Panel Report:
The International Business Of Outdoor Festivals
Moderator
Stuart Galbraith Live Nation UK
Ashley Capps AC Entertainment
Charles Attal C3 Presents
Paul Tollett Goldenvoice
Andre Lieberberg Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur
Claudio Trotta Barley Arts

Discussing festivals as one of the staples of live entertainment might be second nature for Euro-peans in the industry, but Charles Attal and Paul Tollett made bold statements with their prediction that the popularity of festivals in the U.S., given a few years, will be comparable to Europe.

Goldenvoice head / Coachella visionary Tollett said the key is to come up with new festival concepts, and that there might be room for 20 more festivals in the States.

But before getting too ahead of themselves, C3 Presents' Attal quickly joked to the audience that the festival market was already overplayed and not worth bothering with.

"It's very full. Please stay out," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd. Whether he was actually joking is up for debate.

"I think instead of a band saying, 'Let's go hit all the sheds, eventually they're going to say, 'Hey, let's hit 10 of the major festivals," Attal said, with AC Entertainment's Ashley Capps agreeing.

"I think the whole festival business in the States is in an early stage of development and it's going to be very interesting to see where it goes," Capps said, adding that U.S. festival organizers support each other because they're teaching concertgoers to enjoy festivals.

The festival business is tough. Bad weather or a canceled headliner can make the whole year a disaster. And starting up a festival is a difficult, often initially unrewarding endeavor, as evidenced by the crowd and panel's laughter when moderator and Live Nation U.K. head Stuart Gal-braith brought up the notion of making a profit on a festival's debut.

In discussing the differences between festivals in the U.S. and abroad, there was the usual comparison of fan culture - camping for days in Europe versus showing up for a few hours and heading back to a five-star hotel or maybe a round of golf.

However, Claudio Trotta, head of Italian concert promoter Barley Arts, said his countrymen are more like typical American fans in some respects, often opting for luxury and comfort because "they are often too snobby and fashionable to do that," he said jokingly. He added that for certain genres, like metal, camping works perfectly.

Trotta recalled 1994's three-day Sonoria festival, which nearly bankrupted him and "was an amazing disaster," even with acts like Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel and Aerosmith, "because in that area, the people really didn't get the festival idea."

Attal, however, noting that camping isn't possible at his downtown Chicago Lollapalooza site, said the festival site might have more to do with the decision to camp than the nation's cultural differences.

"Obviously our choice was to have a camping festival," Capps weighed in, "because I think there's a total of maybe 700 hotel rooms in Manchester, Tenn. So we really look to the European festivals as a model for what we created, and we continue to do so."

Marek Lieberbeg Konzeratgentur's Andre Lieberbeg, stepping in for FKP Scorpio's Folkert Koopmans who could not attend, said one of the major issues in Germany is the difficulty in establishing new festivals because the market is saturated with about 15 summer outdoors already.

"No matter what acts you have, you always start out with probably no more than 20,000 peo-ple," Lieber-berg said. "Now I think Germany is so crowded with festivals that you have to start out slow and then build a brand, and then you still have the chance of having a 20-year development and becoming a festival of 50,000 to 60,000."

Lieberberg also noted that while festivals are extremely popular in Germany, events won't sell out for the cultural experience alone and depend heavily on a high-quality bill.

Tollett agreed that it's important to start small, and said the concept, after the site, is the most important part of developing a festival.

When Tollett mentioned that Coachella sold out in eight days, Attal congratulated him. "This is one of the only areas, the only area, where you find a concert promoter pulling for the other concert promoter... The music fans are starting to get it, what we're doing on these grounds."

Galbraith agreed, saying that Glaston-bury's absence brought down the rest of the festival market.

The panel mentioned the difficulty in creating a bill that offers a wide variety of talent but at the same time doesn't alienate fans of a certain genre. There's also the problem of a usually extremely successful act that can easily sell tons of tickets on its own but stumbles on a festival bill.

Galbraith used the new Hi-Fi festival, which combined indie and dance acts, as an example. "We should have known better, to be quite honest. We ended up falling literally between two audiences," he said. However, he did note that certain countries are able to pull it off, with Holland being the most extreme example.

"For some reason, I don't know, perhaps it's the drugs in Holland. There, it works," he said. "Rather than trying to make a festival broader musically in the U.K., certainly what we've tried to do is dissect the market and actually come in with very narrow niche festivals now."

Lieberberg said the bill needs to be constructed based on the genre of the whole festival, so a variety of acts can exist as long as things don't get too diverse.

Capps explained the challenge of keeping things fresh each year for Bonnaroo.

"Finding the right mix of consistency and freshness is a struggle, but it's also exciting, it's one of the most exciting parts of programming a festival." He said that while the festival has definite jam band roots (despite the company's previous denial of that notion), they believe their core audience is one that enjoys a wide variety.

But it can be hard to please everyone. The evening before the official announcement of a Bonnaroo "dream lineup" including Radiohead and Beck, the company press release was leaked to a message board.

"First message was our press release verbatim. The first response: 'That sucks.' The next response was, 'Worst lineup ever.' But the festival sold out."

Ryan Borba