THIS SUMMER’S blips on the festival calendar have alarmed some and encouraged others. The herd of ‘boutique’ events may have been somewhat culled, but most of the famous festivals appear in rude health – if not fitter than ever. So what do they need in their survival kits to prevent being washed away? Europe-wide, the templates are being pegged out.
VALUE FOR MONEY Festival veteran Chris Beale has seen it all, from helping invent the festival market at SSE Hire to his current venture: sowing the seeds of broadband into the very soil of outdoor events with CBA Spindlewood. “As observers, we’re seeing the market changing dramatically,” he says. “It’s no secret that people are not as well off as they have been, and they have to make choices. Previously the touring market suffered because people saved up for festivals to see as many bands as possible in one go. Now it’s about the value for money offered by one festival versus another. It used to be that events like Reading were a rite of passage for a
The big-name festivals have a unique advantage over the rest. Phil Ward reveals this and more in his Business Backpack…
young demographic who came by train, V festivals had car parks full of Golf GTis and BMWs and so on. It’s not as clear-cut as that any more.” Failure, says Beale, is more
about supply than demand. “All the boutique festivals that we do are doing fine: ticket sales for the Secret Garden Party, for example, have been fantastic,” he points out. “The ones that have failed tend to have flawed financial models, or some kind of poor management that brings them down in spite of healthy sales. There’s no fall in demand, just bad decisions by those in charge. Sometimes those people try to blame the market in the press but, in some of the cases I’ve seen, that’s just not the case. It’s making us very cautious about who we deal with.” Sound designer Patrick Demoustier’s first Werchter was in 1986 and he’s still going strong – just like the festival. “It
This and top: Download festival, PA by SSE Hire
This summer, security and comms pioneer CBA Spindlewood has already successfully supplied Download, and will soon be tackling Hyde Park, the Vs, Reading-Leeds and selected boutiquers like Latitude. Co- founder Chris Beale (above) is about to visit Outlook in Croatia, but capacity is stretched. “We’re flat out,” he says, “and don’t forget we do several non-music events too.”
Above all, CBA is about infrastructure – and the rate of investment in this direction bodes well for the future of those festivals with the
“The major festivals will always be there because they are a brand ”
necessary vision. “We’re installing Gigabit wireless matrices, developing live IP broadcast… it’s not just WiFi!” Beale explains. “This is industrial bandwidth shifting. Our ‘UK event fibre network’ has a hub at our Midlands HQ and has point-to-point fibre links to all the major festival sites, including Glastonbury. There is a cable from the main core of the internet to the middle of each field.” Beyond media delivery, eventually this web will connect the audio and video spirit of each event to the battery of social networking devices on every backpacking hip and every Audi dashboard. Gigabit fibre-optics in and out of Pilton Farm? That’s a game-changer. “The major festivals will always be there because they’re a brand,” adds Beale. “Those sites will survive as icons, adapted for an online world.”