Inaugural Perth Music Festival Cancelled Due to Poor Ticket Sales
The inaugural Perth music festival, Promise Village, has cancelled its 2024 event just two weeks after the festival was announced and tickets went on sale.
The festival was set to take place on October 12, featuring performances from acts across the globe like Jorja Smith, J Hus, Rema, and Headie One.
However, the festival’s ticketing platform Megatix informed customers that the festival would no longer be moving forward as planned “due to unforeseen circumstances.” The ticketer said refunds have been automatically processed to ticketholders.
Emal Naim, the co-founder of Promise Village, noted in a statement to PerthNow that the festival was nixed due to poor ticket sales, alongside little support from the government.
“It unfortunately didn’t hold up to initial expectations and there was not much support to sustain costs, it just wasn’t feasible anymore,” Naim told the publication. “We’ve made the decision indefinitely to not return to Perth, we’re scared to.”
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The news follows a string of festivals cancelled throughout not just Australia, but across the globe. In Australia, large-name events like Splendour in the Grass and Groovin the Moo festivals have been called-off this year. Bluesfest, which normally brings-in close to 100,000 attendees, had 60,000 fans attend the festival this year. Bluesfest director Peter Noble spoke out at a Variety Live Business Breakfast in Sydney, noting that the music festival climate is an “extinction event.”
Ireland has seen the cancellation of major events like Body and Soul in County Westmeath and Wild Roots in County Sligo. Even in the U.S., festivals are struggling. Coachella, a once-coveted event, took one month to sell-out of its first weekend — marking the longest sellout for the first time in 10 years. The second weekend failed to sell out.
Other festivals didn’t even make the cut, as Firefly announced it would not return to Dover and Jay-Z’s Made in America festival was called-off for the second year in a row. Lovers & Friends’ inaugural festival was also cancelled, as well as Backwoods Festival and Kickoff Jam.
