Deep Roots honours Karoondinha tix as refunds begin
Deep Roots Productions, the promoter behind West Virginia’s Deep Roots Mountain Revival (DRMR), is offering ticketholders for the cancelled Karoondinha festival complimentary passes for the 20–22 July event, “in an effort to shine a positive light back into” the US festival scene, it has announced.
After learning of Karoondinha’s cancellation, Deep Roots says in a statement, it realised “that it’s the ticketholders who are the ones that suffer. We never want to see another event fail or watch the fans of the festival scene feel as though they received the short end of the stick.
“In an effort to shine a positive light back into a scene that is near and dear to our hearts, we will be honouring all Karoondinha weekend and single day passes at this year’s Deep Roots Mountain Revival.”
The inaugural Karoondinha Music & Arts Festival earlier this week became the latest high-profile festival cancellation in North America, following Pemberton Music Festival in Canada and the notorious Fyre Festival in the Bahamas, both of which of which are now facing legal action after being called off at the last minute.
Organised by brother-and-sister team Kaleena and Paul Rallis – collectively Hawk Eye Presents – Karoondinha came out of the gate with a big-name line-up to rival the likes of Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza (Chance the Rapper, John Legend, Odesza and Paramore were booked as headliners) and a capacity of 70,000 on its 1,600-acre site in Centre Hall, Pennsylvania.
In an interview with Billboard’s Dave Brooks, Paul Rallis reveals that, despite predictions of outselling even Live Nation’s Bonnaroo, the festival’s final ticket sales forecasts were between 25,000 and 30,000, leaving Hawk Eye far short of the US$26 million revenue a sell-out event was forecast to have generated. “We didn’t hit the projections we were conservatively estimating,” he explains. “It wasn’t even close.”
“We didn’t hit the projections we were conservatively estimating. It wasn’t even close”
In addition to poor ticket sales, sponsorships also reportedly failed to meet expectations, despite sales staff being paid $15,000 a month plus commission.
Rallis says he still hopes to put on the event at a later date – albeit presumably with a vastly reduced capacity. “We’re looking at other options at this moment and hope we can make something happen in some way,” he continues. “We’re not walking away from the vision of the idea in any way, because our commitment is still to make something great happen in this area – it’s just not going to take place on the scheduled days.”
For those not interested in attending DRMR instead, Karoondinha ticketer Eventbrite has begun emailing attendees about the refund procedure, with an update promised by “the end of the week”.
“Unfortunately, we were notified that this event will no longer take place as originally planned,” the email reads. “As an event technology platform ticketing millions of events each year, we were not involved in the production of this specific event or the decision to postpone it; however, we are committed to providing a high level of customer service to anyone who purchases tickets through our website. As such, we are working closely with the organiser of the event to finalise next steps for processing refunds and will send you an update with details by the end of the week.”
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