Electric Picnic 2013 *Discussion only. NO ticket sales/requests*

melekalikimaka

bodhrandude wrote: »

Well considering RockNess bagged Daft Punk in 2007 and thats a 35,000 capacity festival, I cannot see why they could not do EP. Oxegen bagged them in 2007 much to the detriment of the Scottish counterpart T in the Park and its fans, as RockNess had scooped them as a Scottish exclusive that year.

Daft Punk would decimate the budget IMO... and is a bit too mainstream for the festival... if it starts pulling for mainstream dance acts, its game over for EP

Furious-Red

melekalikimaka wrote: »

Daft Punk would decimate the budget IMO... and is a bit too mainstream for the festival... if it starts pulling for mainstream dance acts, its game over for EP

They already had Chemical Brothers play?

LeftBlank

Furious-Red wrote: »

They already had Chemical Brothers play?

And Fatboy Slim

super_furry

Eveytime I see this thread on the front page I hope it's because of some announcement.

grudgehugger

If we actually want the festival to survive, we should be praying for 2 to 3 really big name acts to be topping the bill that are "too mainstream" for the festival.

Tickets need to be sold for it to survive, and some big mainstream names would doubtless help with that.

There will still be another 100 or so slots across the other stages for our favourite obscure acts to fill (can we have a Sultans of Ping re-union gig please?)

ghostdancer

i'd prefer downsizing.
open on the Friday evening but no main music stages, just B&S area/Salty Dog/Rave in the Woods/Trenchtown etc. , then main music stages open on the Saturday and Sunday, similar to Body&Soul festival.
do away with either the Crawdaddy or Cosby stage, most of the acts on them could play either/or.
scrap Mindfield, the circus, theatre stage, science gallery.

Slattsy

Got any yolks :pac:

Eod100

ghostdancer wrote: »

i'd prefer downsizing.
open on the Friday evening but no main music stages, just B&S area/Salty Dog/Rave in the Woods/Trenchtown etc. , then main music stages open on the Saturday and Sunday, similar to Body&Soul festival.
do away with either the Crawdaddy or Cosby stage, most of the acts on them could play either/or.
scrap Mindfield, the circus, theatre stage, science gallery.

Chances are though security/staff costs are the main expense so it might turn in to a 2 day festival as some of the rumours suggest.

Not sure if scrapping Minefield etc would actually save that much though..

raymann

LeftBlank wrote: »

It hasn't sold out in a good few years now - reckon 2007 or 2008 would have been the last sell out. Open to correction though.

really surprised to hear that. i thought it was like an irish glastonbury, that sold out instantly.

Joe Hart

raymann wrote: »

really surprised to hear that. i thought it was like an irish glastonbury, that sold out instantly.

Not when they were charging €245 for cheapy lineups and the recession hit.

ghostdancer

Eod100 wrote: »

Chances are though security/staff costs are the main expense so it might turn in to a 2 day festival as some of the rumours suggest.

Not sure if scrapping Minefield etc would actually save that much though..

ah yeah, scrapping those wouldn't be a huge saving, but it still costs to put them on and have staff and security for those bits, so every little helps!
not having to have staff/security in the main arena on a Friday would help, not to mention the large savings for having no main acts on the stages.

if it was only 2 days and opening on the Saturday morning, i don't think that many people would go for camping.
i would think the cost of putting on a small amount of things on the Friday night, and charging a bit more for the ticket, would yield more of a profit than only allowing people to come down on the Saturday morning, and charging less....

honru

So now one of the potential headliners booked for Body and Soul (Nick Cave + the Bad Seeds)... doesn't look too good for EP.

ghostdancer

not sure it really makes a difference tbh, headliners will have all been well booked preliminarily at this stage and deposits paid, probably before Xmas. hardly like there's a shortge of acts of the Nick Cave level on the go either....

bodhrandude

honru wrote: »

So now one of the potential headliners booked for Body and Soul (Nick Cave + the Bad Seeds)... doesn't look too good for EP.

Sure POD run Body & Soul so they are only competing against themselves, Im sure they would add him to EP too if he was available.

bodhrandude

EP would be our only hope of seeing the Knife play Ireland unless Oxegen bags them, Im surprised they are not in the longitude line up.

johnnykilo

The first camping EP 2005 I think was the best one (not just for nostalgia reasons :P ). I Think the capacity was only 25,000, you could camp on Friday, have a bit of a session, explore the Body and Soul area, have a bit of banter with your neighbours, silent disco etc... Then have the Saturday and Sunday for the music.

When they went 3 day I always hated having to rush in on Friday get your tent pitched etc.. and then go in and watch the bands straight away. Tickets went up by €50 and I don't really think the line-up improved either. There were more bands obviously but not anymore bands that I wanted to see per se. The quality of the bands when it was 2 days was just as high as it was when it was 3 days.

I reckon if they scaled back the festival to 2 days of music and reduced the capacity to 25000 they'd be on the right track. Appeal to the Boutique element again. With the increased competition this year from all the other festivals I reckon that's their only hope. I don't think even if they booked massive headliners they'd sell out 32,500 or whatever the current capacity is.

raymann

i dont quite understand how they didnt make money though. look at the libe up for glastonbury. its 24 hrs a day for four days with infrastructure on site that blows your mind. how can they run that for cheaper tickets? i get that its more people, but the difference is scale seems to be completely disproportionate.

oddman2

Scale does matter, though. Say EP didn't sell out the last 5000 tickets (random guess). At €230 for a weekend camping ticket, that's worth €1.15 million...

maximoose

Fast approaching April now, I just want to feckin know so I can start to plan alternatives if this isn't on

sadie06

Stuart Clarke from HP just spoke on a news bulletin on Today FM saying he sees EP going ahead with Daft Punk headlining! '

monthehoops

It's very tough to make money from a festival. EP had a very good line up every year but wasn't getting the numbers they needed. Sometimes you chase the bet and lose more which is possibly what happened. The introduction of day tickets was proof they weren't hitting the required numbers. It's expensive to get the bands in alone, never mind transfer, accommodation and production. It ain't easy!

Toast

There really is a lot of factors and it isn't really easy to compare Glastonbury to anything considering it is heavily entwined with the Eavis family and they own a lot of the land used.

It didn't start off life as a commercial venture and the ultimate goal isn't to make a profit but to cover costs and donate to charity. The Eavis family do get a salary for their work and the farm does get money for the time it is out of commission but it is a far wage and not "a random number plus a zero at the end" which would be usually the situation where people are setting their own costs and salary.

After that just saying the scale is disproportionate is not really accurate. Glastonbury is 4km square with 200k total capacity including workers. EP is what.. 1km square with that 35k total capacity including workers? Costs don't scale linearly so EP need to setup a lot of the basic infrastructure with the outlay of the 32,500k who are paying. Glastonbury can setup the equivalent basic infrastructure.. then scale it up as necessary which costs less than the initial outlay (if you get me). The figures are probably shoddy here but ultimately it is economics of scale and larger ultimately becomes cheaper.

Add on to that a lot of the Glastonbury crew will work for less than their usual wage with lots of volunteers just working for tickets. Big name bands will play for less than their usual fees as well. The sponsorship isn't as virulent as in other festivals but there is still a lot more money to be charged for getting your name attached to Glastonbury than to Electric Whatsitnow?

Ultimately though Glastonbury still runs on a basis that all the tickets will sell out. Eavis apparently had a bit of a panic in 2008 when it looked like they wouldn't sell out and has said since that they almost went bankrupt.

Marseyred

I am in touch with one of the boutique camping suppliers for EP. THey received word on wednesday that EP was going ahead and are just awaiting confirmation of ticket sale date.

run_Forrest_run

Marseyred wrote: »

I am in touch with one of the boutique camping suppliers for EP. THey received word on wednesday that EP was going ahead and are just awaiting confirmation of ticket sale date.

the levels rumours seem to have ramped up this morning, with Daft Punk once again raising their helmets:)

Slattsy

sadie06 wrote: »

Stuart Clarke from HP just spoke on a news bulletin on Today FM saying he sees EP going ahead with Daft Punk headlining! '

Im aroused

monthehoops

Toast wrote: »

Ultimately though Glastonbury still runs on a basis that all the tickets will sell out. Eavis apparently had a bit of a panic in 2008 when it looked like they wouldn't sell out and has said since that they almost went bankrupt.

If anyone's interested the Desert Island Discs with Michael Eavis is a fascinating listen.

ghostdancer

oddman2 wrote: »

Scale does matter, though. Say EP didn't sell out the last 5000 tickets (random guess). At €230 for a weekend camping ticket, that's worth €1.15 million...

i remember reading before that with larger festivals like EP, they need around 85% of tickets sold to break even. after that is generally only when they start to make profit.

ghostdancer

sadie06 wrote: »

Stuart Clarke from HP just spoke on a news bulletin on Today FM saying he sees EP going ahead with Daft Punk headlining! '

in what context was he there? was he talking about festivals in general, or did they have him on specifically about EP or something?

there's some "Massive announcement" today at 2. probably Oxegen or a Phoenix Park gig, but the timing of him being on radio talking about EP might mean something...

aka accounts 2010

ghostdancer wrote: »

in what context was he there? was he talking about festivals in general, or did they have him on specifically about EP or something?

there's some "Massive announcement" today at 2. probably Oxegen or a Phoenix Park gig, but the timing of him being on radio talking about EP might mean something...

I reckon it might be EP mainly because MCD have not mentioned any announcement twitter which is what they usually do. MCD would be announcing PP or Oxegen. They will not be announcing EP.

coconutpie

ghostdancer wrote: »

in what context was he there? was he talking about festivals in general, or did they have him on specifically about EP or something?

there's some "Massive announcement" today at 2. probably Oxegen or a Phoenix Park gig, but the timing of him being on radio talking about EP might mean something...

He was on Matt Cooper talking about festivals in general.