fans can now buy shares in Wychwood Festival

eFestivals can reveal news of a chance for fans to buy shares in Tribe Festivals Ltd, the rights holders of the popular Wychwood Festival through crowdsourcing platform CrowdCube.

	Wychwood 2012

Organisers are offering the chance to own a stake in the family-friendly, intimate and inclusive festival which offers a blend of world, roots and contemporary music, alongside comedy, workshops, and more which returns for an eighth year to Cheltenham Racecourse, Gloucestershire from Friday 31st May until Sunday 2nd June in 2013.

Tribe Festivals Ltd, are also joint owners of the Cheltenham Comedy Festival as well as the rights holders to Wychwood Festival. Today they have launched an innovative new model that invites fans and supporters of the Wychwood Festival the opportunity to become shareholders in the annual family weekender.

The offer is available for a limited time only for up to 200 individuals. In return for the share capital of £1000, new investors will receive a pair of tickets for life to Wychwood (valued at £280 each year), plus up to 12 tickets each year for friends and family purchased at half price, as well as additional benefits including discounted tickets to other Tribe-owned or run projects. There will also be a host of benefits available to investors onsite at Wychwood Festival each year.

Tribe Festivals Ltd say, "In a challenging financial year that has seen many festivals, both large and small, crippled by a host of external factors including the wealth of free events available to people across the UK through the London Olympic Cultural Olympiad programme, Tribe will be the first company to trial crowdsourcing as a potential capital stream for a UK festival.

"For a one-month period, Tribe Festivals Ltd will offer a number of shares via the Crowd Cube platform to up to 200 individuals. In return for the share capital of £1000, new investors will receive a pair of tickets for life to Wychwood (valued at £280 each year), plus up to 12 tickets each year for friends and family that can be purchased at half price. There will also be a host of additional benefits to new investors."

Those who are interested can find more details, and buy their share here: www.crowdcube.com.

New investors will be able to take advantage of EIS relief and will be entitled to a share of profits from the business going forward. A potential investment of £1000 will buy 10 shares in Tribe Festivals Limited, out of an available 200,000 shares in the company. This will give a small return by dividend when the company starts reporting a profit. However the main financial benefit comes with the free ticket opportunity that comes with the shareholding.

Each Year investors will receive:
£240 of free tickets (at 2013 prices- ticket prices generally increase slightly each year).

£840 of savings in tickets for friends and family
£50 of bar credit
£50 of merchandise
Total value £1100

If an investor just takes their free tickets and bar/ merchandise for 2 years into consideration they would already be in a return situation. This is also excluding other event opportunities that Tribe may have. If the investor is unable to come to one or more festivals their free tickets can be transferred to friends/family, so the saving is never lost.

In addition to this, if the investor brought any new business opportunity or sponsorship opportunity to the company they would also get a profit share from that event of 30% or sponsorship commission of 20% of the opportunity.

Investors would be free at any time to sell on their shares under current market rules and the new investor would then benefit from all of the above opportunities.

Graeme Merifield, co-founder and Festival Director of Wychwood Festival said, "Just after the 2011 Wychwood Festival we had a big rethink about where we want to take the festival and our other projects. I'm very pleased to say that we have a new and exciting team on our board and we want to expand our Tribe business into a number of other events, so it seems only fitting that we invite those who have been loyal to our current festival portfolio over the last eight years, to come and join our Tribe."

For Wychwood Festival fans who simply wish to buy tickets to the festival, a limited number of early bird tickets are available with prices kept at the same level as the early bird offer of the last two years, and if purchased now there's a saving of up to £30 on the full price of an adult weekend camping ticket.

Early bird adult weekend tickets are priced at £100, weekend disabled (2 for 1) tickets are priced at £100, youth (aged 16-18)/concession weekend tickets are priced at £82, and 10-15 year old weekend tickets are priced at £45. Children aged under 9 years old can attend for free.

General camping passes (charged per person) are also discounted for the limited period offering an adult weekend/disabled camping ticket for £10, a weekend youth/concession camping pass is priced at £5, with those aged under 16s able to camp with grown ups for free.

To buy tickets simply call the festival on 01993 772580, or download the application form from the website, click here (from 9am Friday 20th September).

As per last year, Wychwood are again offering a payment scheme this year to make it easier for festival goers to budget for their ticket purchases, with the order split into four equal payments, one taken at the time of the order and each of the remaining three payments taken at the beginning of each of the next three months. Those wishing to take up the offer to pay by instalments, are asked to call the festival ticket line and they will set it up.

Following on from the success of the friends scheme offer last year, it returns again this year with a chance to enable festival goers to save even more on their ticket price, when someone is introduced to the festival who has never been before.

For every person introduced to the festival and who buys an adult or concession weekend ticket, Wychwood will take £20 the ticket order. So, if someone purchasing a weekend ticket during the earlybird offer (at £100), introduces 5 friends to the festival, then their ticket is essentially free. Wychwood festival goers can introduce as many friends as they like, and will be getting £20 for each and every one!

In order to become a 'Friend of the Festival', attendees must have already bought their own ticket for the 2013 festival, either when they left this year, or during this current early bird offer. They then simply give the Wychwood Office a call on 01993 772580 and will be given their own unique reference number to give to their friends to quote when they ring up for their tickets.

This offer will only be valid before the end of November, at the end of which Wychwood organisers will count up how many people each person has introduced to the festival and then send them a cheque for this amount by way of thanks.

PLEASE NOTE that all friends' orders will be checked against the festival's database of previous customers to confirm that they are a totally new customer to the festival.

There are no acts confirmed yet for 2013. The first names for the line-up will be confirmed in the New Year, as well as some of the new content next year's festival will offer.

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