Joe GallopPan-European promoter, venue operator and ticketing conglomerate Deutsche Entertainment AG (DEAG) said it expects the number of visitors to its festival portfolio to increase by 40% compared to 2022.
The company is set to draw a record audience of more than 800,000 festivalgoers this year in its four strongest national markets, Germany, the UK, Ireland and Switzerland.
Among the festivals the promoter is hosting this summer include DEAG’s subsidiary Kilimanjaro Live‘s Kew the Music (cap. 8,000) in London and Castle Concerts at Edinburgh Castle, promoted by DEAG’s Regular Music, which attracted more than 50,000 visitors to six sold-out shows. Both event series ended last night (16 July).
DEAG has also hosted the 70,000-capacity German electronic dance event Airbeat One, which celebrated its 20th-anniversary last weekend at the airfield in Neustadt-Glewe in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Before that, the promoter hosted Ruhr-in-Love (cap. 50,000) in Oberhausen and Switzerland’s Sion sous les étoiles festival, which set a new audience record of almost 60,000 visitors.
Another crowd-drawer for DEAG is Let’s Rock, the UK’s biggest retro festival series, which attracts a total of around 100,000 80s music fans at ten UK locations over the entire season.
Other DEAG events taking place this summer include Summer Nights (cap. 2,500) in Glasgow, the Wider Than Pictures Series in Dublin, PennFest (10,000) in Buckinghamshire and the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival (20,000) in Scotland at the end of July.
“DEAG’s festival segment is showing fantastic growth across all genres of music in England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Switzerland, said DEAG CEO Prof. Peter Schwenkow. “The outstanding response from audiences points the way for us to new formats, new locations and a gratifying further development of this extremely interesting music festival field.”