It came as no surprise that the ill-conceived BAM Festival – which organisers planned to hold near Brisbane in early October – was taken out to the back paddock and put out of its misery with a .22 rifle yesterday afternoon.
As an often hilarious exercise in ‘How Not To Run A Festival 101’ the organisers finally came to their senses after a last minute desperate plea for people to buy tickets and pulled the plug. While it was admirable of them to do so and prevent many bands, suppliers and those few who had bought tickets being seriously out of pocket, it serves to remind people that putting on festivals is a massive undertaking, and one that requires a serious amount of experience and planning.
Even some of Australia’s most experienced promoters have gone broke or lost huge amounts on tours and festivals, often due to back luck as much as inexperience or poor planning.
The statement from organisers reads:
It is with great sadness and disappointment that we here at BAM! HQ wish to announce that have not sold enough tickets to run this event. As a result, BAM! Festival has been cancelled. After the release of our 2 for 1 offer, the slight improvement in ticket sales was last night decided to be insufficient to warrant the financial risk involved in proceeding with the festival.
While profit was not our goal, and our entire team were volunteers, our responsibility in being able to provide payment to our suppliers was paramount to our success. While everything else for a great festival is prepared, without ticket sales we are unable to go ahead.
We would like to thank every single person who has spent time and effort supporting and creating BAM! Festival. Your efforts did not go unnoticed, and we are truly grateful for your assistance.
To all those who bought tickets to BAM! and were looking forward to the new and different type of festival we were trying to create – thank you for your sign of commitment to the festival, and we are sorry that there weren’t more people like you. We hope that you will continue to be supportive of the local music industry in the future. Full Refunds can be obtained from your point of purchase.
