Festivals without health restrictions are back this summer. Good news at first sight for the organizers. But between the shortage of intermittent workers (many turned away from the profession during the Covid), an overabundant supply and the explosion in production costs, concern is eating away at the sector.
Like every year, the Interceltic Festival of Lorient, launched since Friday August 5, is one of the busiest in France, with nearly 800,000 people in front of the stages. For this 2022 edition, behind the scenes, it is above all organizational costs that are exploding. “We are around 500,000 euros increase. It’s still a lot on a budget of 7.3 million“, explains Jean Peeters.
thes summer meetings this year went through occasional turbulence, -heat wave, torrential rainartists canceling for Covid-19 – but mostly structural. The list of rising expenses continues to grow. “We have no choice but to assume, these are positions that we cannot give up for the festival“, explains Nadège Couroussé, production manager of the King Arthur Festival., organized at the end of August Breal-sous-Montfort, in Ille-et-Vilaine.
“Between the fuel increases, the food increases, the material increases, the insurance increases, it’s all very substantial.”
Nadège Couroussé, production director of the King Arthur Festivalfranceinfo
On the side of the Interceltic Festival, the organizers had a bad surprise, that of the cancellation of an Irish delegation. “At the last moment, a few days before the festival, the company says no because the price that had been negotiated was no longer interesting. So we took a lot, around 100,000 euros just on that”, regret Jean Peeters. But for the president of the festival, there is no question of giving up on the Irish delegation. “If you have no more Irish, it’s no longer an interceltic festival“, he breathes.
To survive, festivals take it upon themselves to offer the best experience to festival-goers. Some develop sponsorship. “There are around 500 festival partner companies with us“, underlines Julien Sauvage, director of the Cabaret Vert festival, in Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes). But this is not necessarily tenable in the long term: “Cit is thanks to that that we clearly get out of it. But at some point, it will have its limits. And then the price of the ticket today, it will be, I think, a real question“. What clearly poses the question of the “economic model of our events”, loose Julien Sauvage. An already fragile economic model. Today, to be profitable, refueling is now mandatory. According to him, “theFestivals can’t afford less than 90-95% fill rate“.
After two years of pandemic, music festivals, now faced with inflation, are struggling to recover their costs – Report by Arthur Fradin
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