The myriad issues currently facing Australian music festivals are akin to an “extinction event” according to Bluesfest director Peter Noble.
Noble made the claim during a speech at the inaugural Variety Twilio Live Business Breakfast in Sydney today, June 13th, after collecting the award for Best Music Festival.
“People are doing it tough in Australia right now. And they’re not going out as much as they did,” he said.
Noble made sure to acknowledge Bluesfest’s fellow nominees Laneway and CMC Rocks, as well as other standout music festivals such as the Woodford Folk Festival.
“Now is not the time where we should be talking about what’s wrong with the festivals. Bluesfest this year got over 60,000 attendees; it was closer to 65,000. What did we get in the great days? We averaged 85,000. In 2022 we got 102,000,” he noted.
What caused this significant change? “It’s the economy, stupid,” Noble said succinctly.
“We all know when you go to the supermarket, when you think about what it costs you, when you go to the restaurant for your meal, we all know that people are doing it tough in Australia today and they’re not going out as much as they did. Go to your new local movie theatre, it’s not just festivals [struggling],” he continued.
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People “will go and find the money to go to something they really want to see at a festival with a very strong bill. They will come. But it’s very difficult to get the strong bill and you see events go on sale and then they don’t see the immediate result and they cancel.
Check out highlights of Bluesfest 2024 Day 3:
“And that becomes the ongoing story. I’m about getting through this. I’m about the fact that until those interest rates go down, it’s going to be difficult for a lot of people to go out, they’re going to think about what it costs versus Netflix. That is the reality right now.”
According to Noble, the government will play a big part in the solution.
“We’ve really got to be as one as an industry. We need to speak to government. We need to say this is the time you support our industry because we are facing an extinction event and that event can be looked at during the times of COVID, government delivered a lot of funding…come on government. Give us a hand up, we don’t want a handout. We can get through this because our industry is worth it,” he said.
