The Ups And Downs Of Festivals

For Koopmans, who has a basket of European fests spread across a half-dozen countries, and van Eerdenburg – who sold out his 55,000 Lowlands Festival tickets in less than two hours – it may only mean explaining how they’re doing so well in what’s becoming a harder market.

Even Koopmans found it hard when his two final fests. Chiemsee Rocks (Aug. 21) and Chiemsee Reggae (Aug. 23-25) at Ubersee in Bavaria both performed well below expectations. The rock fest with Die Arzte, NOFX, Deftones and Sick Of It All did 12,000 as opposed to the usual 15,000 to 18,000. The reggae bash, which regularly does 25,000-plus, was down to 20,000 for a lineup inlcluding El Mago Masin & Wildcamping, Elephant Man, and Ganjaman & Band.

It’s not a result that’s likely to affect Scorpio’s summer as its major German fests did very well, but Koopmans tells Pollstar he will survey the audience to find out why two of his smaller events missed their marks. For Basaran, on the other hand, the summer of 2013 was a nightmare.

The Pozitif promoter began with a diary stuffed with festivals and major outdoor events but ended up having to scrap nearly all of them, mainly because of riots in Turkey. Pozitif lost the contract to book Istanbul’s Rock-N-Coke Festival when the soft drink company switched to Hungary’s Sziget Cultural Management.

Then the same city’s One Love Festival and a string of shows under the name of Istanbul Calling were pulled because of what could only be described as “civil unrest.”

“At the moment it’s more like civil war than civil unrest and it’s not safe to have shows. We can’t even put up posters because all the sites have been destroyed,” Basaran explained as the riots peaked. All this was against the background of his employer selling off 80 percent of itself to corporate giant Dogus Holding.

If Pozitif had gone ahead with its summer shows, Dogus would likely have been left holding a large slice of a bankrupt company. Basaran was left to explain the situation to the representatives of 35 headline acts including Blur, New Order, Keane, The Vaccines, James Blake, Snoop Dogg, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Sigur Ros, The Prodigy, Basement Jaxx, and Foals. The 2,800 delegates expected in Hamburg Sept. 25-28 will likely include several festival chiefs whose summer 2013 experiences lie somewhere between those of van Eerdenburg and Basaran.

There’s also a chance to hear what the big boys made of last year’s German market. The corporate talking will come from Dieter Semmelmann of Semmel Concerts on CTS Eventim’s side, while Christian Dieckmann will speak for DEAG. Reeperbahn also appears to be developing the knack of giving panels the sort of names that make people want to argue about the subject before knowing any of the detail.

Try “Agencies Are Dead,” “Everything Is A Remix” and “Content Was Never King” from this year’s conference agenda. It’s hard to not want to argue about statements like that, from either side of the argument.

When Basaran was pulling his 35 Istanbul shows, he probably realized that agencies are far from dead. He likely found they’re very much alive and perfectly capable of kicking. Managers who reckon they can do just as good a job for themselves might argue that agencies are a waste of money.

The other 200 or so speakers on the showcase conference’s list include musicians Dave Stewart and Cornelia Funke, Cameron Kaiser (William Morris Entertainment UK), Ingo Beckmann (Target Concerts, Germany) and Aline Renet from Prodiss, the French promoters’ association. Reeperbahn’s evening showcases feature acts including Anna Calvi, Kate Nash, Efterklang, Instrumenti, Delorean, Birdy, and Kverlertak.