The Tilburg dance festival Draaimolen is in heavy weather and is selling part of the tickets for half price, hoping to still attract enough visitors. The two-day festival, which programs electronic music on six stages and features names such as Job Jobse, Laurent Garnier, Blawan, Octa Octa, Oceanic and Lafawndah, is selling tickets for Friday at half price. The organization tells 3for12 that Saturday tickets sell well, but Friday lags behind. “If it fills up like this and the weather is good, we’ll survive. Otherwise it will probably be the last edition,” a spokesperson told 3voor12.
In a statement of the festival states that the costs for the organization have risen sharply, while ticket sales are declining. More music festivals are having a hard time in the first festival summer after the corona crisis, due to a lack of staff, materials and especially the greatly increased prices for everything.
At Lowlands, which increased the ticket price to keep business operations healthy, certain parts did not arrive on time during the nightly preparations for headliner Stromae, as a result of which the performance of the Noord Nederlands Orkest had to be canceled the next morning.
Also read our review from 2018: Wandering and dancing to the season’s closing merry-go-round
Exactly how that went wrong is not known, but such problems were predicted.
Busy festival summer
“You have to ask yourself whether it will work everywhere in terms of time planning. Because all events often require the same materials and are moved from event to event,” said Pim Zuethoff of event producer Loc7000 in June, for example.
Industry insiders also expect a busy summer next year, based on the applications already submitted.
The Friday tickets for Draaimolen, on 9 and 10 September at the MOB site in Tilburg, now cost 34.50 euros. If you already had a full-price ticket, you will get half of it back.