Price Increases Over The Years

[mrtourette]

I was looking at some old posters and was struck by how cheap tickets appeared to be, so I did a little comparison exercise:

I'm guessing that 2004 was the first year that demand skyrocketed, look at those whopping increases for 2005.

All in all day tickets have increased by approx 157% in the last twelve years and weekend tickets by about 146% in the same period.

Use this information wisely.

[Abbathehorse]

Very interesting.

I was wondering how this related to inflation over the same period and found this table:

Year Inflation

2011 5.2%

2010 4.6%

2009 -0.5%

2008 4.0%

2007 4.3%

2006 3.2%

2005 2.8%

2004 3.0%

2003 2.9%

2002 1.7%

2001 1.8%

2000 3.0%

I reckon this shows that inflation has risen by 42.4% between 2000 and 2011.

So if my calculations are correct (and there is a 90% chance that they are not), the increase in the ticket price in real terms between 2000 and 2011 is approx 98%.

Wow!

Edited August 14, 2012 by Abbathehorse

[AcademicPistol]

Interesting thread Tourette. Surely the weekend tickets aren't going to exceed £200.00 next year.

[she bangs the drums]

Interesting thread Tourette. Surely the weekend tickets aren't going to exceed £200.00 next year.

[Justiceforcedave]

This is purely speculative (and to a certain extent in defence of some of the price increase) but I would guess there is more then just inflation to take into account. I'd imagine the price of booking bands has increased as a result of live revenue becoming more important to a bands income as record sales have decreased.

....at a guess. Oh and also promoters are greedy.

Edited August 14, 2012 by Justiceforcedave

[Chas]

I dug out my old flyers from the late 70s early 80s so you can see the year on year increases back then.

Year Weekend Friday Saturday Sunday

1976 £6.95 £2.50 £3.25 £3.25

1977 £7.95 £3.00 £4.00 £4.00

1978 £8.95 £3.50 £4.50 £4.50

1979 £10.95 £4.50 £5.50 £5.50

1980 £12.50 £5.00 £6.00 £6.00

1981 £14.50 £6.50 £7.00 £7.00

1982 £15.50 £6.50 £8.50 £8.50

1983 £15.95 £7.00 £8.50 £8.50

Edited August 14, 2012 by Chas

[eFestivals]

The costs of bands has increased quite a lot (they no longer make money from selling records).

The costs of production have increased quite a lot (increased regulation that has to be met).

And - for most festivals (if not specificially R/L) - the amount of entertainment a festival provides has increased too, which doesn't come for free.

But yeah, it's still the case that fests have increased their prices by more than those things and more than inflation. But as the likes of Reading never used to make a profit (for most if not all of the Mean Fiddler years) then perhaps it was a necessity anyway.

With the festival trend now having topped out, it's probably the case that there'll be below-inflation increases (or no increase) for the coming years.

[thetime]

This is purely speculative (and to a certain extent in defence of some of the price increase) but I would guess there is more then just inflation to take into account. I'd imagine the price of booking bands has increased as a result of live revenue becoming more important to a bands income as record sales have decreased.

....at a guess. Oh and also promoters are greedy.

[Abbathehorse]

Also the punters are stupid enough to pay it, only when tickets sales for festival go down in a big way will thwy stop rising.

[jump]

I think that is a bit harsh. It is not a case of being stupid, it is simply a case of supply and demand. For me the price of festival tickets still feels reasonably good value for what I get out of it. When I feel it stops being good value, then I will stop buying festival tickets. This is the same for everyone, however different people will have different cut-off points for when they will stop paying.

And, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that inflation should be the only thing taken into account when looking at price changes, I was just saying that it helps give a more realistic impression of the rice increase in real terms. Obviously Reading and Leeds (as well as all other festivals) have a massive amount of overheads and I am sure their prices have shot up too.

I am certain that prices will increase to over £200 next year, and while people will pay it, they will keep increasing.

[Abbathehorse]

One of the things with R&L is that for a lot of the crowd they are teens going to their 1st fest so they don't really know what a good value for money fest is.

[kaosmark2]

Reading's a shit festival, but of the big ones, it's fairly cheap. Being centralish within the South, and right near a city centre, transport costs, ability to get food that isn't festival prices etc. is all a lot easier. There are a lot of festivals where you'd have to pay to go on a shuttle bus to get to an off-camp supermarket, or go for a pub lunch, etc. Still not worth £200 IMO, but the reduced other costs mean if I can get a £150 ticket then after transport, food, drink etc. it's around half the price of doing another major festival.

[kev1664]

I was looking at some old posters and was struck by how cheap tickets appeared to be, so I did a little comparison exercise:

I'm guessing that 2004 was the first year that demand skyrocketed, look at those whopping increases for 2005.

All in all day tickets have increased by approx 157% in the last twelve years and weekend tickets by about 146% in the same period.

Use this information wisely.

[Bisque]

FUBAR

[pangyijun0707]

. I think next year will be a push for me, about time I had a holiday instead. A good lineup would still tempt me though.

[liam]

Very interesting thread this, I would be also interested to know what the attendance is for each of these years were. E.g the first year I went (2001) seemed nowhere near as busy as the last 3 years or so, and might give an idea of Festival Republic's income and how much they are/are not ripping us off by!

[jump]

Very interesting thread this, I would be also interested to know what the attendance is for each of these years were. E.g the first year I went (2001) seemed nowhere near as busy as the last 3 years or so, and might give an idea of Festival Republic's income and how much they are/are not ripping us off by!

[mrtourette]

. I think next year will be a push for me, about time I had a holiday instead. A good lineup would still tempt me though.

[Chihiro Cheeks]

Actually 2004 was easy to get tickets until right up until the end!

It was 2005 the first year they sold out fairly quick.

Then 2006 to 2010??? sold out on the day pretty much.

The prices have gone up.....the band quality has gone down

[liam]

Unless you're an accountant for FR you will never know the income the fest makes. Revenue isn't solely based on tixs sales and you need to deduct their costs to get income.

Edited August 16, 2012 by liam

[Poppington]

Leeds 2002 was my first Reading/Leeds weekender for me..£90 for a cracking line-up, but it seems like yesterday! Where has the time gone??

[gooner1990]

First went to Reading in 1999, pretty sure the ticket was £78!

I still go now as I live only 20 mins away so the travelling time and cost is minimal, if I ever got to the point where it didn't represent VFM or there was absolutely nothing I wanted to see then I wouldn't go.

Just glad that silly nonsense of 2005-2009 and the festival selling out in 3 hours has finished....have enough trouble with Glastonbury tickets!!

[riizch]

I think the only gripe I have about the price increase is that I feel like the festival experience has decreased in value as the prices have gone up. The numbers have gone up, the prices have gone up, but the quality of the experience has gone down. Every year that I've been since the late 90's, I've found myself thinking that I had an awesome time, but not as good as the year before. I think the most likely cause of that is that the mid 2000's is when festivals became a hugely popular event with the re-emergence of rock music in the popular music scene. Suddenly, everyone wants to go to a festival and different ones start emerging all over the show. New festivals are created, old festivals are revived, and suddenly, they've gone from being a relatively niche event to being the highlight of the social calendar for half of the population.

Back when I was young, there was nowhere near as many "causal" festival attendees - people went to festivals for the music more than anything else. I think during the mid 2000's it kind of became a social scene and a right of passage for teenagers to go to a festival, so it had a completely different vibe from then on. Having a mental weekend away with your mates, getting drunk and escaping the confines of life at home with your parents seemed to become the main focus for most people, rather than the music. I remember my first year at Leeds...I was 18, and I remember feeling really young compared to everyone else there. Now, it's completely the opposite. The average age has definitely decreased and there's been a huge shift in the demographic.

The general comfort of festival life seems to have decreased dramatically as the ticket price has gone up. Everything from physical space and queues to food quality and provision of services seems to have worsened. The relatively minor increases in capacity each year has made an incredibly obvious swell in numbers overall since my first festival, and now I just feel like it's way too overcrowded. As a result, everything has become about quantity over quality, including the bands.

You used to be able to watch the headline acts in reasonable comfort with plenty of space and a great view. Now, you have to sit through the 4 bands leading up to the headliners just to be in with half a chance of getting in the front half of the field. Back in 2003, I was able to SIT in front of the main stage watching Metallica headline, and I was close enough to see (only about 1/3 of the way back) without having to watch on the screens. That's a huge contrast to the Prodigy in 2009 when we struggled to actually get into the main stage area.

And of course, increased popularity has a snowball effect on the ticket price as bands (or more likely, the record labels, in addition to not making money from CD sales anymore) know they can get higher fees for turning up, so of course they look to exploit that. It leaves the promotors between a rock and a hard place. On one side, they have a huge demand for tickets, meaning that everything has to be bigger and better than the competition, but at the same time, the more general provisions you have to make, the less money there is for bands, so the only option is inflating the prices and risking alienating half of your audience who can't afford it. There's a huge expectation upon every festival to have the best lineup over all of the competition, and so exorbitant fees and exclusivity contracts take precedent over the punters' value for money. I'm sure the promotors are more concerned about increased profits than most other things too, which probably doesn't help either.

It could just be that I was young and naive back then, but when I was younger, I don't remember ever having to panic on the night of general release to get tickets, concerning myself with which bands had exclusivity deals with which festivals or worrying about which campsite is least likely to result in my stuff being nicked/burnt/trashed. it just feels like a completely different festival life to the one that I grew up with, and I really don't think it's been for the better.

I know that a lot of different factors affect the ticket prices, not least inflation, but I do feel that for the most part, it's a culture that we've created for ourselves. Supply and demand and all that. I don't think anything will change until festivals become less popular again. It will happen eventually...it's all about market trends. Maybe then we'll start to see sensible prices and value or money again.

[gooner1990]

Back when I was young, there was nowhere near as many "causal" festival attendees - people went to festivals for the music more than anything else. I think during the mid 2000's it kind of became a social scene and a right of passage for teenagers to go to a festival, so it had a completely different vibe from then on. Having a mental weekend away with your mates, getting drunk and escaping the confines of life at home with your parents seemed to become the main focus for most people, rather than the music. I remember my first year at Leeds...I was 18, and I remember feeling really young compared to everyone else there. Now, it's completely the opposite. The average age has definitely decreased and there's been a huge shift in the demographic.