Glastonbury: a 73m [pounds sterling] benefit gig: new research has cleared up some of the muddier financial aspects of the UK's leading music festival, and illustrated the economic benefit the event brings to the area

Leisure Report, May, 2008 by Duncan Rowe

The Glastonbury Festival is renowned the world over the UK's leading musical event, with more than 177,000 revellers attending last year's somewhat weather-affected extravaganza, but until recently the true economic value of this festival has been hard to quantify.

The first Glastonbury Festival was held in 1970 with an attendance of 1,500, a 1 [pound sterling] entry fee and music from Marc Bolan and T-Rex. Since then the Festival has grown both in size and reputation to become the massive global event it is today, but until now no-one has really been able to say quite what the financial value of the Festival as a whole has been.

Of course selling 177,000 tickets at 150 [pounds sterling] each for last year's event produces the headline figure of 26.55m [pounds sterling], but not all those on site had paid full price for a ticket, and this number is hardly representative of profit, revenue, or even turnover. With this in mind, and keen to understand the wider impacts of the Festival, Mendip District Council, supported by funding by the Festival team, commissioned a broad study on the economic impact of the Somerset event, which was carried out by Bristol-based Baker Associates.

Its aim was to fully understand the economic effects of the festival, and help to support the planning of future years, although since the publication of the figures has illustrated the huge economic impact the event has on the local area, it will also no doubt go a long way to appeasing some of the more vociferous local protesters, who have long bemoaned the inconvenience of having hundreds of thousands of party-goers descend on the sleepy Somerset village of Pilton in four years out of every five.

The popularity of music festivals is on the increase in recent years, which have seen the emergence of a number of new contenders joining the established ranks of Glastonbury, the V-Festival and the Reading and Leeds weekenders. London now hosts several summer events, notably the T-Mobile-branded Wireless Festival and Hyde Park Calling, funded by Hard Rock Cafe, both of which are held in Hyde Park. Such is the demand for tickets that events such as V and the recently re-established Isle of Wight Festival have seen tickets sell out within hours, in some cases before the headline acts have been announced.

And with MAMA Group, the subsector now boasts a listed firm specialising in live music events, and one which is highly acquisitive. So one could be forgiven for thinking that holding a festival is the nearest thing to a licence to print money in today's leisure market, although this is not the picture the research has painted.

John Baker, from Baker Associates, comments: "We were commissioned by Mendip District Council and Glastonbury Festivals to carry out the study, which is one of the first to focus on the overall economic impact of the festival, and to improve understanding of its impacts on various areas of the local and regional economy. But the study also reports on other areas that are linked to its impact on the economy, and how these issues can be looked at in the future to further build on the economic benefits that the Glastonbury Festival could bring to Mendip."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The figures, aside from the headline 73m [pounds sterling] gross spend total, provide a clear indication of the wider effects of the Festival, and encouragement to businesses considering involving themselves with the event in some capacity. In 2007 the site saw an average spend per person of 293.24 [pounds sterling], not including the ticket price.

Total spending at the festival site in Pilton by revellers and traders was about 25.6m [pounds sterling], and off-site spend was about 26.5m [pounds sterling], giving a total spend of about 52m [pounds sterling] directly linked to the festival. Estimated spending by Glastonbury Festivals associated with staging the 2007 festival was 21.2m [pounds sterling] (over the period November 2006 to October 2007).

So the gross spend linked to the 2007 Glastonbury Festivals (including two separate events run by the organisers--the Glastonbury Extravaganza and the Equinox 'Pilton' Party) was more than 73m [pounds sterling], although if you include ticket sales this shoots up considerably.

But the wider economic benefits are harder to put a figure on, although Baker Associates' research does shed some light on the positive aspects of the event. To ensure an accurate representation, Baker Associates used several methods to capture data at last year's event, including; a face to face survey with over 2,500 visitors to the Festival, exploring their demographic profile, festival attendance and spending patterns. There same methodology was applied to a traders' survey, designed to understand their business type, expenditure and supply chains. To understand the impact on local, off-site businesses, a postal and internet business survey was mailed and publicised (via radio, press and local business groups) to businesses across the locality. This study focused on their trading patterns and the impact upon their staffing and turnover.