Free Hop Farm Tickets

it's his fault that he charged far too much for a not good enough festival though

I think barny is talking about benicassim though

I'm talking about Benicassim but could be applied to any other festival, I supose. The offical excuses for the failure have been the amount of festivals and the economic crisis. Both are fair arguments, but the truth is Benicassim as a brand on his own can deal with them, half of the audience are half-arsed British people who would come even if there were no concerts at all. So if you make a patchy lineup forgetting completely the opinions of the local people, your competitors will surely take advantage of it. There's a reason why people have chosen other festivals with worse organization. None of the headliners was exclusive here and there were no "middle class" bands at all. Every decision he has made so far has been a big misjudgment.

I'm pretty sure the bankrupt is not due to Benicassim though, it might not have produced the benefits of previous years but it is a (loosened) money machine.

I don't know about that, what bands would you have had on that were touring this year? the main reasons surely are those you mentioned and also the fact that new mainstream guitar music is close to unlistenable at the moment (see: the vaccines)

Everyone knew that anyway. I wonder if that will be it for Benicassim, hop farm & Latitude now then. Hop Farm I knew all along wouldn't be a success. They were booking huge acts for a festival which wasn't established in an awkward location. benicassim I don't know what the crowd percentage is like but I know it's full of shitloads of Brits so with a recession going on it's no surprise that the attendance was down. Would like to think Latitude would carry on even if someone else takes it over. They don't book huge acts yet still charge top dollar and every year sell out near enough so I can't see that being a big risk.

Benicassim might take a break for a year, but it won't cease for long. Like I said, it works. Last year the attendance was like 160.000 (70% brits), whereas on 2011 was 200.000 (50% brits). The difference is last year many tickets where nearly given away as they realized things were going badly, but they usually alternate sold outs with calmer years anyway.

I don't know what bands would have I booked, but diversity and quantity are as important as quality in big festivals. You pay a fuckin' lot to have headaches trying to fix your schedule, not to see some second-rate Irish act. Primavera Sound bring every year a puzzling amount of indie bands and Benicassim might have a higher profile but used to do that.