Splendour in the Grass music festival cancelled for 2024 due to ‘unexpected events’
Splendour in the Grass, one of Australia’s oldest and largest music festivals, has been cancelled this year due to “unexpected events”, organisers have said.
The news of this year’s cancellation comes just seven days after tickets went on sale, with Kylie Minogue, GFlip, Future and Arcade Fire leading the lineup.
The July event has been held annually since 2001, and in the North Byron Parklands in Yelgun, New South Wales, since 2013. In past years it has attracted 50,000 festivalgoers, and previous headliners have included Coldplay, Lana Del Rey and Childish Gambino.
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The decision to headline this year with the Canadian Indie rock band Arcade Fire had been a controversial one, with five people making allegations of sexual misconduct against frontman Win Butler. Butler has denied the allegations and no charges have been laid against him.
In a statement late on Wednesday afternoon, organisers said they were announcing the cancellation of the festival which was due to run from 19 July to 21 July with a “heavy heart”.
“We know there were many fans excited for this year’s lineup and all the great artists planning to join us, but due to unexpected events we’ll be taking the year off. Ticket holders will be refunded automatically. We thank you for your understanding and will be working hard to be back in future years.”
The co-chief executives of the festival, Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco from Secret Sounds, did not elaborate on what the “unexpected events” were, and did not return Guardian Australia’s calls on Wednesday.
In 2023 Splendour in the Grass recorded a 30% drop in tickets sales compared with its pre-Covid heyday.
Guardian Australia understands that the state government had been working with Destination New South Wales to negotiate some kind of financial assistance for the festival, weeks before tickets went on sale on 21 March for the 2024 event.
Secret Sounds has staged the annual three-day festival under the umbrella of the US multinational entertainment company Live Nation since the latter bought a majority share of the Australian entity in 2016.
Splendour is the second major music festival run by Live Nation to hit the wall in the past few months. On New Year’s Eve, the long-running Falls festival in Byron Bay did not go ahead, with Secret Sounds saying the event would take a year off to “recalibrate”.
The managing director of the Australian Festival Association, Mitch Wilson, said he was “devastated” by the cancellation.
“The Australian music festival industry is currently facing a crisis, and the flow-on effects will be felt across the local communities, suppliers and contractors that sustain our festivals and rely on them to support their livelihoods,” he said.
“We need government at the table to help us through this period and assist in stabilising our industry to sustainable levels. This needs a national approach.”
The NSW arts minister, John Graham, said the cancellation of Splendour in the Grass was “devastating” news.
“The festival industry is under extreme pressure, and I am deeply worried about the health of the festival scene here in NSW,” he said.
“The NSW government offered financial support to help the event proceed this year. We will continue to work with them and hope to see them return next year.”
Graham took a $103m live music policy to the 2023 state election with a promise to help revive the struggling sector brought to a prolonged standstill during Covid lockdowns.
In December, Graham announced the appointment of Ducrou as the chair of the advisory board of Sound NSW, a board set up to advise the government on a 10-year contemporary music strategy, including implementing the recommendations of the 2022 Raising Their Voices report which found sexual harm, sexual harassment and systemic discrimination against women in the Australian contemporary music industry.
The cancellation of 2024 Splendour in the Grass has come little more than a month after another major music festival pulled the plug.
On 14 February, Groovin the Moo, Australia’s largest touring regional music festival, announced it was cancelling all six regional festivals scheduled for April and May, due to insufficient ticket sales.
Like Splendour in the Grass, tickets had only been released for sale a week earlier.
On Wednesday, NSW Greens music spokesperson, Cate Faehrmann, said many festivals that had been Australian-owned and operated for years have now been sold to international operators because of spiralling costs and, in NSW, a burdensome regulatory environment.
“Over the last few years the live music industry in NSW has been dealt blow after blow,” she said.
“The fact that one of Australia’s biggest music festivals is unable to sustain itself any longer should be a massive warning to the NSW government that without urgent intervention, live music as we know and love it will never recover.”