With the demise of some high-profile Aussie music festivals in recent years, such as Future Music, Soundwave and The Big Day Out, there’s been increasingly-loud talk that the festival bubble has burst.
Naturally, global ticketing company Eventbrite were keen to get to the bottom of this, and have teamed up with independent research company MusicWatch, Inc. to conduct a large-scale survey of festival-goers and judge the general audience sentiment.
The survey consulted “over 2,000 18—49 year olds across Australia, US, UK and Canada, who attended at least one music festival in the past 12 months”, and yielded a bunch of interesting statistics about their interest in festivals – and how much is spent each year.
According to the report, any festival doom and gloom is unwarranted, with the figures stating that “65% of respondents went to the same number or more music festivals this year compared to last year, and almost half plan to attend even more festivals next year”.
Perhaps even more interesting is the new portrait being pieced together of the hardcore festival-goer – that is, the ~20% of the audience that drive a massive 80% of festival revenue each year.
The report divides festival-goers into three distinct groups:
- 1. Hardcore festival-goers: 14% of Aussie festival-goers; attend an average of four to five festivals each year
- 2. Moderate festival-goers: 44% of Aussie festival-goers; attend two to three festivals each year
- 3. Casual festival-goers: 42% of Aussie festival-goers; attend one festival each year
On a basic level, this hardcore audience is the lynchpin that festivals rely on, as they attend more festivals each year, spend more on tickets and VIP packages, and keep coming back year after year.
More surprisingly, the study places the average yearly spend on festival tickets at ~$750 for these most dedicated fans, as opposed to a mere ~$150 for the more casual festival-goers – and they’re almost twice as willing to attend festivals alone.
While some of us may baulk at the idea of spending that much on a single festival pass, don’t feel too inadequate – the average age of this punter is 31 years old, so they’re not scraping this cash together on youth allowance.
There’s also been a trend towards positioning festivals as an overall experience, rather than just a paddock and a few bands on a stage, and these extras may indeed be a vital ingredient when tempting most punters to your particular patch of grass. However, for this valuable hardcore punter, the quality of the headliners is still the single most important factor.
You can read a mountain of other interesting stats and analyses over at Eventbrite.
