Christopher BarrettOrganisers of some of Europe’s biggest festivals, including the chair of European festival association YOUROPE Christof Huber, discuss the many challenges facing the European festival industry and the moves being made to address them.
A highly experienced live event promoter and festival operator, Christof Huber has been a board member of European festival association YOUROPE since it was launched in 1998, and has been its chair since 2021. The organisation currently represents some 130 festivals scattered across 26 countries.
A busy man, Huber (pictured) is also a partner in Switzerland’s Gadget Entertainment Group where he is director of festivals. Part of Eventim Live, the company’s festival roster includes the 30,000-capacity OpenAir St. Gallen, one of Switzerland’s biggest and longest-running open air festivals. Huber also oversees the company’s Summerdays Festival (cap. 12,000) in Arbon, Seaside Festival (10,000) in Spiez, Schaffhausen’s 6,500-capacity Stars in Town, and the Unique Moments (3,000) show series in the courtyard at the National Museum in Zurich.
“I’ve been running festivals for more than 30 years, and it has always been a high-risk business.”
December saw the end of YOUROPE’s three-year Future-Fit Festivals’ (3F) project, co-funded by the EU. The financial support from Brussels enabled the festival association to stage events including the European Festival Awards and 3F Conferences, and funded initiatives including the European Festival Report & Survey, European Green Festival Roadmap 2030, Diversity & Inclusion Toolset, 3F Safety Report and Festivals for Ukraine Toolkit.
On the back of that activity, the association has received a further three years of funding, and so the Future-Fit Festivals 2.0 (3F 2.0) has been born. YOUROPE has promised to use the income to create six central publications including an Extreme Weather Toolbox, a Fair Ticketing Guide, and a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Roadmap.
“The 3F funding was the first we received since YOUROPE was launched and it changed the association, because we launched many additional projects as a result, and so the team and office grew alongside the expanded workload,” says Huber. “We initiated a lot of projects on our own before we had any kind of money from Brussels, but the funding has given us more options and means we can do better work.”
Paradigm pains
At YOUROPE-backed meetings, including the European Festival Summit, and in the results of its European Festival Survey that involved 222 events, festival operators have emphasised that they have faced a paradigm shift in festival economics.
Among the financial pressures are higher production costs, rising fees for artists, increasing marketing costs, and the need to invest in mitigation measures to cope with ever more frequent extreme weather events.
YOUROPE’s survey saw 67% of respondents state that rising production costs will be the biggest challenge facing their festivals this year. Among the attempts to address escalating costs and balance the books, that were outlined by the survey’s respondents, have been a reduction in the number of event days and less headline acts booked, while one festival operator cancelled its late-night programming altogether last year and was pleased to find there was no reduction in attendee satisfaction scores.
“Since the pandemic, costs have increased drastically,” says Huber. “Before Covid-19 hit, it was always the artist fees that was a major financial issue but now it’s everything. We have seen so many cancelations of festivals. A lot of established brands in key markets including Switzerland, Germany and the UK are fading away.
“I’ve been running festivals for more than 30 years, and it has always been a high-risk business, but it’s more difficult to make a profit now than ever. There has always been sleepless nights, while other years it went really well, but getting a decent margin from a festival is very difficult now.
“The problems are hitting independent festivals hardest but you also see big companies closing festivals. They may be major operations, but they still want to make a profit, and so we are seeing mid-sized festivals such as Melt and Full Force [both 20,000 cap and promoted by Live Nation-owned Goodlive] in Germany being cancelled or postponed.
“With my festival, St.Gallen, we had a sold out edition last year but we had six weeks of rain before it, and so the costs of staging it were dramatically higher than in previous years. We have had to raise the ticket price this year because we need to invest further in infrastructure, including better flooring, to be better prepared for the possible weather conditions. We are doing this because we are convinced it is worth the investment but not everybody is able to.”
It’s going all right
Another key issue that Huber says is worrying everybody in the European festival community is the changing political landscape across the continent, which in recent years has seen a sustained shift to the right.
In 2024, European elections and polls in France, Portugal, Austria and Belgium saw a move toward right-wing and extreme right-wing politics, and in the June European Parliament election, the right-wing European People’s Party made a breakthrough winning 188 seats.
“There is a real sense of solidarity and togetherness among European festival operators and many people are afraid, not just those living in the countries that already have a right-wing government,” says Huber. “I am also seeing that fear among our audiences, particularly the younger generations. The current atmosphere in Europe is worrying.”
Sziget Festival
Among the countries most impacted is Hungary, which has a far-right government that has been led by Viktor Orban since 2010. It is home to one of Europe’s biggest festivals, the six-day, 90,000 capacity, Sziget Festival, which is due to take place this year from 6-11 August with a line up including Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, Post Malone and Shawn Mendes.
“We are the biggest cultural event in the country, and the most valuable economically, but we receive no government support.”
Sziget Festival sustainability manager Ákos Dominus says that the political backdrop is taking its toll: “The government used to have an environmental ministry but there has been a far-right government for the last 14 years and protecting the environment is not a focus for them, so there has been a major decline in resources.”
Dominus says that the ethics of the event and the sense of community created around it remain despite the political atmospheres outside its gates: “We play a leading role in promoting social responsibility, the festival is a stronghold for the LGBTQ community, and we continue to speak up for and support the people of Ukraine. We are the biggest cultural event in the country, and the most valuable economically for Hungary, but we receive no support from the government.”
Huber says Pohoda in Slovakia is another example of a festival affected by a hostile political environment. Established by Michal Kascak and Mario Michna in 1997, the 30,000-capacity event is based at a former military airfield surrounded by Western Carpathian mountains, where the festival has played host to a huge number of major acts ranging from Patti Smith to the Wu Tang Clan.
Pohoda Festival
“The situation there is difficult,” he says. “There have been public arguments between the president of the country and the festival’s promoter, because the festival team has voiced opinions about political issues. We are seeing change in many countries, even in Switzerland, when it comes to mounting pressure on us as promoters to not provide an opinion as a festival. We have had politicians tell us to ‘focus on providing entertainment, not political opinions.’”
Huber believes that in the current political climate festivals have a more important role to play than ever before when it comes to educating people and encouraging them to explore different approaches: “Nowadays, having a panel at your festival enabling people to talk publicly and share information is part of our duty as festival promoters. We play an important role because at our events people from all ages and backgrounds come together. We can encourage young people to stop ignoring what’s going on, to get informed, and to go and vote.”
In 2017, Huber co-founded the European initiative Take A Stand, a music industry project designed to encouraging social cohesion and promote awareness and tolerance for all cultures, genders, races, colours and religions. He says a major focus for YOUROPE this year will be implementing initiatives to improve and protect the mental health of festival teams who are often working under considerable strain.
“It’s our aim to create a new group focused on human resources and helping sustain the health and wellbeing of our teams. We are looking to create seminars about this and want to have guidelines created offering recommendations about how best to sustain positive working conditions for our employees. We can’t change the industry overnight but enabling this exchange of information helps develop the whole market.
Fields of dreams
Despite the many challenges, Huber is positive about the future for festivals not least because there appears to be no shortage of creative event ideas: “I’m convinced there will be more festivals launched in the coming years, new concepts, organisers doing it in a different way. It comes down to finding the community for your festival.
“I am seeing a lot of smaller festivals launch in Switzerland, whether it be in the Alps, somewhere in the field, or a city, people are doing it differently and successfully. There will always be space for new ideas, and people always want fresh festival concepts.”
This article is included in the spring edition of Access All Areas magazine, which is available here.