Splendour in the Grass cancellation signals warning for Australian music festivals

An expert has delivered a grim warning to music festival fans following the shock cancellation of Splendour in the Grass 2024.

In a stark warning to the Australian live music industry, an expert has declared “if Splendour can fail, anyone can”.

The 2024 Splendour in the Grass due to be held at North Byron Parklands from July 19 was abruptly cancelled this week due to what organisers labelled “unexpected events”.

The 2024 instalment of Splendour in the Grass was cancelled this week.

Australian Festival Association managing director Mitch Wilson said the high Australian dollar and soaring costs would have all been contributing factors.

“With costs up 30-40 per cent across the board and affordable insurance difficult to obtain, margins are tight,” he said.

“Festival organisers haven’t raised ticket prices to offset or meet these increases due to cost-of-living challenges being faced by everyone.

“We need government at the table to help us through this period and assist in stabilising our industry to sustainable levels. This needs a national approach.”

Dr Ben Green, a postdoctoral fellow at the Griffith University Centre for Social and Cultural Research, said while there had been a spate of festival cancellations in recent years, the Splendour decision “stood out”.”

“Splendour is Australia’s biggest single-ticket festival, with a 23-year history, and the backing of one of the world’s biggest concert promoters, Live Nation,” he said.

“If Splendour can fail, anyone can.”

Dr Green festivals relied heavily on early ticket sales, but a shift in consumer behaviour meant people were purchasing tickets later than they previously had.

“The traditional wisdom in the live events sector is that opening sales are crucial, and if they aren’t up to scratch, you will never recover,” Dr Green said.

“Unfortunately, one trend since the Covid pandemic is for people to buy their tickets later – with young people especially slow to commit.”

Fans at Splendour in the Grass 2023.

Some fans have blamed what they called a “lacklustre line-up”, which included headline acts Kylie Minogue, Future, Arcade Fire and Turnstile.

“Poor line up was the main reason,” one person commented, while another wrote “People just don’t want to spend hundreds on a weekend with average acts.”

However, Dr Green said the issue was far more complex, with a post-pandemic trend towards more targeted, genre-specific events.

“It does seem that more targeted events, including concert tours and genre-based festivals, are holding up better than diverse festivals like Splendour and Groovin the Moo,” he said.

“The Big Day Out, and international events like Glastonbury and Coachella, were successful for many years with highly varied line-ups.

“But today, this model seems to be struggling,

“The trend towards specialisation might reflect the more personalised ways that people find and consume music, such as through streaming platforms with bespoke playlists and targeted recommendations.

Splendour in the Grass organisers blamed unexpected events on the festival’s cancellation.

Despite this setback, Dr Green remains optimistic about the industry.

“The festival sector has seen slumps before, such as a decade ago when the Big Day Out ended,” he said.

“Live music attendance and revenue doubled in the 10 years before Covid, and more recent research shows that nearly half the population over 15 attends festivals.

“The challenge is to sustain and grow a diverse live music ecosystem, and extend the benefits as widely as possible.

“Increasingly, live music is being recognised as a matter for cultural and social policy, not to be left entirely at the mercy of the market.”

Dr Green said it wasn’t only festivals in Australia that were struggling.

“Last year was the first time in over a decade that Splendour didn’t sell out within a few hours,” he said.

“The same thing happened to Coachella. So it does seem as if something has changed at the wider scale.

The Coachella music festival failed to sell out last year. Picture: AFP

“One common factor seems to be that the “big tent” events are struggling – the festivals that cater to broad and diverse audiences – while more targeted events for niche tastes seem to be stronger.

“This could speak to how tastes and culture have changed in the age of personalised streaming.”

Dr Green also commented on the contradiction of Live Nation reporting significant profits while Splendour in the Grass was cancelled, suggesting that the company, like others in the industry, may prioritise short-term financial returns, possibly at the expense of the long-term health of the live music ecosystem.

“If any business can keep a festival going through lean years, it’s Live Nation. But equally, we could expect a multinational like Live Nation to make decisions driven by the bottom line and short term returns,” he said.

Originally published as Splendour in the Grass cancellation signals warning for Australian music festivals