A lot of nervous festival promoters just got a whole lot more uncomfortable with news that the We Love Sounds festival has gone in to liquidation. The dance oriented festival which took place around Australia in June appears to have suffered from an overcrowded market and the massive competition amongst promoters to secure headline acts for exorbitant fees. The first warning signs came in late May when the promoter was forced to axe the Perth leg of the festival and it appears things went south from there, with an announcement yesterday that the festival is in liquidation.
Founder Ben Korbel revealed that the event in June, headlined by Underworld, Tiga and Crookers suffered “substantial losses’”and “Combined, the five owners, along with our interstate partners, have already absorbed near $1 million of the loss,” Korbel said. “However at this point we hit a threshold that we could not manage any further and in becoming insolvent, were forced to appoint a liquidator.” Korbel’s statement continued: “The biggest festivals, for the most part, are selling out however much more slowly, and some major players are barely breaking even now on their usually multi million dollar events,” he said.
“When We Love Sounds launched, there was a relevant place for it in the market, however as new festival after festival entered the market, ticket buyers have become saturated with large scale events with large scale lineups. In order to survive as a business, we went with “bigger is better”, even though our core philosophy was not aligned with this in any way. Sadly business health and artist vision do not always align.
“With many events now, this is to the point of it becoming predictable and somewhat generic, including We Love Sounds. The strongest festivals are still going to do fantastically and some will fall away. It is sad to see some victims of the downturn, such as Days Like This, which really strived to push an original and unique platform. Playground Weekender will continue to keep this fire alight, amongst others.”
This news will unfortunately not be the last we hear of festival cancellations and promoters going to the wall. There will be casualties before winter kicks in next year. Most of the newer faces in the festival circuit will be extremely worried at the moment as the saturated market gets brutal and competes not only amongst promoters for headline artists, but also amongst the punters to get them to part with their hard earned cash.
