The pull of foreign fields

Canny festival-goers have done the sums and are heading abroad to see the same bands they’d see at our big summer gigs – and it’s not just the sun that’s luring them

WHILE OXEGEN, IRELAND’S lager and frequently mud-soaked musical rite of passage and the Electric Picnic, its more chilled out and esoteric cousin, may be worlds apart in terms of line-up and atmosphere, they do share a common bond in the form of high -priced tickets.

The two events are so much more expensive than other major music events taking place across Europe this summer that many clued-in music fans are turning their backs on them entirely in favour of similar events in Spain, Italy, Hungary and Serbia.

When the cost of the ticket, booze, food, tent, transport, sleeping bag, wellies, novelty hat, rain poncho, inflatable “you’ll never beat the Irish” hammer and suncream are added up, most people camping for the duration of Oxegen or the Electric Picnic will have little change out of €500.

Despite the fact that we are living in deflationary times, the price of concert tickets has not fallen, although the promoters who set the prices will point out that they haven’t increased over the last couple of years either.

A four-day ticket plus camping for Oxegen is €250.50, which includes the €6.35 Ticketmaster service charge but not the ridiculous €20 that Dublin Bus is charging for a return ticket from Dublin to the Punchestown Racecourse 42km away. The full Electric Picnic experience, meanwhile, is €274.35, a price which covers Ticketmaster’s slice and transportation.

Contrast these prices with gigs being put on for our European cousins.

The three-day Benacassim Festival near the Spanish city of Valencia kicks off on July 15th. Tickets cost €180, a price which includes a week’s camping, and amongst the acts slated to appear are The Prodigy, Kasabian, Vampire Weekend and Gorillaz – the first three of whom are also playing Oxegen later this week.

Return flights to Valencia with Ryanair can be had for €120 – less if booked well in advance – so a week’s partying in the Spanish sun costs roughly the same as a weekend at Oxegen or the Electric Picnic – and that’s before the cheaper cost of eating and drinking comes into it.

There’s even better value at the Traffic Festival in Turin later this month. It has a line-up featuring dozens of DJs and artists including Paul Weller, Bob Dylan, The Klaxons and the Specials. It is, amazingly, free thanks to the full backing of Turin’s city fathers. The main sponsors are the region’s civic authorities but cash has also come from dozens of companies including Ray Ban, a host of banks and Rizzla. Ryanair flights, with five nights cheap accommodation, will cost no more than €160.

Further east, tickets for the four-day Exit Festival in Serbia in mid-July are around €80. Acts appearing include LCD Soundsystem, DJ Shadow, Placebo, the Klaxons (again), the Chemical Brothers and, er, 1970s punk castaways The Exploited. The organisers are deliberately targeting concert-goers from this part of the world and have been flying music journalists over in recent years to showcase what they have on offer.

Ryanair flies to Osijek Airport in Croatia, 80km from the festival site, via Frankfurt, and flights can be had for less than €100 if booked early enough. Coach transfers to the festival site are €45 return while accommodation in a nearby hotel for four nights costs €120, bringing the total cost to €345.

So, what’s with the high ticket prices here? Are the promoters coining it at the expense of the fans? It is hard to say as many of the biggest promoters in the State guard their profit margins like the third secret of Fatima.

Pricewatch contacted Oxegen promoter MCD to find out more. It robustly defended its pricing structure. A spokesman said Irish prices were the same as the UK in spite of higher wages, insurance, local authority, police and advertising costs in Ireland. “Festivals in Spain, Budapest etc are cheaper as there are no restrictions regarding sponsorship, examples being alcohol, cigarettes etc.” He said that local councils “subsidise festivals with, for example, free site/venue, policing and clean-up costs while also contributing towards international and local advertising. Also, the cost of living and salaries are lower.” He went on to say that MCD was “very conscious of the current economic climate” and said it was “working extremely hard to balance higher Irish production costs while still maintaining the cheapest affordable ticket prices possible for fans.” He concluded by saying that Oxegen ticket prices had been frozen since 2008 while its 2010 early bird purchase scheme, open to all customers, had been frozen at 2007 prices.

There is certainly validity in the argument about high overheads leading to higher prices and the cost of insuring and policing major events here is astonishing.

Industry sources say MCD will pay out just under €3m to cover the cost of security, policing and medical facilities at Oxegen. Insurance is also high, while the cost of putting the infrastructure, such as lighting, roads and drainage in place will run into millions.

While promoters are quick to discuss their high overheads, they’re less open about their sponsorship deals. While other festivals use sponsorship to drive down prices, in Ireland the sponsors’ money appears to go on the promoter’s bottom line. Vodafone and Heineken are presumably paying handsomely for the stage naming rights at Oxegen while the latter has also paid for the exclusive “pouring rights” at the festival – good news for MCD, bad news if you don’t like Heineken.

The other factor contributing to higher prices in Ireland is artists’ fees. Even the working class heroes who claim to be doing it for the kids demand, and get, more cash to play here than elsewhere. When European tours are being planned, a band’s agent will sit down and work out what prices the market in all the jurisdictions on the tour will bear. These people are no fools and they know that in Ireland, the cubs of the Celtic Tiger, softened up by easy credit and a notion that the good times would just keep on rolling pay whatever is asked of them. Or at least they used too.

High prices have contributed to sluggish ticket sales the big events this summer although all the promoters are at pains to say that everything is fine and they are delighted with the sales. Another factor driving up the prices artists can command is the fierce level of competition between the three promoters in Ireland: MCD, Aiken and Pod. The bands’ agents frequently play these three off each other, driving the prices higher.

The excessive fees demanded by some artists is not unique to this country. In an interview with the BBC last week, Ben Turner the co-founder of the Association of Independent Festivals, which includes Creamfields and Womad, said some headliners cost more than £1m and claimed the figure was continuing to climb. “I think it’s something that agents, managers and artists need to be more aware of, that these festivals that they supposedly love, they need to show some support for that.”