Break up funds and second jobs: how music pageant followers afford hovering prices

[ad_1] F rom Monday to Friday, Jessica Heath works as a civil servant in central London – however when the weekend comes, it’s not time to chill out. For the previous two years, the 28-year-old has additionally labored night shifts most Saturdays and Sundays at a close-by wine bar, with one clear intention – to avoid wasting up for her summers.

Heath has been an enormous music pageant fan since she first went to Leeds as a young person and annually, together with day occasions, she takes in at the very least seven, some as a volunteer. With out that and her second job, she’d by no means be capable of afford it, she says.

Jessica Heath It’s not simply the price of tickets, “it’s so many different issues”, says Heath. “The coach, the meals, the drink, all the opposite parts.” Her most up-to-date journey to Glastonbury value £900 in complete – “an insane amount of cash for lower than every week”.

“It appears like I’m saying, ‘Woe is me.’ I imply, I had an incredible time. However for me and loads of my buddies, you both do this otherwise you go on vacation – you don’t do each.”

It has been a turbulent few years in Britain’s pageant business, with large business giants and smaller indies buffeted by a post-pandemic, post-Brexit surge in prices that led a report 72 occasions to postpone, cancel, or fold in 2024. Occasion organisers, typically regardless of their greatest efforts, have been pressured to boost ticket costs, and are having to innovate to promote them. Whereas festivalgoers caught in an ongoing cost-of-living squeeze are, in lots of instances, having to innovate to afford to purchase tickets.

In consequence, business evaluation exhibits, the way in which pageant tickets are purchased and offered is altering. Pre-pandemic, some opted to pay in instalments; since then, nevertheless, the numbers opting to purchase this manner has soared, with ticket service Skiddle reporting a 48% improve in 2023/24, a determine anticipated to rise additional this 12 months.

“My view could be, should you don’t provide break up funds, you then actually shouldn’t be working a pageant in 2025,” says John Rostron, the CEO of the Affiliation of Impartial Festivals. Nearly all festivals – even day occasions – now provide them, he says, typically unfold over a full 12 months.

Early hen tickets, too, have boomed – up five-fold in 2023/24 at Skiddle. Partially, says Rostron, that’s pushed by dwell occasions being pressured to lock of their acts ever earlier, but it surely additionally means some festivals are promoting out in report time – even in early autumn, virtually a 12 months earlier than their occasion.

Many Guardian readers have stated pageant financing was a year-long pursuit. Charlotte Westwell, 23, a espresso store supervisor from Wigan, stated she and her associate had acquired the bug at Obtain Pilot in 2021, and have gone to 2 or three a 12 months since then.

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Charlotte Westwell To take action, they snap up early hen tickets on cost plans. “Then, after every pageant, I arrange a financial savings pot, and arrange a standing order for a set quantity each month, in addition to a money jar for any spare bits of money. However we inevitably must dip into financial savings for varied causes, wind up with little or no by pageant season, and whack all of it on the bank card in an limitless cycle of pageant debt.”

Nevertheless it’s price it, she says. “I imply, we’re massively, massively into dwell music.”

Charlotte Lovie Many readers stated they had been in a position to get tickets solely by volunteering – “a beautiful group” in itself, in line with Charlotte Lovie, 55, a school lecturer from Southsea in Hampshire, who has labored in trade for a ticket at a number of festivals for every of the previous 4 years.

However even coming by a volunteer place might be powerful, and a few have considerations that rising prices may make festivals more and more inaccessible to these on low incomes.

It’s one thing occasion organisers are conscious about, with some, equivalent to the choice music and humanities pageant Supersonic, inviting better-off attenders to purchase “solidarity” tickets to subsidise a free or cheaper one for these from marginal teams.

“The ethos of the pageant is about this sense of group and folks coming collectively,” says the Supersonic inventive director, Lisa Meyer. “And if that turns into elitist as a result of it’s so costly, then it’s probably not for everybody.”

Stuart Walker, 52, from Nottingham, says he and his associate had initially determined they couldn’t afford their standard couple of festivals this 12 months: “It looks like a a lot larger luxurious than it was, and I’d have to chop again on much more issues.” Ultimately, although, they determined to dip into their financial savings, and can go to Lovely Days and Latitude later in the summertime.