Consumers will win battle of the festivals

The 2006 summer festival season has already begun. You may be still trying to remember where you left your tent at Oxegen or how many pies you consumed at the Electric Picnic's Pieminister stall, but next year's campaign for your festival euros is already in full swing.

It's shaping up to be the kind of campaign that will make the recent jostling between Fianna Fáil/PDs and Fine Gael/Labour look like a playground scrap by comparison.

The huge success of this year's Electric Picnic has changed the lie of the land. Now, if you want to go to a multi-day, multi-stage festival with camping in Ireland, you've a choice. You can go to Oxegen or wait for the Picnic.

Of course, both festivals are chalk and cheese in terms of potential audience and overall atmosphere, so it's doubtful if there are many punters who will actually be going to both. Each has certain unique selling points: Oxegen is about the quantity of bands on offer (80 bands over five stages) and the Picnic is about the quality of the whole event (the boutique festival).

Nonetheless, competition between MCD Concerts (who promote Oxegen) and POD Concerts/Aiken Promotions (who jointly promote the Picnic) will be even more intense next summer. While we can expect the same number of outdoor shows featuring a big-ass headliner and a load of makeweights, it's the battle over where you will pitch your tent for a weekend away that will be the one to watch.

The first skirmish came in a survey on the Oxegen website last week. Aside from asking what could be improved about their own festival, the organisers also asked site users for their views on the Electric Picnic.

Oxegen is the market-leader when it comes to Irish festivals. It has sold out in advance for the past two years and is very much the proven favourite for first-time Irish festival-goers. That its organisers are gathering views on what people think about a much smaller, more specialised festival is telling. They know there is a new game in town and that they have to match or top it. The Electric Picnic is not going to turn into the Electric Crumb.

While you're online, go to the Electric Picnic website's forum and check out a lengthy post- event mail from promoter John Reynolds - it shows just why the Picnic is such a breath of fresh air for concert-goers in the country. You will probably never see anything like it on oxegen.ie.

Reynolds thanks people for their feedback and then lists a raft of issues that have been raised already about this year's festival. He doesn't mention the lack of a prominently displayed timetable on the website prior to the weekend, an issue that was undoubtedly raised by many. However, he does state that all the listed problems - everything from signage and sanitation to recycling and the campsite - will be addressed before next year's three-day event.

A similar promise was made after the first festival in 2004 and it was kept - a very unusual state of affairs. But Reynolds knows that the reason why the Picnic was such a success is because of things like this. A brilliant festival is not just about the bands or the location or the chip-free food stalls or the atmosphere or the Body and Soul area or the attention to detail.

It's about mutual respect.

If you're going to shell out a couple of hundred euros for a weekend away, you want to be treated properly. We Irish complain more than any other race on earth, which makes the positive post-Picnic raves all the more remarkable. After all, phone calls to Joe Duffy about Picnic rip-offs have been noticeable by their absence.

It will be interesting to see how the competition pans out next summer. MCD may well try to book every band on the planet for Oxegen. They might put on a Picnic-like event later in the summer. They could even try to buy Stradbally Estate. Whatever happens, though, the real winner should be the Irish music fan. After all, choice rules okay.