The Association of Independent Festivals is the UK’s leading non-profit festival trade association, created to represent and empower independent festivals.
In addition to helping members grow their business, offering legal and accounting advice and building a community of independent festival promoters, AIF also lobbies the government and media about the issues facing the independent sector, and the initiatives that could provide a solution.
Overseeing it all is John Rostron who, prior to joining AIF as the Chief Executive, co-founded the Association of Independent Promoters, promoted concerts and festivals, and co-founded the Welsh Music Prize.
Some of the initiatives Rostron has spearheaded include the First Festival campaign, which was designed to counter declining Gen Z attendance at festivals by offering £18 festival tickets to hundreds of thousands of people aged 18+ across the UK.
AIF’s latest campaign is 5% For Festivals, which seeks to reduce the VAT on festival tickets in the UK from 20% to 5% for three years.
Here, Rostron provides an update on both initiatives, and some of the issues facing the independent festival sector…
Were there any learnings to come out of First Festival in 2023?
Oh, loads. We thought that if given the option to sign up for lots of festivals, and get access for £18, you'd really pick quite a lot of festivals, and you'd throw your hat in the ring to multiple events.
And you don't. You actually really do have a sense of the kind of things that you want to go to, and the rest of them are just not in your field of vision. And that was interesting.
We learned that some of our festivals don't want 18-year-olds – they're like, no, we're for people who are older, or we're for people who are over 21.
We had some practical difficulties offering an 18-year-old a ticket for £18. At that age, you're not very often going by yourself. So there's a coordination aspect that comes with it, and perhaps what we were doing practically created a bit of a barrier, because normally you come along in a group and you buy some tickets together. Somebody would become the sort of de facto booker.
But with First Festival, we didn't have that as a mechanism. So I’d see people a bit nervous about getting a ticket in case their friends couldn't get one.
But do they want to go? Yes, they do. It wasn't like we got hit with loads of people who said, ‘Festivals are not for us.’ The core of it was very positive.
Is it returning this year?
We're looking at it. We hope so. We would like to scale up, really – there was a lot of demand, and we couldn't meet the demand.
I want to get to a place where the government gives every 18-year-old a festival pass, which happens in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal.
Can you see the government being amenable to that idea?
Nobody’s said, ‘No’. Everybody's open. I think it will take time because it's such a big thing.
One of the other campaigns you're really focusing on is reducing VAT on tickets from 20% to 5% for three years. What will the benefit of that be?
So the background is we lost a lot of festivals to the pandemic, over 100 festivals. Last year, we lost 36 festivals that we could track. And we've lost 29 already this year.
It’s a credit problem. The cost of putting on a festival has changed. Supply chain costs have gone up. And people have tried to do everything to mitigate that by reducing some of their production, reducing some of their artists, and also putting their ticket prices up.
But the problem for them is double. When they set their budgets and they look to the year ahead, they can come in on budget. But the supply chain part isn't stable. And so those supply chain budgets they're having a problem with – [if] somewhere on the journey something goes wild, then suddenly that's putting pressure on.
They don't have the liquidity to deal with that pinch moment, and that's because of COVID. Prior to COVID, they had some money in the bank, the ticket company would be advancing them some money. And the supply chain would be like, ‘Hey, you want to book my fences, that's 10% now, 90% after the show.’
"Last year, we lost 36 festivals that we could track. And we've lost 29 already this year."
COVID’s come, and understandably all that's completely changed. Ticket companies have loads of pressure, so don't advance money like they used to, they're much more cautious.
The festival’s got no money because they used up all their reserves. And then the supply chain, which went through all of its problems, it's now at least 50% to book it. Sometimes it's 100% to book it.
So you've got added demand for money and stricter terms, which is just creating a credit crunch.
And then of course, when something goes wrong, and a festival cancels or postpones, it makes it harder for everybody else, because if the supply chain company gets caught, bad debt goes up on its books. So you've got bad debt at supply chain companies – some of them are talking about being up 500%.
So their prices go up because they're carrying a debt. So it's kind of all squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
But you've got this VAT that you pay out, which is 20%. So instead of doing all the nipping and tucking with the stages and the artists, it's like, let's look at that 20%. And if we can get that down to 5%, suddenly we've got 15% to play with. And that's going to give us a cushion.
If the supply chain suddenly goes a bit wild or ticket sales drop a bit, we've got that 15% as a cushion to get us through without having to reach into the banks and try and stretch our credit. So that's the ask of government.
What's their feedback? And do the festivals think this will really make a difference?
Lower VAT on festivals will as good as you can guarantee save every single festival that's gone under. It's literally the silver bullet. You can't guarantee it, of course, because somebody could still have a bad day. But broadly, you talk to the ones that have postponed, or the ones that have canceled, and talk to the ones that are calling it an end, and all of them say that VAT would have been the difference.
The other thing is, no new festivals are starting. Prior to the pandemic, you'd have a bit of churn, but there'd be new things coming along all the time. Nothing new is starting. There are no green shoots. There's people who've got tenders, and they've got licenses, but they're not starting.
So we've asked a few of them, ‘If VAT was at 5%, would you?’ And they're like, ‘Yeah.’ Because within the budget, for all the reasons that I've said, it's just like, this is too much of a variance. But the 5% gives them the market conditions to go, ‘Yeah, now I feel I can give that a go.’
So that's why we're asking for it.
And in terms of the government conversation, it's been very positive. We’ve not had a single ‘no’ in any of the meetings. But we've been talking about it since March last year, so we're on our anniversary, a year of talking about it.
"Lower VAT on festivals will as good as you can guarantee save every single festival that's ever gone under."
Beyond the supply chain issues and the rising costs, are there any common concerns that you regularly hear from independent festivals that perhaps don't get as much airtime?
Probably the biggest unspoken issue or concern is artist exclusives.
These independent festivals, they're built by people who love music, and they live in their community. They love artists and they put loads of these artists on. And then at some point, some of these artists that they're working with [build] an audience, and then the [organizers] get told you can't have them anymore, [they're doing] an artist exclusive [with a major festival].
And not only is it heartbreaking for them, where they've been part of the artist’s journey, but it's wrong on so many levels.
And it's bad for communities. It's bad for artists, it's bad for audiences.
"Probably the biggest unspoken issue or concern is artist exclusives."
It sounds sexy, doesn't it: Peggy Gou is playing an exclusive in Gunnersbury Park. It really is like, Peggy Gou says fuck you to everybody else around the UK.
And it’s not Peggy Gou that’s made the decision, it's Live Nation that's offered a load of money and [her] management team have seen all the pay cheques and done it. But it's a massive fuck you to everybody that has been part of Peggy’s journey.
And all the money comes into Gunnersbury Park, who have not been part of Peggy Gou’s journey [like] all of these other places across the UK. It's like an extraction. It's like coal mining and oil mining, sucking them out of the communities and all the audience's [money] into London.
And then actually most of it goes to a company that's owned in the US.
I can understand where it's coming from, this desire to trap the talent in, we want to get the bums on seats. But here's the thing – it doesn't work. If it worked, Reading and Leeds would be sold out. Because Reading and Leeds offer you nothing except a load of really big names. There's no culture and art, it's some names on a bill and some fencing and you're lucky if you'll find a bin. That is the offer. And that's not working anymore.
Is there anyone out there that's doing something innovative or has really found a clever way to navigate some of the issues, and is having good success? A good news story for an independent festival?
One of the really good news stories is unfortunately coming out of something that's quite bad. Download last year, amazing, massive, 100,000 people.
But it was a horror show when it came to accessibility. And there was a big case about how bad it was in terms of not looking after its audience.
I'm not sure whether it was a combination of that, plus their line-up, but our independent rock and metal festivals are reporting record sales this year. And one of them, for example, when it comes to accessibility tickets has completely sold out.
And he's actually been on the phone going, ‘What's the law about this? Because we're trying to build some more, but we don't know if we can build some more, but we've got people asking to get in.’ And they've had to get legal support because they've never been in that situation before. And we think it's all related to Download getting it wrong.
But broadly, when you get to the sort of 10,000, 15,000 cap festivals, we've got lots of people doing really well, selling really well. Because they have communities rather than headliners.
Their marketing budget as a percentage is smaller, because they're not having to try and reach people, they've already kind of reached people through their offer. So they're managing to battle through some of these things in a better way. And I think the supply chain has lots of confidence in them, because they know that they always do okay.
Visit AIF here. Follow John on LinkedIn here.
