I recently had a conversation with someone who runs a festival every year. He has lots of acts, an open stage, people selling things, workshops, and good attendance. However, his festival doesn't make a profit and this year made a significant loss which he will have to bankroll out of his own funds.
He's a keen musician but he's thinking of knocking it on the head, or running one every other year, if income is that precarious that he risks losing a substantial amount of money at some point.
While I'd rather not say who this person is, any suggestions on ways of making money which also preserve the connections and relationships which are nurtured over years of running these things? Or is this sort of music incompatible with making money?
Ugh. Unpleasant subject, for people who would rather just play some tunes in the kitchen, but here are some offhand thoughts. (Apologies, if I am bringing up things he has already tried.)
Has he looked into corporate sponsorship, or donations from local businesses? Selling advertising space for billboards at the event? Getting local media to cover the event, so that those billboards would get some exposure?
Does he have a manager/marketer to handle these matters? There are people who do this sort of thing professionally. Perhaps one of them would agree to do it on a commission basis... if they don't bring in enough money, they don't get paid.
Mark, my only thought is to keep the festival true to the genre. I've been to many "celtic music" festivals that had a little traditional Celtic music and the rest was music (drum performances) from Africa, Rock, easy listening and even the Philadelphia Mummers for gosh sakes. Their were also exhibts on saving the whales, savings the local dogs, making soap etc.
While entertaining in another setting I stayed only to watch the Celtic music then beat it out of there. I did not stick around and spend any money.
My local festival gets smaller and smaller every year. They often have many of the same bands year after year. Personally, I think they need some new fresh acts.
I dunno. I guess that wasn't helpful.
First, I would look at the cash flow of the current setup. Is there a general admission fee? A charge for individual concerts? A fee for vendors to set up and sell their wares? Corporate sponsorship? Government sponsorship? Can fees and/or ticket prices be increased without driving off too many folks?
I’ve been involved in the production of several festivals and the financial success of the ventures seemed to depend more on luck than anything else. In one case, we had a beautiful location, excellent facilities, excellent performers, lots of committed volunteers, good publicity, etc. And the festival opened for its first annual run on a beautiful weekend in mid September. 2001. Three days after that fateful event. We went ahead with the festival and lost money.
The next year, same location, great lineup, etc. Then, a week before the event, the weather forecast predicted a rare inland hurricane, with dangerous winds and biblical deluge. As it happened, we got only a moderate amount of rain and no serious wind, which normally wouldn’t have spoiled a good festival, but the damage was already done. Thousands stayed away and we lost even more money. “We” being a non-profit volunteer organization, which soon collapsed under the burden.
My point being that, without deep pockets committed to the cause, festivals are fragile enterprises.
The one festival I’ve worked on that remains sound after twelve years has a strong fund-raising effort outside of the actual festival revenue stream. Again, it’s a non-profit organization. It also goes to considerable effort to involve the local merchants and businesses in supporting and promoting the event.
Hmmm, I’m rambling, but maybe there’s some useful advice somewhere in there…
Of course I don't know what is the approach of your friend or how he works on the festival, so I can only say about how things work in my neck of woods. Most of people here organize festivals by the laws of nature - they do only some basic planning, spend a lot of time, effort and stress on more or less disorganised activities putting the festival together, and then struggle for the next few months with financial and fiscal matters.
However, there are some quite effective ones; funnily enough, they are usually organized by successful business people who know and love music.
What I found out to be really helpful is to treat the festival as an investment venture - and, first of all, to come up with a really good full-blown business plan, including all the important details with regards to financial planning, SWOT analysis, procedures etc., This should be done relatively early in festival organization. It really helps to put a lot of information in line, and set financial goals, even if you knew it or had a notion of it, it helps you to get it off your mind, look at it from a perspective and more often than not come up with new strategies and innovative ideas. At least your friend will know exactly what his budget and expenses will be, and may come up with an idea to get funds for it, or just to ask right questions to right people. As I said, it's best done early, as it leaves you with a time to think and then generate the contacts and the money.
To me, this question could well be posed in the "Celtic Rock" discussion below. I readily admit that part of my dislike for "Celtic Rock" is that that Irish/Celtic festival producers, in an apparent attempt to broaden their appeal to festival-goers and therefore generate more gate revenues, tend to hire "Celtic Rock" bands instead of trad bands at their festivals. [and btw, I consider "Celtic Rock" to be those guys with electric guitars and bass and drum kits and some guy wearing a kilt playing highland pipes playing Stairway to Sweet Home Free Bird at an "Irish Festival"] OK I'll stop bitching and using quotation marks now...
So the producers are afraid - and perhaps rightly so judging by the original post - that if they hire only trad music that they will not attract enough of an audience to break even, let alone make any profit on the festival. Afterall, ITM may rightfully be considered a niche market. Therefore, at least in my neck of the woods, the Celtic Rockers dominate the local festival scenes.
I'd like to think that a sharp producer would be able to attract enough of the unwashed masses (i.e., those not erudite enough to already love ITM) to create enough of a revenue stream to support an Irish festival with actual traditional Irish music by creating a proper atmosphere of music and art and dance and attractions and vendor booths and food and such. I think people would attend a clean, family friendly festival, with opportunity to have a few pints and enjoy a beautiful outdoor setting without the need to beat them over the head with amplified American Idol wannabe's in green kilts.
I may be wrong - and given the number of Celtic Rockers out there getting lots of good festival gigs there is plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. But I'd still like to hope that if people are given the opportunity to hear good ITM played in a nice setting they would actually enjoy it more than the crap they've been hearing and come back again next year... and bring their friends.
I mean to cast no dispersions upon the ablity of your friend, Mark H., to promote a festival. He may be doing a brilliant job and I could never suggest otherwise. In fact, not even knowing the man I admire his efforts greatly.
At the risk of rambling on to your great disatisfaction, but in an honest attempt to answer your question, I've worked with festival committees and the four biggests costs associated with a festival are: (1) location rent/security/parking; (2) entertainment costs; (3) marketing; (4) personnel.
Anyway one can reduce any of those costs, the more likely the festival will be financially successful. Our experience has been to work our butts off to get the local community folks as involved as possible - volunteers, local radio & TV advertisements, local parks and recreation departments, schools and churches, pubs, beer salesmen, local Celtic shops, visitor and tourism departments. We've played more than a couple of festivals dirt cheap/gratis to encourage their survival (our experience has been the local bands will play for free or very little to support the festival and free up some money to bring in the traveling bands - not to try and screw the local bands, hopefully they make it up in future gigs and support for Irish culture and music in the community). Location and timing are very important. Perhaps the location can be secured without rent from the city or county. Schedule the event so as not to compete for the same crowd with other scheduled events. Revenues from food and vendor booths can be negotiated fairly to vendors and producers. And a few business sponsorships wouldn't do them any harm (is there any sound sweeter than "guaranteed revenue" to the ears of a producer?).
Did I reall just write all this crap?! Sorry to ramble - hope its useful! (BTW, the Cincinnati, OH Celtic Festival is a good example of the possibilities)
The organization I run a session and concerts at holds a yearly Feis. They had it at one place for many years running, and the place sold their own beer. We were forced to move to a new place, where they didn't have beer vendors. So, I don't know if you can do this where you are, but they learned in NJ anyway in the US, you can get a temporary license to have a beer stand. They made thousands more than they had at the old place. If only they had known all these years they could have been doing it.
So that's one suggestion to look into. People will always eat and drink too, even if vendors aren't selling. So food and drink kiosks run by your friend's organization, especially if it is in summer heat could make the difference.
If this is the festival I think it is - which I attended because there were 2 bands I really wanted to see, I would say that one of the problems I had was actually a lack of advertising. Compared to other festivals, it was difficult to get much info on the event.
The festival also doesn't have a lot of scope to grow as it's in one building
Catering was a slight issue as we were having to walk into town between events for a meal as there was only sandwiches/tea/coffee style catering - and they closed the bar during the afternoon.
However, I enjoyed the event and would do it again if there were bands I wanted to see - although I had heard the rumour that this was going to be the last one.
Thanks for the great answers so far. Some great ideas there - I'm not party to the organisation of this particular festival in question (so sorry, in a way it's frustrating that I can't even answer some of your points since I don't know the details) but there are some tremendous ideas there - bases to cover, things to think about.
Someone mentioned timing and of course the weather is important so perhaps there's scope to change that.
Just one answer which occurs to me from another festival I've been to / run workshops / played at: they have a "main" festival in August with workshops and then they have a quiet, almost invitation-only gathering quite early in January, which has a public concert in the evening. That's been very successful on the "content" side of things but I don't know about whether it's broken even. However, it can happen (thinking here of the same thing applied to big organisations) that the mini, spin-off gatherings sometimes become as powerful / popular, perhaps for different reasons and to serve different audiences, and complement the "main event".
These are all really good thoughts, and thank you for these and any more anyone can add.
Our quaint little touristy town just put on its first annual Celtic Music Festival over the weekend. (God help me, I first mistyped that as Celtic Mucus Festival.) Somebody in the Chamber of Commerce, looking for a weekend theme to boost the tourist business in the off-season, noticed that Altan had already been booked at the community theater and figured a Celtic festival was just the thing. So, with three months’ preparation (if you’ve ever run a festival, you know that’s madness), there it was. They managed to scrape up a few additional acts, including a local Celtic (acoustic-)Rock band. The concerts were individually ticketed and were good, according to their respective audiences, but the workshops were few and varied from minimally decent to way beyond lame.
I’m pretty sure they barely broke even, if that, but the festival will continue at least for a few years because The Chamber has resources and is willing to make long-term commitments to encouraging tourist traffic. Again, the moral is: Find sources of funding independent of the festival’s direct revenue stream.
Thanks, Bob, for the additional tip! I'll forward to the owner of the particular festival I was talking about - and I'm sure (I hope) he'll find some of this useful.
Celtic mucus - there's a thought. Is that like green snotwork?
Oh, another thing to look into: Sometimes grants are available for some of these activities, especially if an educational/artistic/cultural claim can be made. If I were running a festival now, I would try to engage somebody with experience in non-profit fund-raising and grant writing.
Mark.... forgot to add, they always hold a 50/50 raffle. It gets major huge. Tickets can be as little as a dollar, but can be more. All it costs is a few rolls of tickets, and voila! free money with very little work, and some lucky person goes home with a small fortune.
I love the raffle idea - not sure it's legal here in the UK (is anything anymore??!) but sounds a real money-earner. PS saw your profile - sounds amazing where you are.
Making money at festivals
Making money at festivals
I recently had a conversation with someone who runs a festival every year. He has lots of acts, an open stage, people selling things, workshops, and good attendance. However, his festival doesn't make a profit and this year made a significant loss which he will have to bankroll out of his own funds.
He's a keen musician but he's thinking of knocking it on the head, or running one every other year, if income is that precarious that he risks losing a substantial amount of money at some point.
While I'd rather not say who this person is, any suggestions on ways of making money which also preserve the connections and relationships which are nurtured over years of running these things? Or is this sort of music incompatible with making money?
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Mark Harmer
Re: Making money at festivals
I think it's probably largely luck. You could make a fair bit, you could lose a fair bit. Chance you take if you organise these things.
I don't think this music is incompatible with making money. But be prepared for the inevitable flak if, by some fluke, you actually do make some.
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by benhall.1
Re: Making money at festivals
Ugh. Unpleasant subject, for people who would rather just play some tunes in the kitchen, but here are some offhand thoughts. (Apologies, if I am bringing up things he has already tried.)
Has he looked into corporate sponsorship, or donations from local businesses? Selling advertising space for billboards at the event? Getting local media to cover the event, so that those billboards would get some exposure?
Does he have a manager/marketer to handle these matters? There are people who do this sort of thing professionally. Perhaps one of them would agree to do it on a commission basis... if they don't bring in enough money, they don't get paid.
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by mickray
Re: Making money at festivals
Mark, my only thought is to keep the festival true to the genre. I've been to many "celtic music" festivals that had a little traditional Celtic music and the rest was music (drum performances) from Africa, Rock, easy listening and even the Philadelphia Mummers for gosh sakes. Their were also exhibts on saving the whales, savings the local dogs, making soap etc.
While entertaining in another setting I stayed only to watch the Celtic music then beat it out of there. I did not stick around and spend any money.
Just my humble opinion
Best of luck to your friend.
Mary
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Antikhntr
Re: Making money at festivals
My local festival gets smaller and smaller every year. They often have many of the same bands year after year. Personally, I think they need some new fresh acts.
I dunno. I guess that wasn't helpful.
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Fishmonger
Re: Making money at festivals
First, I would look at the cash flow of the current setup. Is there a general admission fee? A charge for individual concerts? A fee for vendors to set up and sell their wares? Corporate sponsorship? Government sponsorship? Can fees and/or ticket prices be increased without driving off too many folks?
I’ve been involved in the production of several festivals and the financial success of the ventures seemed to depend more on luck than anything else. In one case, we had a beautiful location, excellent facilities, excellent performers, lots of committed volunteers, good publicity, etc. And the festival opened for its first annual run on a beautiful weekend in mid September. 2001. Three days after that fateful event. We went ahead with the festival and lost money.
The next year, same location, great lineup, etc. Then, a week before the event, the weather forecast predicted a rare inland hurricane, with dangerous winds and biblical deluge. As it happened, we got only a moderate amount of rain and no serious wind, which normally wouldn’t have spoiled a good festival, but the damage was already done. Thousands stayed away and we lost even more money. “We” being a non-profit volunteer organization, which soon collapsed under the burden.
My point being that, without deep pockets committed to the cause, festivals are fragile enterprises.
The one festival I’ve worked on that remains sound after twelve years has a strong fund-raising effort outside of the actual festival revenue stream. Again, it’s a non-profit organization. It also goes to considerable effort to involve the local merchants and businesses in supporting and promoting the event.
Hmmm, I’m rambling, but maybe there’s some useful advice somewhere in there…
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Bob himself
Re: Making money at festivals
Of course I don't know what is the approach of your friend or how he works on the festival, so I can only say about how things work in my neck of woods. Most of people here organize festivals by the laws of nature - they do only some basic planning, spend a lot of time, effort and stress on more or less disorganised activities putting the festival together, and then struggle for the next few months with financial and fiscal matters.
However, there are some quite effective ones; funnily enough, they are usually organized by successful business people who know and love music.
What I found out to be really helpful is to treat the festival as an investment venture - and, first of all, to come up with a really good full-blown business plan, including all the important details with regards to financial planning, SWOT analysis, procedures etc., This should be done relatively early in festival organization. It really helps to put a lot of information in line, and set financial goals, even if you knew it or had a notion of it, it helps you to get it off your mind, look at it from a perspective and more often than not come up with new strategies and innovative ideas. At least your friend will know exactly what his budget and expenses will be, and may come up with an idea to get funds for it, or just to ask right questions to right people. As I said, it's best done early, as it leaves you with a time to think and then generate the contacts and the money.
Sorry if your friend knew that already
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Janek
Re: Making money at festivals
http://www.liveireland.com/reviews_july07.shtml
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by Georgi
Re: Making money at festivals
To me, this question could well be posed in the "Celtic Rock" discussion below. I readily admit that part of my dislike for "Celtic Rock" is that that Irish/Celtic festival producers, in an apparent attempt to broaden their appeal to festival-goers and therefore generate more gate revenues, tend to hire "Celtic Rock" bands instead of trad bands at their festivals. [and btw, I consider "Celtic Rock" to be those guys with electric guitars and bass and drum kits and some guy wearing a kilt playing highland pipes playing Stairway to Sweet Home Free Bird at an "Irish Festival"] OK I'll stop bitching and using quotation marks now...
So the producers are afraid - and perhaps rightly so judging by the original post - that if they hire only trad music that they will not attract enough of an audience to break even, let alone make any profit on the festival. Afterall, ITM may rightfully be considered a niche market. Therefore, at least in my neck of the woods, the Celtic Rockers dominate the local festival scenes.
I'd like to think that a sharp producer would be able to attract enough of the unwashed masses (i.e., those not erudite enough to already love ITM) to create enough of a revenue stream to support an Irish festival with actual traditional Irish music by creating a proper atmosphere of music and art and dance and attractions and vendor booths and food and such. I think people would attend a clean, family friendly festival, with opportunity to have a few pints and enjoy a beautiful outdoor setting without the need to beat them over the head with amplified American Idol wannabe's in green kilts.
I may be wrong - and given the number of Celtic Rockers out there getting lots of good festival gigs there is plenty of evidence to support that conclusion. But I'd still like to hope that if people are given the opportunity to hear good ITM played in a nice setting they would actually enjoy it more than the crap they've been hearing and come back again next year... and bring their friends.
I mean to cast no dispersions upon the ablity of your friend, Mark H., to promote a festival. He may be doing a brilliant job and I could never suggest otherwise. In fact, not even knowing the man I admire his efforts greatly.
At the risk of rambling on to your great disatisfaction, but in an honest attempt to answer your question, I've worked with festival committees and the four biggests costs associated with a festival are: (1) location rent/security/parking; (2) entertainment costs; (3) marketing; (4) personnel.
Anyway one can reduce any of those costs, the more likely the festival will be financially successful. Our experience has been to work our butts off to get the local community folks as involved as possible - volunteers, local radio & TV advertisements, local parks and recreation departments, schools and churches, pubs, beer salesmen, local Celtic shops, visitor and tourism departments. We've played more than a couple of festivals dirt cheap/gratis to encourage their survival (our experience has been the local bands will play for free or very little to support the festival and free up some money to bring in the traveling bands - not to try and screw the local bands, hopefully they make it up in future gigs and support for Irish culture and music in the community). Location and timing are very important. Perhaps the location can be secured without rent from the city or county. Schedule the event so as not to compete for the same crowd with other scheduled events. Revenues from food and vendor booths can be negotiated fairly to vendors and producers. And a few business sponsorships wouldn't do them any harm (is there any sound sweeter than "guaranteed revenue" to the ears of a producer?).
Did I reall just write all this crap?! Sorry to ramble - hope its useful! (BTW, the Cincinnati, OH Celtic Festival is a good example of the possibilities)
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by daddae
Re: Making money at festivals
D'OH.. "I mean to cast no 'aspersions..." sorry, I need a pint..
# Posted on March 10th 2008 by daddae
Re: Making money at festivals
The organization I run a session and concerts at holds a yearly Feis. They had it at one place for many years running, and the place sold their own beer. We were forced to move to a new place, where they didn't have beer vendors. So, I don't know if you can do this where you are, but they learned in NJ anyway in the US, you can get a temporary license to have a beer stand. They made thousands more than they had at the old place. If only they had known all these years they could have been doing it.
So that's one suggestion to look into. People will always eat and drink too, even if vendors aren't selling. So food and drink kiosks run by your friend's organization, especially if it is in summer heat could make the difference.
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by irisnevins
Re: Making money at festivals
If this is the festival I think it is - which I attended because there were 2 bands I really wanted to see, I would say that one of the problems I had was actually a lack of advertising. Compared to other festivals, it was difficult to get much info on the event.
The festival also doesn't have a lot of scope to grow as it's in one building
Catering was a slight issue as we were having to walk into town between events for a meal as there was only sandwiches/tea/coffee style catering - and they closed the bar during the afternoon.
However, I enjoyed the event and would do it again if there were bands I wanted to see - although I had heard the rumour that this was going to be the last one.
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Tarrantella
Re: Making money at festivals
Hi all,
Thanks for the great answers so far. Some great ideas there - I'm not party to the organisation of this particular festival in question (so sorry, in a way it's frustrating that I can't even answer some of your points since I don't know the details) but there are some tremendous ideas there - bases to cover, things to think about.
Someone mentioned timing and of course the weather is important so perhaps there's scope to change that.
Just one answer which occurs to me from another festival I've been to / run workshops / played at: they have a "main" festival in August with workshops and then they have a quiet, almost invitation-only gathering quite early in January, which has a public concert in the evening. That's been very successful on the "content" side of things but I don't know about whether it's broken even. However, it can happen (thinking here of the same thing applied to big organisations) that the mini, spin-off gatherings sometimes become as powerful / popular, perhaps for different reasons and to serve different audiences, and complement the "main event".
These are all really good thoughts, and thank you for these and any more anyone can add.
Tarantella, I couldn't possibly comment!!
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Mark Harmer
Re: Making money at festivals
"there's scope to change that..." - I meant changing the timing, of course, not the weather!
If only life had an undo function!
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Mark Harmer
Re: Making money at festivals
Our quaint little touristy town just put on its first annual Celtic Music Festival over the weekend. (God help me, I first mistyped that as Celtic Mucus Festival.) Somebody in the Chamber of Commerce, looking for a weekend theme to boost the tourist business in the off-season, noticed that Altan had already been booked at the community theater and figured a Celtic festival was just the thing. So, with three months’ preparation (if you’ve ever run a festival, you know that’s madness), there it was. They managed to scrape up a few additional acts, including a local Celtic (acoustic-)Rock band. The concerts were individually ticketed and were good, according to their respective audiences, but the workshops were few and varied from minimally decent to way beyond lame.
I’m pretty sure they barely broke even, if that, but the festival will continue at least for a few years because The Chamber has resources and is willing to make long-term commitments to encouraging tourist traffic. Again, the moral is: Find sources of funding independent of the festival’s direct revenue stream.
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Bob himself
Re: Making money at festivals
Thanks, Bob, for the additional tip! I'll forward to the owner of the particular festival I was talking about - and I'm sure (I hope) he'll find some of this useful.
Celtic mucus - there's a thought. Is that like green snotwork?
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Mark Harmer
Re: Making money at festivals
Yeah, that sounds about right!
Oh, another thing to look into: Sometimes grants are available for some of these activities, especially if an educational/artistic/cultural claim can be made. If I were running a festival now, I would try to engage somebody with experience in non-profit fund-raising and grant writing.
# Posted on March 11th 2008 by Bob himself
Re: Making money at festivals
Mark.... forgot to add, they always hold a 50/50 raffle. It gets major huge. Tickets can be as little as a dollar, but can be more. All it costs is a few rolls of tickets, and voila! free money with very little work, and some lucky person goes home with a small fortune.
# Posted on March 12th 2008 by irisnevins
Re: Making money at festivals
I love the raffle idea - not sure it's legal here in the UK (is anything anymore??!) but sounds a real money-earner. PS saw your profile - sounds amazing where you are.
# Posted on March 12th 2008 by Mark Harmer