new report on music concerts and festivals reveals record-breaking sales

- around the festival site (7) — Photo credit: Phil Bull

Ticket sales for gigs and festivals have risen to a record-breaking £2.1billion this year, and live revenues outstrip those from recorded music, a study by market analysts Mintel has found.

Concerts and festivals remain popular with four in ten Brits attending a music event in the last 12 months with almost one in ten going to a gig at least once a month. Arenas are now the second most popular type of music venue. The report also reveals that the festival sector continues to grow despite proliferation of events, and the average age of headlining acts is on the increase.

A statement from Mintel says, "The UK live music industry has continued to grow during the past five years, despite the tough prevailing economic environment. Despite steadily rising prices, consumers have demonstrated that they are still prepared to pay 'top dollar' to see the most popular acts, while festivals continue to draw the crowds, although perhaps not all are enjoying the same sort of attendances they did before the financial crash of 2008."

The live music market has, the report finds, grown by nearly half in the past five years, with the split between tickets and secondary spend broadly unchanged, although that's expected to change now that Parliament has tightened regulation on secondary ticketing.

The report adds that many ticket buyers remain unhappy about issues with ticketing, particularly in relation to the resale of tickets by secondary resellers, although a good number have used their services in the past year as there are very few realistic alternatives if consumers want to locate a sought-after ticket. Promised governmental moves to improve transparency in the secondary market seem likely to improve the situation but there has also been a raft of new products and services launched in the past year aiming to cut out profiteering on the resale of tickets through by-passing resellers and also trying to eliminate booking fees.

The report also reveals that Live Nation is dominant player in live music. Although other companies such as AEG and Deutsche Entertainment have sought to
make inroads into Live Nation’s market share, to date they have barely dented it, although AEG has secured a strong position in the London market, which it can use as a platform for further expansion.

Other data the report provides includes the fact that advertisers have throttled back on advertising, and that cashless ticketing and payment is on the up, and music fans have spent 45% more on seeing live acts compared with five years ago.

The full report is available (here) priced at £1,750.00 (Excl.Tax)

eFestivals believes the festival industry is seeing a small period of growth again with 1070 events listed for this yearby eFestivals in the UK for 2015, compared to 1010 in 2014, and 960 in 2013.

The festival industry in the UK saw a massive growth from 2000 to 2011. For the last few years there's been around 1,000 festivals a year, indoor and outdoor and live outdoor music events.

Since the Olympic year when many events cancelled, the number of planned festivals not going ahead has been falling year on year, however this year the trend has reversed, and there's been an increase in the number of festivals cancelled, the highest since 2012 as the table below highlights.

% of UK festival listings cancelled on eFestivals by year.
number cancelled in 2015: 51 of 1070 = 4.77%
number cancelled in 2014: 35 of 1010 = 3.46%
number cancelled in 2013: 36 of 960 = 3.75%
number cancelled in 2012: 57 of 929 = 6.13%
number cancelled in 2011: 40 of 934 = 4.28%
number cancelled in 2010: 36 of 801 = 4.49%
number cancelled in 2009: 41 of 710 = 5.77%
number cancelled in 2008: 43 of 633 = 6.79%
number cancelled in 2007: 31 of 496 = 6.25%

Of course, this doesn't take into account trends in what people want from a festival, or the number of festival goers attending festivals, and we could perhaps be seeing that festival numbers peak in four year cycles, as the previous peak years for cancelled events were 2008, and 2012.

Our figures also suggest that the maximum total number of tickets on sale each year has been static for the last few years at around the 6-6.5 million mark.

If every ticket was sold for the events we knew the daily capacities for then the total number of people attending a festival for a single day at peak for the last few years would have been:

maximum daily known capacities attending a festival for a single day at peak in a year
2015: 651 festivals, and 6,267,743 attendees
2014: 655 festivals, and 6,192,292 attendees
2013: 663 festivals, and 6,074,944 attendees
2012: 627 festivals, and 6,455,701 attendees

We already have 457 events listed for 2016, with many more set to join them before now and next summer.

To see what's available see our festival search page.

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