Lewis Capaldi cancels as Splendour faces dwindling crowd numbers

Australia’s biggest music festival, Splendour In The Grass, is struggling to sell tickets and has lost a major international drawcard with Lewis Capaldi cancelling his upcoming shows.

Last year’s sold-out event began with heavy rain falling on the North Byron Parklands festival site, and the opening day was cancelled. The sold-out crowd of 50,000 was 15,000 people bigger than the 2019 festival. The 2020 and 2021 events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Festival goers were faced with a soaking wet, challenging start to last year’s Splendour in the Grass.Credit: Getty

Capaldi, the Scottish singer-songwriter and Grammy Award nominee, pulled out of next month’s SITG opening night appearance after last weekend’s Glastonbury performance, saying he’s taking a break “for the forseeable future” to manage his Tourette’s Syndrome.

“I’m still learning to adjust to the impact of my Tourette’s and on Saturday [during his Glastonbury set] it became obvious that I need to spend much more time getting my mental and physical health in order,” Capaldi said on Tuesday.

Before Capaldi’s cancellation, Jessica Ducrou, co-chief executive of Secret Sounds which runs Splendour In The Grass, told this masthead she had “no idea” if the festival would sell out, and declined to say how many tickets had already sold.

Lewis Capaldi has cancelled his upcoming shows, including next month’s Splendour In The Grass.Credit: Getty

“People don’t have the disposable income they might have had pre-pandemic, so [not selling out] wasn’t a surprise,” Ducrou said. “Let’s just say it will be busy.”

The festival has historically sold out within hours, and high ticket demand has previously caused the festival website to crash. Two decades ago 12,500 people attended the inaugural, one-day festival. The next year was a two-day event, and it expanded to three days in 2009. After crowd numbers jumped to 30,000 in 2014, ticket sales ballooned to 50,000 last year.

In 2020, all 50,000 tickets sold in less than an hour, but the festival was later cancelled. Three-day tickets and single-day tickets are still available for next month’s festival.

“Ninety per cent of the time it sold out within hours, but it’s a different world these days. Consumer spending is down significantly,” Ducrou said.

Byron Shire mayor Michael Lyons said: “As long as their [Secret Sounds] planning can cater for the maximum amount, we’re not too bothered” how many tickets are sold.

“I feel for them, if they’re suffering a downturn, but most important is that they’re able to handle things a lot better than last year. I’m confident they will,” he said. “I’m sure they will be doing everything they can ... to run a seamless event.”

Ducrou said changes have been made to better respond to bad weather after last year’s opening day was cancelled, campgrounds flooded, and transportation failures left people stranded for hours.

‘The site is beautiful, there’s been a lot of work done, and we’re not coming off the back of nine months of flooding.’

Jessica Ducrou, chief executive of Secret Sounds

“We’ve been working on the grounds, the drainage network, we’ve re-turfed areas, put in more sealed roads, and from a venue perspective we’ve worked on making it more robust, if we do receive weather like that again,” she said.

“We also have a division on site that is dedicated to weather management ... and that’s about making sure that if we have bad weather, we’ve got varying plans to roll out.”

“Conditions up there are brilliant at the moment. The site is beautiful, there’s been a lot of work done, and we’re not coming off the back of nine months of flooding. We’re getting close to the event, and we’re excited for everyone to experience Splendour as they should.”

Secret Sounds is majority owned by US-based company Live Nation, which also controls Falls Festival. Falls Festival was relocated last year to Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl, and in May, organisers said “our team needs a break” and this year’s festival was cancelled.

Plans to relocate Victoria’s Falls Festival to Murroon, 35 kilometres from its original home in Lorne, ended up in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A VCAT hearing set down for February was abandoned after talks between festival organisers and objectors broke down.

“We’ll take time off ... and allow some space to re-imagine how Falls will look in the future,” Ducrou said in a statement last month.

It’s another blow for Secret Sounds, after SITG parent company Billinudgel Property was fined $100,000 by the NSW Department of Planning and Environment for last year’s traffic disruptions, caused by people queuing in their cars for up to12 hours at the side of the road.

“It was a very difficult situation we all found ourselves in, when it was happening right on top of us,” Ducrou said. “There was no moment where there was a simple and easy solution.

“ It took a while for us afterwards to get a full read on what had gone wrong.”

Last year’s increase of 15,000 tickets had been opposed by Byron Shire. In the aftermath, Cr. Lyons said an “unfortunate amount of rain” caused “a lot of chaos” for everyone involved.

“If you want to be less kind,” the mayor told this masthead, “after the February and March weather events, knowing the site and the long-term weather forecast predicting heavy rain, I don’t think they [the organisers] can say they were caught unaware by the weather.”

American singer Lizzo will headline next month’s opening day on Friday, July 21. Flume headlines day two with an exclusive 10-year retrospective, and Mumford & Sons will play an exclusive headline slot on the festival’s closing night. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Idles, Sam Fender, Tove Lo, Arlo Parks and J Balvin are among the international performers.

A three-day ticket costs just under $450, and about $200 extra for onsite camping, per person. The only tickets sold out so far are the more expensive VIP passes for three days and single days.

Last month British rapper Slowthai was removed from the line-up after appearing in a British court on two rape charges. The 28-year-old, whose real name is Tyron Frampton, pleaded not guilty to the charges, and will return to court in July next year.

Rainbow Kitten Surprise also dropped off the line-up, after announcing last month on Twitter that “one of our members is in a medical crisis” and the group would take a year off.

“We have one replacement, and we’re just waiting on the other,” Ducrou said. “We’ll be sharing that with everyone as soon as we can.”

In a statement on Tuesday following Lewis Capaldi’s cancellation, Secret Sounds said single day, Friday only ticket holders would be contacted by Moshtix about how to apply for a refund.

Australian artists on the line-up include Hilltop Hoods, Ball Park Music, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Tkay Maidza, Meg Mac, Cub Sport, RVG, and Harvey Sutherland.

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