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

Thundercats Ho

melekalikimaka wrote: »

the guest list is incredibly tight, the issue is jumpers imo, of all the uk and irish festival, EP is outrageous the amount of jumpers, and blaggers to, queues of no joke 30/40 people at the gates at times trying to bull their way in and getting worse every year, its almost no existant at most uk festivals.

I don't know how the gates work so i'll have to take your word on that.

It would still be down to the people running the show as to who they let in for free. If it was common knowledge you have zero chance of getting in without a ticket, you wouldn't have 30/40 people at the gates blagging.

At this stage i just want them to officially announce if it's going ahead or not. If it goes ahead, great. if not, then there are others to go to.
I like the sound of Lissard, and there's B&S too.

ghostdancer

Thundercats Ho wrote: »

At this stage i just want them to officially announce if it's going ahead or not. If it goes ahead, great. if not, then there are others to go to.
I like the sound of Lissard, and there's B&S too.

well they've said multiple times that it is going ahead, and they've told the Irish Times today that it is going ahead, and tickets are on sale in March as usual, so not sure what else they're to do bar call a press conference or something to satisfy some people on the internet....

ghostdancer

ghostdancer wrote: »

well they've said multiple times that it is going ahead, and they've told the Irish Times today that it is going ahead, and tickets are on sale in March as usual, so not sure what else they're to do bar call a press conference or something to satisfy some people on the internet....

Can they speed up time so it's August already? :pac:

I find it odd that they didn't release tickets for Christmas. They must have lost a fair bit of money in accrued interest, no?

Thundercats Ho

ghostdancer wrote: »

well they've said multiple times that it is going ahead, and they've told the Irish Times today that it is going ahead, and tickets are on sale in March as usual, so not sure what else they're to do bar call a press conference or something to satisfy some people on the internet....

That's what an official announcement is.
Or going live on the updated website.
Or releasing tickets for sale (end of March).

ghostdancer wrote: »

tickets are on sale in March as usual

It's not usual for the first tickets to go on sale in March. That would be November (priority and early birds). It's March for general tickets (full price).

ghostdancer wrote: »

call a press conference or something to satisfy some people on the internet....

Nice


Like i said before, if it's on i'll go. If it's not, i'll go to another one.



Edit: WTF am i doing, arguing with someone i don't know, about something i don't care.
It's Friday, i'm out of here...

nocoverart

maximoose wrote: »

I'll take the entire Coachella line-up please.

I think the Coachella line-up is rather underwhelming. I guess it's all down to personal taste.

ghostdancer

Thundercats Ho wrote: »

That's what an official announcement is.
Or going live on the updated website.
Or releasing tickets for sale (end of March).

It's not usual for the first tickets to go on sale in March. That would be November (priority and early birds). It's March for general tickets (full price).

Nice
Like i said before, if it's on i'll go. If it's not, i'll go to another one.

Edit: WTF am i doing, arguing with someone i don't know, about something i don't care.
It's Friday, i'm out of here...

they probably don't think it warrants an "official" announcement though, most people won't be thinking about it until the lineup is announced. the website is updated (if my memory is correct) when they announce the lineup. they've had the dates for 2013 up for a while now, and i've just noticed they have a thing on the website saying that early bird details will be out soon....

from their perspective, they've said it's on, they've let people know the dates, so they hardly feel the need to make a big song and dance about confirming that it's on just because they're late getting the early bird tickets out.

the only place i've heard people going on about it not being on is on the internet, none of my friends in real life have mentioned it not being on....

Eod100

So are early bird tickets going on sale or not?

The press release doesn't make this clear which you'd think would be a fairly basic thing to have in any statement..

Jeden

Idea for a Saturday day ticket is a good one. I normally don't have any holidays to play with by September and €230 is a major commitment as are 3 days of camping and drinking when you are north of 30!

Saturday, have a blast of a day and then camp for a night and head in the morning would be appealing to me and probably lots more people like me. Still spending €250 or so when you factor in food, booze, tickets and obligatory silly hats and fairground rides so it should be worthwhile for them to offer this.

melekalikimaka

Mr.S wrote: »

What makes you say this? I have always thought the opposite, not as bad as Oxegen though!

I have worked every ep and oxegen, recent years involved with ticketing, ep is terrible... oxegen has a considerable fencing system compared to ep

Eod100

Anyone else think this Irish Times article is sending out a mixed message?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0126/1224329299019.html

At one stage it's saying it'll go ahead and then the other mentions the financial difficulties.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this year is the last EP for a few years..

Toast

Jeden wrote: »

Saturday, have a blast of a day and then camp for a night and head in the morning would be appealing to me and probably lots more people like me.

If they do the day tickets it is very unlikely there will be any camping option with them. This year the day tickets weren't even allowed into the late night areas like salty dog etc.

fits

^ I was with day trippers and we didn't really have a problem getting to salty dog late at night.

Toast

I was on a weekend band so I couldn't say for sure but they checked us in and out whenever we left the main arena on the Sunday and were sending day bands back into the arena (many with loud complaints) when they tried to leave. If by you didn't really have a problem you mean you snuck out I'm sure it was possible but I meant officially.

Jeden

That's a fair point Toast, you're more familiar than me with the rules and regs of the different ticket types.

Would you agree that there is sufficient demand and value in a Saturday ticket only?

I think I'd still be interested even if it doesn't include camping, always option of kipping in a car, not ideal but then if you wanted comfort you wouldn't be going down at all.

Kind of surprised they don't offer camping, I mean, what are they expecting people who go down for the day to do with themselves after the gig, I guess the attitude is that it's not their problem, but that's not a great attitude IMO.

I think camping should be an option and if they feel they have to charge a premium for that, then so be it.

fits

Toast wrote: »

I was on a weekend band so I couldn't say for sure but they checked us in and out whenever we left the main arena on the Sunday and were sending day bands back into the arena (many with loud complaints) when they tried to leave. If by you didn't really have a problem you mean you snuck out I'm sure it was possible but I meant officially.

Oh I cant remember the exact details. I know I asked security if there would be an issue as our friends were playing late at the salty dog. There wasn't any sneaking. I think we couldn't go one way and had to go around another path. But I cant remember exactly to be honest.

Eod100

Jeden wrote: »

That's a fair point Toast, you're more familiar than me with the rules and regs of the different ticket types.

Would you agree that there is sufficient demand and value in a Saturday ticket only?

I think I'd still be interested even if it doesn't include camping, always option of kipping in a car, not ideal but then if you wanted comfort you wouldn't be going down at all.

Kind of surprised they don't offer camping, I mean, what are they expecting people who go down for the day to do with themselves after the gig, I guess the attitude is that it's not their problem, but that's not a great attitude IMO.

I think camping should be an option and if they feel they have to charge a premium for that, then so be it.

I was going to say that the reason why day tickets don't include camping is that it would be hassle to prevent day trippers from getting in to the arena the following day.. But then realised that that wouldn't be an issue with Sunday day tickets as it's the last night of the festival.

Had a weekend ticket last year and remember I was always checked coming from the camping area into the main arena (through the ''official entrance'' as opposed to the long way past the Salty Dog stage).. But was never checked when going from the main arena to the camping area so I'd imagine it'd be easy to do that with just a day ticket and then stay with friends in the campsite.. Not that I'd advocate doing that or anything! :P

Eod100

Anyone see ticket prices being reduced this year?Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

I know they'd probably get more people to go if they reduced tickets to the 200e mark but not sure if that would bring in more revenue than the 230e price with less numbers..

Jeden

Eod100 wrote: »

Anyone see ticket prices being reduced this year?Or is that just wishful thinking on my part?

I know they'd probably get more people to go if they reduced tickets to the 200e mark but not sure if that would bring in more revenue than the 230e price with less numbers..

Hard to say really....I think it's too expensive, but I can see why they need to charge that much based on the sheer scale of all the different entertainment they offer.

As posted earlier here, I think they should look at scaling back some of the luxury extras - pull back a bit on the comedy and arts aspects and focus on the music. No doubt there'll be howls from some corners if that was done, but overall, if the price was €50 less per ticket I think people would wear it and they would benefit revenue wise overall.

Idle speculation mind, I've no idea on their overheads and how much they need to bring in to break even. I hope they can manage it though, it's not speculation to say that losing millions as they have done the past 2 years, is unsustainable in the long term (or even for a couple more editions unless the Government subsidised for 'arts' reasons)

Eod100

Jeden wrote: »

Hard to say really....I think it's too expensive, but I can see why they need to charge that much based on the sheer scale of all the different entertainment they offer.

As posted earlier here, I think they should look at scaling back some of the luxury extras - pull back a bit on the comedy and arts aspects and focus on the music. No doubt there'll be howls from some corners if that was done, but overall, if the price was €50 less per ticket I think people would wear it and they would benefit revenue wise overall.

Idle speculation mind, I've no idea on their overheads and how much they need to bring in to break even. I hope they can manage it though, it's not speculation to say that losing millions as they have done the past 2 years, is unsustainable in the long term (or even for a couple more editions unless the Government subsidised for 'arts' reasons)

Yeah did a rough caclulation there - full capacity is 32,500.So 32,500 by say 200e comes to €6,500,000. Whereas they'd get the same amount if they sold tickets for 230e to 28,261 people. So probably unlikely that ticket prices will decrease (esp by that much anyways)..

Toast

fits wrote: »

There wasn't any sneaking. I think we couldn't go one way and had to go around another path. But I cant remember exactly to be honest.

Ah ok, I was just going on what we saw and what a few other people posted here after the event so it is quite possible they were officially allowing people in after a certain time or similar. It was mostly at the red campsite gate when we saw problems so it could simply have been that they were turning people away from there but as once you went out to the salty dog you could go back to the campsites without going back to the Arena it would have been oddly pointless.

Jeden wrote: »

Would you agree that there is sufficient demand and value in a Saturday ticket only?

...

I think camping should be an option and if they feel they have to charge a premium for that, then so be it.

I think there is demand for day only tickets and I would be very surprised if they didn't offer them this year but I can't see them being with camping. Problem with offering camping with a day ticket is there is no mechanism for moving people out of the campsite when the day ticket is finished. People would hang around in the campsite (and inevitably some would be trying to get into the arena). A day only campsite could exist but it probably would be very hard to get the Friday only people out in time for the Saturday only people to setup etc. I think it's a major hassle they probably won't bother with and I can't think of any other festival that allows camping with a day ticket.

Would love to see a price drop too but if it happens it is going to be at the loss of some of what makes EP special I think. This is going to be a tough year for them.. much more so than any before.

Jeden

It would be a shame if EP went to the wall. Tough trading conditions, lots of likely attendees having to emigrate to get work, 25% youth unemployment of those that stay. Pay overall for lots of jobs, notably any state funded jobs, in decline.

With all of these factors, it's not surprising that the affordability of Forbidden Fruit has been appealing in terms of not having to camp over and the inevitable expense that brings, as well as the option of just going to the day you want to control costs.

If EP is to survive, I think they need to have a long look at the market, where it's going and how they can adapt to respond to that. The positive thing is that there's a lot of goodwill out there for EP and people still want to go, that's half the battle already won.

So it's back to the same things that every business need to address, marketing, price point and overheads and finding a way to make those things work. Maybe they can look at how things are done in UK and Europe, but I realise that we're in much murkier economic territory than many of our European chums, so not just a case of being able to copy them.

ghostdancer

http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/ontherecord/2013/01/28/so-what-is-going-on-with-the-electric-picnic/

So what is going on with the Electric Picnic?
Jim Carroll

Many OTR readers will have seen one or other – or, indeed, both – of this paper’s news stories over the last few days about the Electric Picnic. On Friday, Gordon Deegan and myself reported on the festival’s €2.1 million losses for 2010 and 2011 as well as significant changes in the event’s ownership structure. On Saturday, I wrote an analysis piece about what this might mean for the festival as it prepares for its 10th outing. After all, per Picnic promoter Melvin Benn, who I spoke to on Thursday night, this year’s event is definitely proceeding. Should this news be a cause for a chorus of hurrahs for the Picnic faithful? Actually, is there still a Picnic faithful to lead that chorus?

Because, let’s be honest about it, the Picnic faithful is not really a very heavily populated church to begin with. As I noted in Saturday’s story, “its 32,500 maximum capacity is small compared with the numbers who attend outdoor shows at Slane Castle, Croke Park or the RDS”. It’s also worth noting that it’s been a while since the festival managed to hit that 32.5k target too.

Yet the festival has attained huge cult status with a large swathe of Irish music fans and has, since it initially emerged as an one day event in 2004, managed to attract a new constituency every couple of years. There are very few who went to the event in ’12 who were around in ’04 as older fans move on and younger ones, weaned on Oxegen (remember Oxegen?), move in. Perhaps it’s a mark of the OTR readership demographic, but I see and hear much more feverish speculation around the Picnic line-up every year than for any other festival on the calender. For a large number of switched-on Irish music festival fans, the Picnic is the one which matters most.

Over the last few months, though, this speculation has switched from who’s on the line-up to the very existence of the festival in ’13 and beyond. Most of this was caused by the unavailability of cheaper “early bird” tickets before Christmas, something which was the norm with the Picnic for the last number of years. Indeed, the unavailability of early bird tickets for many events in the usually lucrative run up to Christmas was noteworthy (no news on Oxegen or an Oxegen replacement, for instance, or any of MCD’s proposed Phoenix Park shows). When the Picnic tickets failed to materialise, the rumours started. It’s only in the last week that the organisers have attempted to quash these rumours. When I spoke to Benn on Thursday night, he insisted that tickets will go on sale in March. No further details were provided about line-up or prices so we can probably expect these in March too.

Benn said that the reason why the early bird tickets didn’t go on sale was because of the need to get “a new company structure” in place, including new bank accounts, after significant changes in ownership structure last November when Festival Republic Dublin Ltd was acquired by LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd. Now, you could argue that it doesn’t take that long to get a bank account together in this day and age, but we’ll leave that for another day.

The web of companies behind the Picnic is highly convoluted with six different companies in all having some say on the festival’s affairs. There is EP Republic Ltd, the operating company behind the festival and whose annual accounts show combined losses in 2011 and 2010 totalling €2.1 million, which is owned equally by Benn and festival founder John Reynolds. This company is controlled by EP Festivals Ltd, with 71 per cent owned by Festival Republic Dublin Ltd and 29 per cent owned by Reynolds’s POD Music Ltd.

Festival Republic Dublin Ltd was acquired by LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd, an entity owned by international music promoters Live Nation and Gaiety Investments, the parent company to Denis Desmond’s MCD Concerts. While Gaiety Investments and Live Nation were already a co-owner of Festival Republic, the MCD boss only became a director of its Festival Republic Dublin Ltd subsidary on November 26th last. Between the jigs and the reels, the Electric Picnic is now 71 per cent owned by LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd and 29 per cent by Reynolds via POD Music Ltd, one of his myriad of companies

This change in ownership structure at this particular time does raise a lot of questions. After all, the same two entities already had a share of the Picnic via their involvement in Festival Republic, so why the change now? Is Desmond seeking a greater say in how the Picnic is managed and how does this chime with his plans for Longitude, a festival some agents say has been pitched to them as “like the Electric Picnic, but better”? Why try to put a new event in place to replicate an event you own 35.5 per cent of?

Or is this move a precursor to that full Live Nation takeover of Gaiety and/or MCD, a move which has been discussed for quite some time. Since that takeover was first mooted, Desmond has settled his court case with former partner Eamon McCann in December 2009. Meanwhile, records at the Companies Office show that Gaiety Investments has twenty outstanding mortgages and loans from a variety of lenders, all taken out at various periods from 1999 to 2009. Amounts are not provided for these debts, with the exception of $12 million borrowed against a property in New York’s Manhattan borough in 2003 from Bank of Scotland (Ireland).

All of which leads back to that three-day event in Co Laois later in the year (and we don’t mean this). Despite Melvin Benn’s reassurance that everything in the camp is tickety-boo, we understand from sources that the atmosphere between all the Picnic’s myriad of vested interests can best be descibed as “toxic” in the wake of recent events. Right now, we can only wait for the news to arrive in March – or even for John Reynolds to respond to some phone calls and questions. This is turning out to be quite a dramatic year for the Irish live music industry and it’s only January. Wait until NAMA start selling some of the live music venues they’ve now got a stake in and the drama will increase tenfold.

Eod100

Still can't tell what's happening with early bird tickets..

Is it that there won't be any this year? Or that they'll be on sale in March?

ghostdancer

Eod100 wrote: »

Still can't tell what's happening with early bird tickets..

Is it that there won't be any this year? Or that they'll be on sale in March?

well they were saying on their fb page that they'd be on sale in January, so it seems like there were plans to have early bird tickets at least.
lots of rumours that they'll be onsale Tuesday week, but nothing official.

i'd imagine general tickets will be onsale in March when the lineup is announced, if there's no early bird tickets before that, i can't see them launching any then...

as it is, the only official news is them telling people on fb/twitter/EP website popup that early bird details will be "available soon".

I hate the idea of day-tickets. I love the weekend, but by Sunday, I am usually wrecked (in a good way) and I can't stand the day-trippers intent on destroying themselves as quickly as possible. They're the festival equivalent of the lad who comes up to the bar five minutes before they shut and orders doubles and shots.

But I can't see how it will last without drastic changes. €230 for the weekend, (plus a conservative €100 - €150 spending money) is just way too much for people these days.

melekalikimaka

Mr.S wrote: »

But day tickets mean increased sales = more money = better for EP.

Lots of people don't want to go for 3 days, only like 1 of the days lineups etc etc. While the Sunday is always usually busier, its nothing that stops the fun tbh!

But yeah, 230e for the weekend is crazy, add in another 20-25euro for a return bus that your probably going to need. 199 for a 3 day ticket would be acceptable imo.

after SHM i imagine insurance probably rocketed too.

mutley18

Fleetwood Mac possible headliners? They are touring the UK in September...

mutley18

mutley18 wrote: »

Fleetwood Mac possible headliners? They are touring the UK in September...

***Drrrroooooooools*

deeks

mutley18 wrote: »

Fleetwood Mac possible headliners? They are touring the UK in September...

Would be a fantastic headliner but I don't see it happening. I'd imagine they'd be far too expensive for the Picnic.

lordgoat

At a guess i'd say FM will play the Pheonix park (or similar venue) and then the 02 later in the year oct/november