event is opening up to genres outside of jazz. The Streets, Jungle, or Faithless are just a few of this year’s examples.
Other highlights from across Europe include Rock For People at Park 360 in Hradec Králové, Czechia, which celebrated a record edition June 12-15, welcoming more than 40,000 daily visitors to its 29th annual event. In Spain, Sónar in Barcelona counted 54,000 at its daytime festival, 66,000 at Sónar by Night, and 34,000 at OFFSónar, the program taking place throughout the city, June 13-15. The audience traveled to the Catalan capital from 90 countries, and was made up of 70% national, and 30% international guests, according to promoter Advanced Music.
Also in Barcelona, Primavera Sound celebrated its 2024 edition May 29-June 2, welcoming 268,000 festivalgoers if you count everyone at the three main festival days at Barcelona’s Parc del Fórum, as well as guests at the shows of Primavera a la Ciutat, the week-long program taking place across the city, and the free opening day and the closing party – surpassing last year’s numbers by more than 20,000 people. The promoters welcomed another 105,000 to Primavera Sound Porto, the festival’s Portuguese sister event, which was in line with last-year’s daily attendance of around 35,000.
While there’s ample evidence of festivals doing better than ever, there’s also concrete proof that others are struggling. One example is MetalDays from Slovenia, which cancelled its 2024 edition with no plans of ever returning. Its organizers published a lengthy statement outlining all the reasons for this development, and the struggles independent festival organizers have been going through since the first lockdowns of 2020.
Anatomy Of A Festival Cancellation: MetalDays Slovenia Proclaims The End
The letter, available on metaldays.net, candidly talks about both the economic challenges outside of the promoters’ control, including price increases across the supply chain — sometimes as much as 300% — as well as the promoters’ own shortcomings. It depicts how heartbreaking it is for organizers to see their greatest passion projects fail, and to lose the trust of their audience and business partners in the process.
The UK’s Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) has been shouting about the fact that the sector hasn’t had a single steady season since the pandemic in which to recover. 43 independent UK festivals had canceled their 2024 editions at the time of writing, with some pledging to return in 2025 and others gone for good. The longest-standing is Towersey Festival, which announced that this year’s 60th anniversary edition, Aug. 23-26, will be its last.
Three generations have run the festival through six decades of profound cultural and societal changes, but the complete shut down of live during COVID, and everything that followed economically, put an end to this incredible story.
AIF CEO John Rostron told Pollstar in a recent interview, “supply chain costs have gone up, and continue to go up, by over 30%-50% on average. They don’t want to pass that all on to customers, so they’ve raised ticket prices by 20% or so since COVID, and then looked at what can be cut to cover the rest. The rise in artist fees has added to the need to cut too, so often the first thing to go is a stage, and all the artists with it.”
What both boutique and major festivals usually have in common, is the amount of content offered around the main stages. Said Rostron, “festivals always have way more on offer than people can see, and they often over-deliver, so the customer doesn’t notice any difference [after cuts have been made], but it’s interesting how hard the independents find it to do this. They are creative people who really want to go above and beyond.”