plug pulled on Portsmouth & Southsea Festival

The organisers of the Portsmouth & Southsea Festival, which was due to take place at Castle Field, Southsea from Thursday 9th to Sunday 12th October have announced the event is cancelled.

The festival office has confirmed that the event is cancelled on their website (here) saying that ticket sales were too low to be able to proceed.

The festival organisers' announcement states:

The directors of the Portsmouth and Southsea Festival, planned for the 9th-12th October 2008, are devastated to announce its cancellation.

Despite 10 months of planning, complying with all council requirements and securing a strong line-up, ticket sales are too low to be able to proceed.

All festivals rely on strong advance sales and Portsmouth and Southsea Festival has become the 40th festival this year to fall foul of low sales, which we believe to be mainly due to the global ecomonic slowdown.

We are disappointed for the 2,000 people who had committed to come to the event, and can assure them of a refund. Full details can be found on our web-site - www.psfestival.co.uk.

11,000 people needed to attend to make the event loss making, but viable and the gulf between what needed to be achieved and the current position was too great with only 24 days to go.

We are also disappointed for the local bands - especially the Rocktober winners - and club promoters who were hoping to perform.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Portsmouth City Council and local councillors who have been so supportive throughout the planning stages.

We would also like to thank The News and Wave 105, who have been tremendous in their support and coverage of the event.

It is important to stress that no local business or private individual has parted with any money to trade at the festival. The only financial losers from cancellation are the festival's directors.

We truly believe that Portsmouth deserves to have a major music event and will reconsider our position in 2009.

Artists due to play Portsmouth & Southsea Festival included headliners The Charlatans, Fun Lovin' Criminals, and Kim Wilde with support acts including Shed 7, Bluetones, EMF, Tom Hingley and The Lovers, Nick Kershaw, Howard Jones, Go West, and Bjorn Again.

The festival will be giving full refunds. Each transaction has to be processed individually and they aim to refund all requests within 28 days. The organisers ask all those who bought tickets to ensure that their request for repayment is received by Monday 13th October.

For those that bought their tickets through the PS Festival website they are asked to email refunds@psfestival.co.uk with their paypal receipt and the transaction ID as the subject.

Ticket holders who purchased from New Theatre Royal, The Mayflower, Wightlink and One Tree Books should return their tickets to the appropriate outlet with proof of purchase from that outlet for a full refund.

Where tickets were purchased in cash, ticket holders are asked to email admin@psfestival.co.uk for instructions.

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