Photo Credit: Aranxa Esteve
Mid-tier festivals might be next to suffer from “blue dot fever,” according to analyst Annick Maas.
The growing malady of “blue dot fever,” the phenomenon of seats going largely unsold at live events — as represented by endless blue dots on Ticketmaster’s site — isn’t getting better anytime soon. Partially, it’s the ticketing industry, and more broadly it’s the state of the economy. But it’s also the generational gap between millennials who no longer have the time to attend live events, and Gen Z who do not yet have the money to attend live events.
Now, the plague might be coming for smaller and mid-sized festivals.
According to one analyst, big changes are fomenting in Europe, where the festival market is about to be dominated by a combination of only the largest and most niche events. Those may be the only categories primed to withstand the headwinds as music fans pare back on ticket-buying in economies fraught with rising prices.
Bigger ‘tentpole’ events can stay ahead of the curve, according to media and internet research analyst Annick Maas, by selling tickets before announcing a lineup. This luxury provides events with the leeway needed to account for unexpectedly high fees associated with artist bookings.
“You want to sell your tickets before you have the lineup. So, think about Glastonbury. All the tickets are sold before we actually know a single person that is going to line up there,” Maas explained. “And so, you know, even if the artists are going to charge more, it doesn’t really matter because your tickets are already sold.”
Against that competitive pressure, mid-level festivals will struggle the most, according to Maas. They simultaneously don’t have the ability to book big-name talent the way the larger festivals do, and they lack the die-hard fans attending smaller, more niche events.
“In the 1990s, festivals were quite niche. They exploded around 2010, very much attended by millennials. Now, [millennials] are now settling down, [having] kids, etc. And they don’t necessarily have as much time to go to festivals,” said Maas. “And yet, the next generation, Gen Z, only 24% of them are working, so they don’t have the money that you actually need to spend to go [to] a festival.”
“I think the conclusion is [that] niche festivals and the big festivals are the ones that are going to survive. But more generally, festivals are having a sort of slump because of a generational issue.”
“If you think about it, years ago, the artists made all their money on selling CDs, but no one buys CDs anymore, and they don’t make a lot of money from streaming. And so, these days, artists are just going much more on concerts, and that’s where they make the bulk of their money.”
“People don’t necessarily go [to more] concerts, but they pay more to go to the concerts, and that’s very much driven by your Olivia Dean tickets, as well as the Taylor Swift ones,” Maas said of the broader concert ticketing industry. “The experience economy is growing, but not because people go more to concerts, but much more because tickets have become more expensive.”