Northern Beaches Rock Relief Brookvale concert’s ticket sales were falling short before axing

Earlier this week Northern Beaches Council pulled the plug on its bushfire fundraiser at Brookvale because of wet weather. However, sales figures suggest if it had gone ahead it would have been much smaller and low key than initially hoped for.

Hoodoo Gurus singer Dave Faulkner and Bass Guitarist Richard Grossman were supposed to perform at Rock Relief which was cancelled. Picture: Troy Snook

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Just 10 per cent of tickets for Northern Beaches Council’s Rock Relief concert had been sold prior to the event being cancelled due to bad weather on Monday.

A total of 20,000 tickets had been put up for sale and the council was hoping to raise $1m from the Brookvale Oval event.

But with just 2000 tickets sold, only $110,000 of the $1m target had been reached.

The Council is now attempting to recoup as much of the $60,000 spent on the event as possible

Around $50,000 had been spent on promotion and $10,000 on insurance.

Although it pledged to provide full refunds and confirmed it was planning to make insurance claims, councillors have said the event should have not been given the green light.

Peter O'Doherty and Reg Mombassa from Dog trumpet were prepared to support the concert at Brookvale Oval before the storms on Sunday. Picture: John Appleyard

A number of Liberal councillors raised concerns over the concert after its cancellation.

Cr Rory Amon described the event as “another example of council waste”.

“The rock concert was the mayor’s idea and was scheduled without reference to the elected council,” Cr Amon said.

“While well intentioned, had councillors been given an opportunity to provide input in to the mayor’s rock concert idea I would have made my views known that the council should find alternate means to support bushfire victims.

“A council-run rock concert was always going to struggle to sell tickets...I suspect it would have been embarrassingly undersubscribed.”

Northern Beaches councillor Rory Amon says the Rock Relief concert should have never gone ahead. Picture: Adam Yip

But Mayor, Michael Regan hit back, saying he would not apologise for trying to do a good thing.

“Interesting that none of these councillors raised any concerns with the event until now - and some of them even promoted it,” he said.

“Clearly now that we have been forced by the extreme weather to cancel the event, sadly they are seeking to make it a political issue. If we’d been able to go ahead and raise a million dollars I’m sure they’d be trying to take the credit for it.

“Rock Relief was developed in response to the overwhelming community sentiment to do something to help those in fire and drought affected areas. I don’t apologise for doing the right thing by our community and those further afield who need our support.”

Northern Beaches Mayor Michael Regan said the council was trying to do a good thing. Picture: Adam Yip

Cr David Walton questioned the cancellation.

“Why did Council not consider a postponement of the concert if the cancellation was only due to the weather?” he said.

“The council has already expended over $60,000 on insurance and promoting the concert.”

Cr Stuart Sprott said he felt for the staff who invested so much time into promoting the event.

“I am disappointed but not surprised at the cancellation of the rock relief concert...I believe council is not in the concert promotion business and we could be spending ratepayers’ money and using council resources in much more productive ways.”

Cr Regan said the council was seeking to have costs reimbursed through insurance.

“With the tight schedules of the artists involved, it was impossible to just postpone to sometime in the next few weeks. We have said though that we will consider holding a similar concert at another time.”