If you’re spending this weekend listening to music in a muddy field, you’re part of a significant economic trend, says Janice Warman: festivals are Britain’s boom sector
There was no doubt about it. I was irretrievably stuck. Each boot was lapped by a shining circle of mud which, as I tried to move, made ominous sucking noises and seemed to increase its grip. I turned in desperation and appealed to a tall man behind me. ‘Can you help me please?’ He looked down at me. ‘Just a minute — I’ve got to take this call.’ He turned away. But moments later I was free: he and another festival-goer had lifted me clear of my Hunters, retrieved them and put me back in them.
Luckily most Brits don’t seem to mind a bit of mud. Even that year at WOMAD, my personal favourite among all the British festivals, the sun came out after the rainstorms and eventually we learned the tricky art of wading just fast enough not to get stuck again. It was like being on a strange planet: above knee level, the sun shone, the prayer flags fluttered, there was chai in the chai tent, the jamming Jamie Cullum was close enough to touch, and all was well with the world; below, there was a shining mocha sea.
You could say that the growing festival sector owes a lot to the British character — we also don’t seem to mind queues, crowds and bad food. And having sampled it, I can testify that there is a magic in live music which seems to overcome all of the above. With 450 events in Britain annually, more than one for every day of the year, it’s no surprise that we have become world-famous for our festivals.
And it’s good business. PRS for Music (formerly the Performing Rights Society) says that in 2009, the top 200 festivals will have contributed £450 million to the UK economy — including ticket sales, travel, accommodation and food.
The industry is also expected to be relatively recession-proof. The (laughably inaccurate) official forecast of a ‘barbecue summer’ and the rise to fashion of the money-saving ‘staycation’ boosted ticket sales so that all this year’s major festivals sold out. And the weak pound has had a twin benefit — persuading Brits to stay at home and attracting foreign festival-goers.
This August bank holiday weekend the season comes to a climax with Reading Festival; by the time the Isle of Wight’s Bestival and the End of the Road Festival in Dorset roll around in mid-September, around two million people will have packed their tents, their Birkenstocks — and no doubt a few joints — and joined the traffic queues for Glastonbury or T in the Park.
Live music has overtaken CD sales as a way to make money out of music. ‘The reality today is that there is not much money to be made in recorded music,’ says a report from Mintel on the music industry. ‘Album sales are in meltdown. Much of the action is moving to the live arena. Live music has become a key route to profitability.’
The live music industry was worth £1.4 billion in 2008; brands spent £23 million on live music sponsorship. That’s because festivals are an ideal way of accessing and penetrating the consciousness of the hard-to-reach young.
And there are some very clever people behind the scenes. Ben Turner has set up the Association of Independent Festivals with BBC Radio 1 DJ Rob da Bank, himself the founder of Bestival and Camp Bestival. Turner has struck a deal with Visit Britain, the national tourism agency, to offer a 20 per cent discount on festival tickets for overseas visitors.
Turner, who is also the head of Graphite Media, offers an explanation for the affinity between brands and festivals. ‘Outdoor music events are very aspirational, glamorous. People are enjoying life; it’s the highlight of their year. What better time to engage with them?’
At the same time, companies have to be wary. ‘Young people are savvy about brands. Those aged 35 and under have grown up with brands, and they can tell when it’s just there for a badging exercise. You need something more, something that enhances the event.’
Often the people who run festivals are as interesting as the events themselves. Katrina Larkin co-founded the Big Chill 15 years ago. It began as a Sunday afternoon festival with friends at the Union Chapel in Islington. It’s now set in the deer park at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire, but its first move was to the Black Mountains, where Katrina had been camping and begged the farmer to let them return with a few more friends — the few turned out to be 700. Now it pulls in 30,000.
‘We never had a business plan for it, it was designed for friends.’ Katrina calls it ‘four days of pure escapism in idyllic countryside’ and its mix of world music, folk and jazz (‘the Leonard Cohens and the David Byrnes’) mark it out, she feels, ‘rather like a really good record collection of someone who is passionate about music rather than someone who is buying it because it is in the charts’.
But music is only part of the Big Chill. This year a zombie movie was made by Film4 on-site, incidentally gaining entry to the Guinness Book of Records for the most zombies in one place. There was a talk by Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang; festival-goers could have their picture taken by the fashion photographer Rankin and see tents customised by Rachel Whiteread, Vivienne Westwood and Gavin Turk; or they could go to the Dereliction Drive-In, relaxing in wrecked cars to watch movies beneath the stars.
And between festivals, the brand is kept going by two Big Chill bars — one in Brick Lane and one in Bristol — as well as the organisation’s HQ, Big Chill House at King’s Cross in London. They also have a record label. Indeed, it seems there are never-ending ways to make money out of festivals: this October will see the first publication of Festival Annual, a photographic roundup of the year’s events, including the Big Chill (left and right).
Some festivals are all about the branding — Virgin’s ‘V’ festivals in Chelmsford and Staffordshire are a prime example — but others reject it altogether. One such is the Hop Farm Festival in Kent, run by multi-millionaire and self- styled ‘King of Gigs’ Vince Power, whose Mean Fiddler entertainments empire encompassed London’s Astoria, the Reading and Leeds Festivals. More recently, Power stepped in when the grand old man of festivals, Glastonbury, was threatened with closure on security grounds because there were so many gatecrashers. To Glasto founder Michael Eavis’s chagrin, Mean Fiddler bought a 40 per cent stake, which satisfied Mendip Council enough to gain the festival a renewed licence.
Power sold Mean Fiddler in 2005. I spoke to him in his air-conditioned caravan behind the three stages at Hop Farm. Compared to his other festivals, which now include Benicassim in Spain, Hop Farm is a minnow among sharks. But he’s fond of it.
‘In an effort to get back to basics I wanted to do no branding, no sponsorship, no VIPs,’ he said. ‘If you walked into the site, you could almost say this is a festival in the Sixties.’
‘You could say I’m a hypocrite because I’m the one who brought sponsorship into festivals in a big way. When I did the Carling deal [at Reading, in 1997] it was something like £6 million, which was unheard of then.’
He was lucky in his first year at Hop Farm — he had Neil Young as the headliner and the event sold out. But this year was an illustration of the dangers of running events like these: he booked The Prodigy and Oasis, and applied to expand the licence to 50,000 people. He was refused; by the time he won his appeal, both bands had agreed to play other festivals and he had to book the Fratellis and Paul Weller instead 8212; with a much reduced audience.
Power is anything but downcast. To make money out of festivals, you need to think big, he explains. You need to pay Oasis or The Killers over half a million pounds, but then they pull a lot of people in: easily 20,000 in their own right, but with a full bill of acts, that could quickly become 50,000. For a big festival, the artists’ budget is about £3 million and the production budget roughly the same.
And the whole festival business? ‘It will be tough for all of us, including the bigger festivals. There has been massive growth in the last five years and now it’s pulling back into the recession.’ As an indicator of spending power among the sort of people who go to festivals, takings at his bars in London are 15 per cent down, he says.
But festival-goers are an extraordinarily loyal lot. I for one have my bedroll and Birkenstocks stashed and ready for next year’s WOMAD — the muddier, the better.
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