The long Rewind Festival saga came to a close yesterday as the festival finally folded, organisers cancelling the event altogether after a series of cataclysmic setbacks. After organisers announced the festival would become a two day concert in Sydney, not Wollongong, everything seemed to fall apart. The headline acts were pulled off the bill, and yesterday it was revealed that more headliners had jumped ship.
Up until last night it was still unclear however if ticket holders were to receive a refund for their tickets. Organisers maintained right up to the eleventh hour that they were under no obligation to provide refunds, a claim disputed by the NSW Department of Fair Trading. Now the event is cancelled tickets holders can expect full refunds.
But the most interesting part of the saga appeared on Rewind Festival’s Facebook page last night in posts that have since been removed. Luckily we saved them so you could see for yourself what a mess internally this festival was. Although it is still unclear who exactly posted the messages we do know that it was someone with administrator access to the page so we can assume one of the promoters, clearly emotional given the abuse from the public they’ve received the last few days.
You can read the statements below which help shed some light on what went wrong, including the confession that it was ticket sales that undid the operation. Enjoy.
A full statement of what went wrong and why will be released very soon, before you cast your stones i suggest you digest the journey then make your honest judgment of the situation, i have been reading various suggestions over the past days on how we got everything wrong from start to finish, let the truth be the judge of that…i have today been cleared to release your refunds back for tickets purchased hopefully this will go some way to settle those who thinks someones run off with the money here, in the end it was a simple fact that not enough tickets by a mile was sold to carry out a production of this nature, we all tried very hard to pull this together and would have done no matter what reports say of license/visas/bookings ect had the ticket sales been correct, the reports i have seen from Wollongong saying i/we let them down…….i can tell all now that 1/3 of 1% of the population of Wollongong bought tickets to this event and with the reluctance of the mass of Sydney people not wanting to travel to Wollongong made the festival un-workable
I have also noticed a batch of nonsense comments from Damien Negus on this face book page stating he knows this and knows that, the truth of him and his partner in crime Kerrie Jarvis is they came up with a nonsense production budget that would have made the festival bankcrupt before it started, if he continues to preach his nonsense i will post on the page the the budget for the festival they created, all in that industry we showed it to fell over with laughter, in fact Damiens partner told us before they wcould get involved we had to pay for a new jaw/teeth operation for her to the tune of $40,000 dollars, needless to say the deal never got off the ground, oh and then out the blue 2 weeks ago he called to try and lay claims on the festival, Do you still want a share now Damien????
We have nothing to save here , the festivals cancelled all tickets will be refunded, all are very disapointed at the outcome, I /we will loose the rights to host another Rewind, thats our loss, its a very good concept thats why i brought it over to Australia in the first place, all the comments on DAs, Visas ect ect would not have been the issue, the simple problem here is not enough tickets sold to support all the other issues on the table and for the changing of why the festival was moved, this was just down to saving face for the area (Wollongong) and trying to rescue something from the ashes, re the weather and the land been a factor, in fact it was a major factor just not the only factor
