Sign up for IQ Index
The latest industry news to your inbox.
Last year's European summer saw millions of fans create lifelong memories in fields, but numerous challenges remained
By IQ on 11 Jan 2024
Sziget
With Covid in the rear-view mirror, the festival season 2023 was looked forward to with excitement. The European summer saw millions of fans create lifelong memories in fields, but numerous challenges remained. In this opening chapter from the latest European Festival Report, we analyse how the year shaped up…
The 2023 festival season was a massive improvement on 2022’s post-Covid rush when some markets still fell foul of lingering restrictions. As we’ll see later, 64% of festivals sold more than 80% of their tickets, with 21% of festivals telling us their ticket sales were “much better” than last year.
Many events saw record ticket sales. Promoted by Live Nation-owned Luger, Swedish festival Way Out West reported its highest attendance yet, with 55,000 fans flocking to this year’s edition. Luger’s Natalie Ryan-Williams said: “This edition was really special to us, and we ended up with a new attendance record, having the most attended day in the history of the festival on the final day.
“We are very happy to find that even in a time of financial difficulty, the audience – which includes a younger generation finding their way to us – seems to want to prioritise coming to the festival, and for that, we are very thankful.”
And in France, 126,000 people flocked to Arras for Live Nation’s Main Square Festival. “If it took more than a year of hard work, we are happy and grateful to have been able to live these moments with you,” organisers of the event – which marks its 20th anniversary in 2024 – told fans. Dutch festivals Down The Rabbit Hole and Lowlands sold out at impressive speeds.
Fellow French festival Lollapalooza Paris extended to three days in July and celebrated with Stray Kids, one of the first K-pop bands to headline a major European festival.
Norway’s Tons of Rock sold a record-breaking 100,000 tickets in 2023 and won an industry award for Best Commercial Partnership for its collaboration with the Norwegian postal service, which enabled festivalgoers to mail home all the merch they bought at the festival instead of carrying it with them. Lollapalooza Berlin became the first German festival to get accredited to sustainability standard ISO 20121, delivering a lineup with more than 50% female acts. And the company launched a new two-day electronic music event, U Nation, during Pride Week in Helsinki. The festival promotes diversity, inclusion, environmental sustainability, unity, and responsibility.
“DEAG’s festival segment is showing fantastic growth across all genres of music in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland”
As Europe’s second-largest festival promoter after Live Nation, Superstruct also saw its share of successes. Among them were Sziget, which marked its 30th anniversary this year with another sold-out event, including welcoming its 10 millionth visitor. Sónar in Barcelona marked its 30th anniversary with more than 120,000 attendees, 32% of whom came from 100 countries outside of Spain; and Germany’s largest dance festival, Parookaville, sold out all 225,000 tickets to its seventh edition. The company’s ID&T brand marked the third decade of Dutch dance event Mysteryland with the announcement that 80% of the festival’s power consumption came from green grid power, with the remaining 20% from other sustainably produced sources.
Germany-based multinational DEAG expected to notch up a record number of visitors to its festivals this summer, with crowds expected to pass 800,000 across its core markets of Germany, the UK & Ireland, and Switzerland.
“DEAG’s festival segment is showing fantastic growth across all genres of music in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland,” said DEAG CEO Peter Schwenkow. “The outstanding response from audiences points the way for us to new formats, new locations, and a gratifying further development of this extremely interesting music festival field.”
In the UK, AEG Presents-promoted BST Hyde Park’s tenth anniversary edition saw its biggest ticket sales ever. Headlined by Guns N’ Roses, Take That, Blackpink, Billy Joel, and Lana Del Rey – plus two nights each from P!nk, and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, the event sold around 550,000 tickets, topping the previous record of 530,000 set in 2022.
“I never thought I’d be able to say we sold more tickets than last year, but we sold more tickets than we’ve ever sold before. It’s incredible, everybody sold out,” said AEG Presents CEO of European festivals, Jim King.
And it wasn’t just the big festivals that saw success. In August, a string of Spanish festivals reported very positive attendance figures for 2023, including boutique event Festival Jardins Terramar, which welcomed 24,220 spectators across 12 days; Cap Roig Festival attracted 53,025 attendees across 23 dates for an overall occupancy rate of 94%; Mallorca Live’s Es Jardí concert series, staged from 16 June to 6 August, brought together 60,000 people over 23 nights; and the historic Porta Ferrada Festival in Sant Feliu de Guíxols celebrated its 61st edition on the Costa Brava with 73 concerts and close to 60,000 attendees from 30 June to 20 August. “We started […] with 11,000 spectators, and now, ten editions later, we are close to 60,000,” said executive director Sergi Roselló.
“We are still feeling the after-effects of the two pandemic years in many areas, especially in terms of price increases”
Italy’s Roma Summer Fest at the 3,000-cap Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone achieved record ticket sales and saw revenue increase 28% year-on-year to more than €8.5m from 153,000 ticket sales.
As well as record-breaking ticket sales, staff and crew are more experienced than last year and, at least in the main, back to their usual efficiencies. Logistics are not as complicated, and global headliners are combining tours with festival appearances once again. According to FKP Scorpio co-CEO Stephan Thanscheidt at the International Festival Forum in London in September, he’s relieved that people are having fun again after a hellish 2022. “Nobody had fun last year, so seeing people having fun organising such immense projects has been great.”
The CTS Eventim-owned company welcomed 35,000 people to its Highfield Festival, 25,000 to M’era Luna, 50,000 each to Hurricane and Southside, and 60,000 to Deichbrand.
“The enormous popularity is the nicest confirmation for us,” fellow co-CEO Folkert Koopmans told IQ Magazine. “We are still feeling the after-effects of the two pandemic years in many areas, especially in terms of price increases. And part of these costs, unfortunately, we have to pass on to the guests, even if we try to reduce this burden to a minimum. The fact that we have now organised successful festivals all around in the second year after the pandemic and that people have had a good time and trust us to offer them very special festival experiences again in 2024 makes us very happy.”
Yet, it was a year of mixed emotions. The industry is not yet “back to normal,” and while some festivals saw their best event ever as fans flocked to see their favourite artists, others had a torrid time.
So, what pressures does this vibrant summer business still face? We dug behind the numbers to look at some of the challenges that remain.
“We’re monitoring further developments very closely in view of the growing demands everywhere”
Production costs vs ticket prices
The most significant challenge facing festivals in 2023 was the massive rise in costs caused by issues relating to Covid and artists taking huge productions on the road.
As far back as May, FKP Scorpio co-CEO Koopmans warned of the impact of this issue and estimated that only 20% of events were profitable.
“The fact that we didn’t make any money with a sold-out Hurricane in 2022, but actually lost it, was also due to the fact that we had basically sold the tickets three years earlier,” he told German publication Kreiszeitung.de. “But since all festivals are now being overwhelmed by the costs, I believe that in the end, only 20% of them will still be making money. This problem was already indicated in 2016/17, but after corona it got particularly bad.
“Of course, like our other festivals, we don’t want to give up Hurricane because, ultimately, they are [all] important, they’re part of the portfolio and, in addition, they’re building up a lot of bands. But as I said, it’s a problem, and we’re monitoring further developments very closely in view of the growing demands everywhere.
“We’re struggling with it, trying to keep the costs under control. But it’s incredibly difficult. Of course, we also have an extremely high break-even point. And my company now earns money primarily from the big concerts, for example, from the Rolling Stones or Ed Sheeran.”
Fellow German promoter DreamHaus (Rock am Ring/Rock im Park) also said production costs were increasing in the region of 25-30% for this year’s festival season.
“We could lower the cost of the whole festival experience, but this would have a significant impact on the whole quality of it”
“There are not that many suppliers that can supply festivals of our size, so we’re also in a corner where we can take it or leave it,” said the company’s head of festival experience, Catharine Krämer. “We could lower the cost of the whole festival experience, but this would have a significant impact on the whole quality of it.”
At the IFF, which took place in September as the season closed, Thanscheidt reflected on his colleague’s earlier statement, noting that while the company had seen a successful year for festivals, “there’s a limit that a lot of fans would pay to attend festivals nowadays, so we’ve had to advertise better camping and VIP experiences to entice more people into coming.
“Keeping ticket prices under control while maintaining profit margins at the same time is proving extremely difficult right now.”
But what can be done about this rise in costs? At a time when people’s pockets are being hit by inflation, significant rises in ticket prices are not really an option for most events, whose audiences tend to be younger and therefore less able to afford 30% hikes in prices.
Interestingly, some festivals are finding ways to reduce ticket prices for those least able to afford them. At YOUROPE’s fifth European Festival Conference in Croatia in November, Artur Mendes from Portugal’s Boom festival shared that since 2002, his event has had a 10% allocation of “friendly price” or “guest country” tickets out of its total of 40,000 tickets.
A total of 500 tickets are given free to people from the guest country – which changes each edition and is selected based on places where income is significantly lower than average, while friendly price passes are for people on low incomes. The results of these initiatives mean that Boom’s audience comes from 169 countries, and only 20% of attendees are Portuguese. “Interestingly, we see that every time we have a guest country, the following edition there is more interest from those territories to buy tickets and work at the festival.”
“The massive number of open-air events made organisation and implementation considerably more difficult this summer”
Cancellations
This year saw a significant increase in the number of festival cancellations as rising costs and an audience struggling with inflation combined with disastrous effects.
In the UK, a study by the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF) in the first half of 2023 showed there were 600 music festivals held in the UK in 2019, but only 482 took place in 2023.
The organisation said the 19.7% decline included festivals that disappeared during the pandemic and those that tried to return in 2022 but either failed or took place but did not make it through to 2023.
Among the high-profile casualties across the continent this year was Download Germany, which was due to take place for the first time, featuring headliners Slipknot, Parkway Drive, Volbeat, and The Prodigy on 23 and 24 June.
“Despite the first-class lineup, the massive number of open-air events made organisation and implementation considerably more difficult this summer,” a statement from organisers, Live Nation GSA, said. “Unfortunately, the associated technical production obstacles proved to be insurmountable.”
In the Netherlands, what would have been the sixth edition of hip-hop festival Oh My! was called off in July, with organisers blaming “the cost-of-living crisis, increased production costs in general, and last-minute safety and crowd regulations we need to implement due to recent events in our industry.”
“After difficult years of pandemic and war in Europe, our festival concept, the public’s buying habits, and the industry in general have changed significantly”
Langelandsfestival, one of Denmark’s largest and longest-standing festivals, filed for bankruptcy in June after racking up debt in the millions. The event has taken place since 1991, but this year’s event was cancelled at the end of 2022 as organisers explained that they had made a huge investment in talent for that year’s 30th-anniversary event. The festival was subsequently unable to “sell the number of festival tickets that was crucial to ensure an acceptable festival economy.”
“After all the bills for 2022 are paid, the result is a large deficit in the millions,” read a statement.
And in August, Poland’s Fest Festival filed for bankruptcy after selling just 50% of the tickets available for its fourth edition.
Several mid-sized Norwegian festivals cancelled due to “skyrocketing” costs, including Beitostølen Live, a two-day festival in the south of the country. “After difficult years of pandemic and war in Europe, our festival concept, the public’s buying habits, and the industry in general have changed significantly,” said a statement. “With increasing competition, rising prices, demands for advance payment at all stages, failing ticket sales both this year and last year, less sponsorship income, and the absence of public financial support, the math, unfortunately, does not add up.”
Kadetten – a hip-hop festival launched in 2022 that featured Megan Thee Stallion, Central Cee, and Burna Boy – cancelled its 2023 edition earlier this year. “The cancellation comes solely from the costs of the artists and availability in 2023,” wrote Kadetten organisers. “The prices of everything have skyrocketed; in addition, the predictability for American artists has become a logistical nightmare with flights etc.”
Other festivals that cancelled include the 19-year-old Skral in Grimstad, Oslo Americana (and its sister events in Sweden), and Festival Imperium.
What effect will these cancellations have on consumer confidence? It’s yet to be seen whether the 2023 trend of buying tickets later than usual will continue into 2024, as some people wait to see whether an event will go ahead or not before committing.
“We’ll have normal summers in the future, but the probability of normal summers is decreasing”
Artist fees
One issue that will be familiar to many festival organisers this year is the rise in artist fees. Acts are facing the same rise in production costs as everyone else, meaning they have to increase fees to balance the tour books. There’s also a suspicion among some in the industry that after years of no live income due to Covid, some are seeking to make up lost revenue.
Adding to this, the strength of the dollar makes artists coming from the USA more expensive to book. Some American acts are deciding that it makes more financial sense to stay at home than come to Europe.
This all combines to make the job of a booker harder than ever. As Walter Hoeijmakers from Dutch festival Roadburn tells us: “We’ve seen the main bands or the headliners are asking for way more money, to the point that we can’t afford certain bands.”
Weather
At the European Festival Conference, a presentation by professor Robert Lončarić of Zadar University threw into sharp focus the challenges climate change is bringing to festivals across Europe.
One slide showed the huge rise in the number of “extreme weather events” in 2010 compared with 2023, and it drew gasps from the audience.
“We’ll have normal summers in the future, but the probability of normal summers is decreasing. And continental areas of Europe are in the most danger of extreme hazard events,” Lončarić said, advising organisers to “have a meteorologist on speed dial.”
One of the most prominent festivals affected by the weather in 2023 was Germany’s Wacken Open Air, which was forced to deny entry to around 25,000 ticketholders after adverse weather conditions left the site “looking like Mordor from the Lord of the Rings movies,” Wacken’s head booker Jan Quiel told the IFF in London. “It was heart-breaking having to send so many people home. That was even worse than having to cancel due to Covid. We also incurred a heavy financial loss due to the additional costs we paid to have an extra campground to host more shows.”
“Of the 40 days of pre-production, it rained on 35, which caused all the bus and car spaces to be flooded, and the mobility plan was not what we originally planned”
The Superstruct-backed festival’s co-founder, Thomas Jensen, estimated the revenue shortfall caused by the capacity reduction to be in excess of €7m. The event subsequently rebounded and sold all 85,000 tickets for next year’s event in a record- breaking four-and-a-half hours.
The final day of Slovenia’s MetalDays was scrapped due to torrential rain and flash flooding in the area, and the 25,000-capacity, Superstruct-backed, UK festival Bluedot was forced to cancel its final day due to unprecedented rainfall. It has axed its 2024 edition to enable the ground to recover, say organisers.
The first day of Primavera Sound Madrid was cancelled due to persistent severe weather, while in July, Dutch festivals Awakenings, Bospop, and Wildeburg were cut short due to warnings of severe thunderstorms and hail. Primavera Sound director Alfonso Lanza told Spanish daily El Pais: “Of the 40 days of pre-production, it rained on 35, which caused all the bus and car spaces to be flooded, and the mobility plan was not what we originally planned.” There are no plans for the event to return to Madrid in 2024.
And it’s not just torrential rain festival organisers have to deal with. Last year, France’s Villa Pop Festival was cancelled due to fears over wildfires.
Festivals are turning to expensive measures to prevent weather from becoming an issue in the future. After seeing more rain in the three days leading up to the June 2022 edition of Austria’s Nova Rock than in the previous six months, this year, promoter Nova Music Entertainment (part of CTS Eventim’s Barracuda Music) spent €300,000 on renewed lawns and drainage, plus a new network of paths for arrival and departure. A new shuttle service was also in operation.
Attendance
Many people attend their first festival as a teenager – it is a rite of passage for young people across Europe and often the start of a long relationship with these events. But the Covid lockdowns meant many did not get to have this experience, and there is
concern among some organisers that there could be a “lost generation” of people who never get into the festival habit.
“Excel sheets are not the ultimate god of the festival; creativity and artistic expression are”
“Though 2022 brought about a lot of excitement with everything coming back to a semblance of normality, I’d say that there’s been a gap where we’ve seen a generation not accustomed to attending festivals due to the pandemic,” Pavla Slivova of Czech festival Colours of Ostrava told IFF. “In my opinion, there needs to be a change in marketing. What worked in 2019 or 2022 isn’t working this year, so we need to refocus our attention on what Gen Z finds attractive these days.”
Agent Alex Bruford of ATC agreed when it comes to thinking about what would appeal more to that particular demographic. “There were a number of festivals that struggled with attracting the Gen Z crowd, who aren’t gravitating towards more hedonistic activities than previous generations,” he said. “We need to have a collective think about what an actual festival means to them and what’s appealing and appropriate to today’s young people.”
Independents
In recent years, there have been many headlines about huge private equity-backed companies buying up festivals as consolidation in the industry grows. But there are still plenty of independents.
Among them is Serbia’s EXIT Festival, which started in 2000. EXIT boss Dušan Kovačević said: “The biggest challenge of remaining independent in 2023 is the increasing costs in the festival industry. Corporate-backed festivals often have substantial financial resources, more marketing power, and established connections that allow them to gain needed funding more easily in moments of crisis.
“Without the backing of major sponsors or investors, it can be challenging to maintain a sustainable business model and deliver a high-quality experience while keeping ticket prices fair.”
Nevertheless, Kovačević says the main benefit of remaining independent is “freedom.” “Independence allows us to think and grow beyond financial reports. Excel sheets are not the ultimate god of the festival; creativity and artistic expression are. This way, we get to cultivate the spirit of the festival that made it so magical in the first place.”
“Remaining an independent entity offers us the freedom to execute our creative vision without constraints”
In Belgium, promoter Greenhouse Talent bought Gent Jazz Festival after previous organiser – the non-profit Jazz en Muziek – went bankrupt at the end of 2022.
“Whenever festivals are taken over by bigger machines, they start to get streamlined and become a little bit samey. That is something we would like to avoid,” says Greenhouse boss Pascal Van De Velde. “We’re a very independent company. We don’t like to rely on bosses or structures that have goals not directly connected to promoting shows. We are concerts and festival-driven and to keep that purity is very important.”
Czechia’s Rock For People was founded in 1995 and has been independent ever since. “Remaining an independent entity offers us the freedom to execute our creative vision without constraints, enabling us to curate a unique and authentic experience for our attendees,” says co-founder of the 40,000-capacity event, David Nguyen.
Click here to read IQ Magazine’s article on ten key independent festivals in Europe.
War in Ukraine
Festivals across Europe continued to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, which started in February last year.
Music Saves UA is a fundraising initiative created by the Ukrainian Association of Music Events to provide humanitarian help in the country. This year, the organisation toured 20 festivals, 12 of which are YOUROPE members, raising money and awareness of the plight of residents and the live music industry in the war-torn country.
“We should use the power of our events, the power of our art, the power of anything to try to change the approach to Ukraine”
The festivals donated money to the cause by collecting deposit cups, recycling cans or bottles, selling charity merchandise, booking Ukrainian artists, asking for donations from guest list members, and more.
Festivals’ efforts raised €91,000 for the charity (74% of which came from YOUROPE members) this summer.
A particularly strong supporter of the plight of the Ukrainian people is Slovak promoter Michal Kaščák, who organises the 30,000-capacity Pohoda festival. He first visited his neighbouring country in December last year and said it was a transformative experience. Since then, he has integrated multiple Ukrainian elements into his festival; helped Ukrainian crew, artists, and musicians secure work at festivals and events around Europe; and performed with his band Bez Ladu A Skladu in the country.
And he urged festivals across Europe to do everything they can to help. “We should all speak more about it; we should use the power of our events, the power of our art, the power of anything to try to change the approach to Ukraine,” he told IQ Magazine.
“I’m afraid that people will come to the stage where we will think that the war is a normal part of our lives, as it’s not in our countries, it’s not so painful, and it’s not so horrible. But people in Ukraine dream about freedom. They can see absolutely clearly that it’s not a special war operation: it’s genocide – one country trying to destroy another nation.”
Making a positive impact
As well as creating marvellous memories for fans and bringing in millions of euros in investment to regions and countries, festivals do a significant amount of social good.
“Ruisrock exists to make the world a happier and a more joyful place, and we hope that our mission has been successful”
Whether through educating audiences about important issues such as equity, sustainability, or human rights; helping develop eco-friendly measures and technology; or investing in local communities, festivals make a major contribution to the planet. Hungary’s Sziget runs a scheme called the Love Revolution, which this year returned to the Main Stage to provide a ten-minute programme of presentations and short speeches during the breaks between changeovers, to raise awareness of social issues.
Since it was founded over two decades ago, Serbia’s EXIT has been behind many important projects, including Life Stream, in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme, the mass reforestation scheme Green R:Evolution, and a pioneering mental health programme.
Many festivals raised large sums of money for charity. Among them is Denmark’s Roskilde, which this year will distribute DK10m to associations and organisations that work with children and young people. Glastonbury famously gives £1m a year to charity shared between organisations including Oxfam, Greenpeace, and WaterAid, while for over 25 years, Festival Republic has supported the likes of Action Aid, Oxfam, and Child.org.
In summing up this year’s Ruisrock festival in Finland, head promoter Mikko Niemelä seemed to speak for all festivals: “Ruisrock exists to make the world a happier and a more joyful place, and we hope that our mission has been successful. This year, our festival was the most beautiful it has ever been, and for this, I want to thank our wonderful audience, artists, partners, and the whole festival team.”
The European Festival Report, a packed annual summary of the biggest trends, happenings, and initiatives on the continent’s festival scene, is a project of Future Fit Festivals, co-funded by the EU. Read the second edition of the annual publication in full below.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.