A low cost festival should really not be an oxymoron but lots of people at Glastonbury this 12 months are in a extremely unique area monetarily to in which they have been when they booked their tickets prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pageant goer Harriet Wheeler, 32, from Brighton, claimed persons she commonly goes to enjoy music with are not forking out this calendar year.
“We’ve got a lot of friends who come to Glastonbury every single 12 months – this is our 1st – but a whole lot of them haven’t been capable to come since they’ve experienced to assume about the rest of the 12 months and what income they are heading to have leftover to devote, no matter whether which is for them selves or their children.”
Owen Dunwell, 58, from Nottingham, claimed he has actually found the more price.
“This is our 2nd pageant on the trot and all the festivals, all the prices have absent up.”
At the Leftfield stage – curated by Billy Bragg – the line-up involves a speak on the value of residing.
“I consider people today will want to listen to about, you know, the condition we uncover ourselves in and how we deal with it,” he said.
“You know, in the press, the latest circumstance is all targeted on the wage rate spiral. It is not at all targeted on how we do capitalism.
Harriet Wheeler
“More than the previous 50 years, these a significant chunk of the pie has gone to shareholders and bosses fairly than going to the workforce.
“And in the finish, if men and women you should not have dollars in their pockets, they are not heading to be in a position to invest that cash and make the economic system go spherical.”
Back again in 1970, it charge just a pound to get in to Glastonbury, but right now tickets price an eye-watering £285.
Bragg claimed that ought to be seen in context, including: “For some, this is their summer months vacation and, you know, £285 for a ticket? You check out and get a weekend in Ibiza for that.”
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Glastonbury paints a photograph of a flourishing competition scene, but several of the more compact Uk musical weekends which created up a next pre-COVID have not been equipped to equilibrium their publications this 12 months, with soaring costs and weak ticket revenue leading to numerous past-moment cancellations. The knock-on result is getting felt by a lot of who make a living from the sector.
Helen Bayett
Helen Bayett, 30, from Bristol, is the owner and manager of Sizzling P’tatoes, a foodstuff stall at Glastonbury.
“In a normal yr we do about eight or nine festivals,” she mentioned.
“This calendar year we can only do two and that’s due to the fact of the affordability.
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“All the things has gone up… it really is so high priced to do, we can not pay for the petrol and the running prices and the stock costs.
“You have to have all your funds up entrance for these type of issues, so it relies on getting it ticking over in the summertime to create that backup up so that you can then go once again.
“This 12 months we only can do Glasto and Greenland mainly because the others we just simply just are not able to afford to pay for.”
Standard support could possibly have resumed at Glastonbury – but publish-COVID there is now a whole new set of challenges for the reside audio market.
Source: The Sun
