The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Radio 1’ s Big Weekend ‘to return to city’
Radio 1’s Big Weekend music festival is set to return to Dundee after the event was cancelled in 2020, it is understood.
A Dundee City Council source said it is a matter of “when, not if” the BBC festival will return, with the local authority in advanced negotiations with the national broadcaster.
The logistics and costs of hosting the annual event still need to be ironed out and it remains to be seen whether this will be in 2022 or the following year.
The festival was all set to be held in the City of Discovery in May 2020 but had to be cancelled after the UK went into lockdown at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Harry Styles and Calvin Harris, as well as Dua Lipa and Camila Cabello, had agreed to perform.
Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro were also in the star-studded line-up.
The last two incarnations, in 2020 and 2021, have both been virtual.
The BBC would only confirm further details of the 2022 event will be announced later this year. However, organisers are believed to see Dundee as first choice.
The council source said: “Discussions with the BBC are ongoing but they are very keen to come back to Dundee.
“It’s a matter of when, not if, the festival will be held here.”
City leaders previously said the event could bring in millions of pounds to the city and showcase Dundee to people watching on TV all over the world.
The festival was launched in 2003 in Manchester under the name “One Big Weekend” and went on to become Europe’s biggest free-ticketed music festival.
Attendees now pay a fee for tickets, which were introduced in 2018, though these are much cheaper than equivalent events.
The broadcaster is likely to operate a ballot system with a certain number of tickets allocated to people who live locally in Dundee and surrounds.
The last physical event was held in Middlesbrough in 2019, which was headlined by Mark Ronson, Miley Cyrus and The 1975.
Some 32,000 tickets were available for each day in Teesside, split into three pots.
The first pot was only for those living in Middlesbrough, the second was for people in the rest of the Tees Valley Combined Authority area and the third was open to the whole of the UK.
Camperdown Park would be the only site to host the festival twice after also holding it in 2006.
That event featured Snow Patrol, Muse, Keane, Pink, Sugababes and Razorlight.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “We hope to announce more details about Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2022 in the months to come.”
Perth was one of four locations in the UK to hold a similar event, named the Biggest Weekend.