BluesfestOver a week after Bluesfest’s cancellation, the 20,000 ticket holders, the 100+ food and market stall holders who’d put down $5,500 deposits, and estimated 2,000 contractors were getting mixed messages about getting their money back.
Muddying the waters was that due to the discovery of a computer glitch where some purchases were recorded in duplicate or triplicate, the original $23 million owed to ticketholders was reduced to $5.17 million.
With liquidator Jason Bettles of Worrells forecasting the investigation could take between 12 to 18 months, cries for class action by creditors grow louder.
Music executives were concerned that an industry code that punters’ money remain safe – and maintain consumer confidence in the sector – seemed not to be the case.
“When anything of that scale goes down in such a terrible way it reverberates around the industry,” Tim McGregor, Global Head of Touring at Ticketek Entertainment Group (TEG), told The Music.
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“It’s horrifying if there’s an issue with consumers (not) able to get a refund on their tickets. Suppliers to the festival are obviously very committed and have a lot of people who work for them and who were expecting to be paid, and that may not be the case.”
A prime concern is if international artist agents and managers start questioning if Australia is worth that long trip from the northern hemisphere.
“The last thing we need is for Australia to be considered to be a risky market to come to. It’s obviously a lot of investigating on what went wrong and we hope the right thing is done for the consumers, the contractors and the artists.
“It’s a pity, Bluesfest had a huge history, and an amazing event on the calendar. It’s an incredible shame that it went that way.”
Dismay
An immediate response from other execs in the live sector was dismay that refunds to consumers was not automatic in this case.
Veteran promoter Michael Chugg responded: “We are very upset about it. There are common practises [that] you don’t fuck with punters’ money.”
Howard Adams, Chair of the Australian Live Music Business Council (ALMBC), said, “Trust arrangements provide essential safeguards, improving confidence in the market and reducing the ripple effects of event cancellations on the broader interconnected industry.
“When a major festival is cancelled, the consequences extend far beyond the headline event. Protecting ticket revenue through trust mechanisms is a critical step in supporting consumers and the small businesses that form the backbone of Australia’s live music sector.”
On the weekend, ALMBC provided advice on the ways ticketholders could take the next steps.
Talking to The Australian’s Andrew McMillen, Frontier Touring CEO Dion Brant expressed his disappointment, “The idea that fans can’t buy a and have confidence that either the event will play – or, if for whatever reason, the event doesn’t play they’ll receive a refund – goes against everything the industry stands for.”
Harvey Lister, Chairman & CEO of international venues operator APAC & MENA, added, “I’d be very concerned if the public thought that having to appeal to the generosity of a liquidator to get back the fund that they had paid for their tickets is something that generally happens in the entertainment industry, because it isn’t.”
The ALMBC reiterated the importance of ticket income being held in trust, as is required in other industries as real estate or travel to eliminate consumer risk in order to:
Protect small businesses from insolvency or cancellation scenarios
Discourage unsustainable or speculative promotions
Make ticket companies compete on service, not on cash advances
Build long-term confidence in live music.
Buying Later
In the immediate post-COVID years, one-third of festivalgoers admitted in studies that they delayed buying tickets in case events fell over.
In the past 12 months, that caution seemed to have lessened. But post-Bluesfest, it is inevitable that this could be a recurring issue.
But two executives The Music spoke to specifically about a fall in consumer confidence crisis agreed there wouldn’t be enough of a drop to affect the existing optimism surrounding the entire music festival segment.
“There is a risk although that will play out in the next couple of weeks and months,” suggested TEG’s McGregor. “I do think it’ll be evident there are some issues with Bluesfest that don’t necessarily apply to other parts of the industry.
“But, yes, whenever anything like that happens there is concern it will change consumer behaviour, and that’s not good for anyone.”
Australian Festival Association CEO Olly Arkins’ view was, “There might be some hesitation – but I don’t see it as having a huge impact on the future of the sector.
“Because festivals of this size cancelling is not the norm by any means. Cancellations in the last five years have overwhelmingly seen refunds.”
Arkins warned how late ticket buying can intensify planning misfires on music events – especially when most work on tight margins and high risks as it is.
“If you don’t know how many people are coming, you don’t know how big the site is going to be, how many toilets are needed, how many people you need to scan tickets, how many food trucks.
“If you're not having clarity on attendance a few weeks out, then your services can be stretched because more people turned up, and you haven't booked extra staff or suppliers.
“The worst case scenario is you expected more and added services. Then you get to the point where you can’t reduce and you’re on the hook. Because you’ve spent too much, you’re in a greater risk. If your tickets don’t match up, then your losses mount up and you're unlikely to come back.
“Promoters across the board have to match and improve their line-ups year on year. Increased artist fees and lack of strength of the Australian dollar are having an impact. We don't want to see audiences just expecting bigger and bigger line-ups every year, because that is extremely unsustainable.
“Moving away from a headliner based line-up is something we’d like to see because it’s so volatile otherwise.”
Reporting
Arkins believed reporting by some mainstream media of just large scale events buckling under but not of success stories elsewhere “don’t provide a true representative of the situation of the whole industry.
“We’re not out of the woods entirely when we come to challenges of putting on bigger festivals. But I am confident about the state of the industry. Overall we’ve seen positive experiences with ticket sales and successful events.
“A lot of amazing new festivals are popping up each year, we’re seeing younger promoters giving it a go. The health of any industry is judged on new people coming in and willing to try new things.”
These include Converge, Mighty Hoopla, An Emo Extravaganza, No One But Us, Radar, Dangerous Goods, and Revolve, with K-Pop’s Hello Melbourne launching on March 14 with three acts, while Newcastle’s Howlin’ extends to a two-day format in 2027.
The ambitious 11-city Park Waves set for this summer never got past the drawing board. Rolling Loud after a few early stumbles pulled the plug a week out.
Spilt Milk and Groovin The Moo return after a break, Knotfest will do so in 2027, while Gaytimes and Good Life are teasing comebacks.
Experience
Do major festivals collapse because the era of across-the-board acts are over, and new fans are not interested in listening to acts who play in styles they have little affinity for?
For Melbourne-based pop culture academic and author Sam Whiting, "Most festivals that are still doing well and are competitive are very genre-specific ... or they'll just have one massive headliner that carries the whole bill."
In a social media think piece responding to the end of the Bluesfest era, singer songwriter Ben Lee commented, “I’ve played at, and attended, countless festivals over the years since the ‘90s. I think part of the problem with a lot of them is they really lose touch with the punter experience, the average music fan’s experience.”
One of his suggestions: “No more than 10,000 people. I genuinely think when you get above 10,000 people, you start getting this pressure to stack the line-up with international acts.
“As a result, ticket prices go up, the whole thing becomes just this very corporatised market place that desensitises punter experience. I reckon 10,000 people is a beautiful number of people to have, particularly in a mixed-genre festival.”
Olly Arkins pointed at continued strong turnouts “for festivals across the board offering unique once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”
He cites Mundi Mundi Bash in the NSW outback which also presents fun activities as undie runs and thousands dressed in blue to the shape of Australia (usually for charity fund raising), “or Strawberry Fields on the banks of the Murray River, or Nelly Furtado playing Beyond The Valley after five years. The experiences are as much about non-music as they are music.”
The success of festivals focussed on single-genres as EDM and country have been recounted in The Music.
McGregor forecasted “a great opportunity for growth in guitar based music. It’s going through a renaissance, which I’m excited about because I’m a guitar based music enthusiast.”
Country Music
Festivals in Australia’s $1.1 billion country music scene continues to grow, with attendances at live events up 54% since 2023, and its fans spending 57% more than regular patrons to “look the part”.
Last year saw record attendances posted for Gympie Muster (to 60,000), Groundwater (to 60,000), Savannah In The Round (with 10,000 for one day alone), while Ridin’ Hearts had between 8,000 and 9,000 each in Sydney and Melbourne.
In 2026 so far Tamworth Country Music reported a total of 300,000 over ten days.
Last weekend’s CMC Rocks hit new heights with 25,000 on its Willowbank site on each of three days. That number was 20,000 a day in 2018.
“It was our biggest crowd ever, an unbelievable success,” stated Chugg, whose Chugg Entertainment produced the show with Potts Edge and Frontier Touring.
“Everything was magnificent. Everyone had a great experience. Food sales were up, bar sales were up and merch sales were up. We sold 130,000 tickets even before we announced the line-up.”
Half the CMC Rocks audience came from outside Queensland, and 1% from abroad. “The crowd was across the board, all ages, lots of younger ones. There were a hell of a lot of families, it was their once-a-year weekend together.”
After ten years in country music, TEG this February moved to a deeper footprint.
It set up an office in Nashville, with a local executive Brad Turcotte with strong contacts – he’d worked with Keith Urban, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Chris Stapleton, and Luke Bryan – to head a team to expand in the US, Australia and New Zealand through artist pipelines and touring opportunities.
McGregor explained: “Now even traditional artists are getting terrestrial and streaming airplay. We thought it was overdue and highly warranted to invest really heavily in the genre rather than a bunch of well meaning part timers – including me – to bring in a team that was solely based on the genre and build festivals and tours.”
Excited
Arkins was further excited by how festivals remain places to discover new acts, and how younger female fans are becoming driving forces of festivals.
“Laneway had its biggest crowds this year, and the biggest ticket buyers were 18 to 24 year old women. So as it’s the new Big Day Out, and seeing the bulk of the audience being younger females, that is so promising and fills me with more hope and confidence.
He added: “The strength of music festivals is the ability to program effectively and understand audiences and how they’re changing, and meeting the consumers where they are.”
Younger festival promoters are learning from sporting codes on keeping in close touch with their crowds, and learning from fans what they wanted in terms of personalised experiences.
McGregor agreed, “There is a great opportunity.
Obviously sports clubs are focussed on expanding their members. The ones in music who already do that do an excellent job. They’re genre-specific and they’re better at it.
“Successful promoters and festivals are going to figure that out and get deeper into personalisation, as the tools become available to do so… AI is going to allow a level of sophistication as far as that is concerned, down to what their motivations and interests are at any given time.
“From the consumer’s point of view, it might be brilliant because they’ve been communicated to in the right way.”
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
