Money and the main stage: How festivals manage headliner spending
With artist fees skyrocketing since the end of Covid, festivals are feeling the pressure on their budgets. So what are the solutions? James Drury investigates.
Feature By James Drury | 4 January 2025
One of the key findings of this year’s European Festival Survey – and a topic frequently brought up at conferences, including the International Festival Forum (IFF) and European Festival Summit (EFS) – is just how concerned promoters are about headliner fees.
Whether you’re a major event vying for stadium-filling acts or a small festival with a more modest budget, the problem is industry-wide. For promoters, rising fees for artists are compounding the problem of inflation across all their costs, at a time when consumers are worried about their wallets, meaning festivals are very sensitive to ticket prices. The reasons for rising fees are multiple. The well-documented rise in production costs also applies to artists, for some of whom touring is becoming almost unfeasible.
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