The Gorgeous Festival promoter, who cancelled the event last week, has opened up on artist fees which he feels contributed to the event's demise.
Alistair Cranney told the Adelaide Advertiser, “I was offered Paul Kelly and they wanted $100,000 for him. I love Paul Kelly but he’d already done two shows in SA this year. A lot of those people would not be inclined to pay money to see him again.
“We got pushed really hard to take Angus and Julia Stone, they still wanted $80,000 for that. Interestingly, we got offered them a year earlier and they wanted $120,000 and they kept trying to tell me the reason they wanted less this year was because they were being nice.”
In public statements of commercial dealings not likely to engender goodwill, Cranney said he stood to lose between $60,000 and $100,000 if he had gone ahead with this year’s festival which was set to be headlined by singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke. He also said there was "more on" which he claimed contributed to disappointing ticket sales, which was announced on the Festival's Facebook Page last week:
It is with heavy hearts that we must announce the cancellation of Gorgeous Festival 2015. While it is still a month until the planned festival date, early ticket sales were not of a level sufficient to finance the Festival we aspired to.
While we investigated the feasibility of scaling things back we did not want to hold something unworthy of the name Gorgeous Festival.
Thank you for your support of Gorgeous Festival, and we hope for more Gorgeous times ahead.
Sally and Alistair
While we investigated the feasibility of scaling things back we did not want to hold something unworthy of the name Gorgeous Festival.
Thank you for your support of Gorgeous Festival, and we hope for more Gorgeous times ahead.
Sally and Alistair
