Promoter AJ Maddah has confirmed the Big Day Out has taken heavy losses this year.
Maddah, who bought a 50% stake in BDO as late as last October, and well after the festival's launch, fronted Triple J's 'Hack' program today for a full and frank discussion on all things BDO.
When asked by host Tom Tilley whether Fairfax reports of losses between $8- and $15-million were accurate, Maddah said that it was in the lower-end of that spectrum. “We still don’t know,” he said, “but it’s going to be ugly.”
"It wasn't going to go ahead this year until I walked in. They were literally, they were on the edge of the abyss, or the edge of cancelling the event. And to my mind if they cancelled the event then it would be completely lost and you could never bring it back. I kind of got involved for very selfish reasons, and that's, you know, all my happy memories from my childhood are from the Big Day Out, from Livid Festival. It was the one or two days of the year where I could get away from my shitty home life or whatever else. And um, it would have been very sad for me to watch it die without putting up a fight, and ah, that's why I came on board. I was rowing the lifeboat back towards the Titanic, rather than the other way around.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and you don’t stick around if you don’t pay your bills. All of the vendors for Big Day Out are the people I need three weeks out for Soundwave.
“I walked into this knowing the full picture and knowing what had happened,” he said. “[The Big Day Out is] meshed so much with Australian music history and live music over the past 25 years – so I think it’s a brand that people will come back to.” On CEO Adam Zammit's job: “That’s something that we’ll review in good time. He’s a really good guy and I enjoy working with him. He obviously have his own certain style of things which could probably be tempered, but sometimes those liabilities are also assets.”
When a caller to the station said "I don't go because the price has inflated dramatically", Maddah replied "It was absolutely rip fast. It was just really really dumb. The price - $185 was ridiculous. But, as I said, you know, that was not long before I came in this year. It's just insane. Look, you know, if you go to a specialty festival where, you know, there are 20 bands that you want to see that's one thing. You know, Soundwave has something like 97 bands this year and 12 stages, and, you know, if you're into any kind of guitar music, there is a full days programming for you. Big Day Out is more about the experience, it's more about the day. You know, there are 3 or 4 bands everyone wants to see throughout the programming hopefully. And, you know, it's a day of wandering round, doing the markets, doing the bands, doing everything else. And for that - $185 is absolutely unreasonable.
Maddah also discussed the logistics which necessitated the axing of the Perth leg, the Blur controversy, drink prices and two-day events. A full transcript of the interview is on the hack website.
