A new report has claimed that Australia could potentially lose its festival scene due to the ongoing climate crisis.
The findings come from the report, Rain, Heat, Repeat: How Music Fans are Experiencing Extreme Weather, which featured polling by Green Music Australia. Analysis was carried out by RMIT and La Trobe University academics.
It comes after 26 live music events were cancelled in Australia last month due to extreme weather, which the report suggests is a sign of things to come.
The polling found that one-third of participants checked weather forecasts before buying tickets to a live music event. 34 per cent had become more cautious about buying tickets due to extreme weather, which rose to 44 per cent for regular gig-goers.
Additionally, a third wouldn’t attend a live music event if the temperature was predicted to hit 35 degrees and one in five would now buy ticket insurance due to the risk of a weather-related cancellation.
Catherine Strong, a sociologist and associate professor at RMIT, told The Guardian: “The normal way the festival industry does business relies on a certain number of tickets to be sold early and often.”
She continued: “People are now getting cautious enough about the weather that they’re starting to leave their ticket buying to the point where they can meaningfully look at a weather forecast, and this in turn affects how festivals can assess whether or not they are viable … and for a lot of them, that’s just not practical. A late cancellation means having to pay artists more for their cancellation fees, and it drives insurance costs up even more.”
The report also found 85 per cent of those attending Australian festivals had been affected by either floods, storms, heatwaves or the threat of bushfires at an event during the last 12 months.
In January, major music festival Splendour In The Grass was cancelled for the second year in a row. In a social media post, organisers said the event “needs a little more time to recharge and we won’t be back this year”.
It was previously cancelled just days after tickets went on sale, “due to unexpected events”, believed to be related to the volume of ticket sales. Kylie Minogue and Arcade Fire were among the headliners for the cancelled event.
