Metal festival Alt-Fest has been cancelled by its organisers, with a lack of funds from investors and ticket sales being attributed to its demise.
The festival, which was scheduled to feature live performances from Marilyn Manson and Gary Numan, was initially propelled by £61,000 donated by fans via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. The festival raised over double its initial goal of £30,000, and promised backers an “international celebration of Alternative music, art, lifestyles and culture”. However, a post on the festival’s official Facebook page on August 1st revealed that its organisers Missy and Dom had pulled the event, just two weeks before it was scheduled to take place.
The post read: “It is with a heavy heart that we must confirm we have had to cancel Alt-Fest. We tried to put on a ground-breaking event for you & the alternative scene, and it was your support that was helping to make it happen. From our early days on Kickstarter through to all of you who have purchased tickets we thank you. We the organisers of Alt-Fest have done everything we can to save it, but this week we ran out of time to raise all the required funds that was needed upfront of the festival.
“We also wish to apologise for the delay in releasing a formal statement cancelling the festival. We realise this has severely damaged our personal and professional reputations, we can only sincerely apologise for any additional stress and upset this has caused, we were honestly looking to act in your best interests.”
The post continued: “We sold over 7.5 thousand weekend tickets, and as you were aware we had a great line up with plenty going on. This however meant we had to pay for over half of all the band’s fees, with the remainder due just before & at the festival itself. Securing bands was not the only cost. The festival was going to cost £1,703,000 in total to put on, including artists, riders, travel, accommodation, production: power, staging, sound, lighting, track way, fencing, water, waste, the venue fee, security, medical assistance, traffic management, health & safety, marketing and much more. We ourselves and all of the Alt-Fest team have put in huge amounts of effort and time over the past two years and done everything within our power to make this work.
“If we were to sell a minimum of another 1,000 tickets between now and the festival, we’d have suffered a significant loss that we couldn’t carry. This recently came to light based on a costing error explained below & inevitably down to the fact that the investor unfortunately pulled out last minute. We were expecting to sell more tickets based on our line-up, and if we had sold just 3000 tickets more then we would have been over the breakeven line, or if we could have deferred a percentage of our contractor’s payment, which they sadly were not prepared to do.”
Though this is obviously a tough and frustrating situation for everyone involved, and it is difficult to not feel a little sympathy for Missy and Dom, it’s yet another example of how terribly wrong these Kickstarter projects can go. Kickstarter is essentially a platform in which people can propose an idea and, even if they do not lay out the logistics of how said idea would work, if it is good enough unwitting donators will throw money at it. Clearly, Missy and Dom weren’t in a position to be the sole organisers of such a festival, and the fact that they were still promoting travel to the festival via its official Twitter page just two days before they announced that it was cancelled shows how horrendously inexperienced they were in organising a large event.
Below is the list of ways in which those who had tickets to Alt-Fest can claim a refund, as posted by the organisers:
- Festival Tickets via Amazon = Amazon Local are contacting their customers direct and processing refunds now.
- Festival tickets, Dismembership and add-ons (car parking etc) purchased through our website via clubtickets.com = by email at helpdesk@clubtickets.com
- Festival Tickets via Festickets = direct with them festicket.com
- Dismembership purchased through our webshop (with glamping/merch in) = contact Paypal to a raise a dispute.
- Glamping purchased through our webshop (with merch etc in, NOT the same as the ticket page)= contact Paypal to raise a dispute
- Viewing platform = contact Paypal to raise a dispute
- Tangerine Fields = direct with them tangerinefields.co.uk
- Big Green Coach are contacting all of their customers directly with advice on refunds. Refunds will be issued automatically.
Unfortunately, as is the case with Kickstarter, those who backed the festival via the site are unlucky to see any form of refund.
