Music festivals becoming too expensive and repetitive

Ben TobinYouGov PR Manager
May 14, 2014, 12:38 PM GMT+0

Ahead of the upcoming music festival season in 2014, a new YouGov report has shown that many people, including previous festivals attendees, believe that such events are becoming too expensive, not representing value for money, and are repetitive.

35% of all survey respondents say that music festivals have become too expensive. In fact, only 11% consider festivals as great value for money. This contributes to the finding that a third of past festival goers are not planning to attend one this year.

For many, the festival experience could be improved upon; 29% of those who attended a festival in the last 5 years said they had a very good experience at the last festival attended, 39% described their last experience as ”good”, a quarter said it “satisfactory”, 4% said it was “poor”, while 3% said it was “very poor”.

Festival goers do have a number of grievances which could explain this. 28% say festivals have become too corporate. 14% say that there are now too many festivals with the same acts doing the rounds and 11% say they are becoming bored with festivals. This highlights the challenge festival organisers have in organising original and innovative events that differentiate from the norm.

In terms of logistics, over half say they love festivals but hate the toilets (53%), over a third (36%) say festivals are becoming over-crowded with too much queuing. Almost one in five (19%) say there is too much laddish behaviour, while 13% say they have a problem with drug use by other people at festivals.

James McCoy, Research Director at YouGov, commented on the report: ‘’The report shows that while demand for music festivals has remained high, it will be interesting to see which events survive pressure on disposable income as the market becomes increasingly saturated.

The challenge for festivals organisers is to act upon the grievances of festival goers, in order to provide an experience that is value for money, enjoyable and likely to result in return visits.''

Learn more about this report

Go to YouGov reports