Summer’s gone: EU festivals talk the season that was
As the European festival season draws to a close, IQ catches up with organisers across the continent to discover whether the summer proved as tough as some anticipated
Feature By | 11 September 2019
The rising cost of putting on large-scale live events and difficulties in booking top-tier talent were among the challenges overcome by festival organisers this year, according to a cross-section of Europe’s major music events.
Ahead of this year’s festival season, several festival organisers and associations told IQ that 2019 was shaping up to be a slow year. Across the board, they said, sell-outs were down and sales were lower, and many complained of a lack of top-shelf talent on tour. A typical sentiment was that of Jean-Paul Roland, festival director of French rock festival Eurockéennes, who said “the season seems more subdued than last year”, with organisers facing “more difficulties to reach a point of profitability”.
IQ’s annual analysis of Europe’s festival…
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