This weekend's Coastal Jam music festival, to be staged in Mornington Peninsula and headlined by Austin Millz, Lime Cordiale and Bryce Vine, has been cancelled.
Event promoter Adam Metwally, evidently crestfallen to release such a statement, shared the news via the event's Instagram page late last week, detailing in a video the decision to cancel had not been made lightly, citing the continuing cost-of-living crisis that's resulted in slower than usual ticket sales as one of the reasons."As an independent promoter slash small business, it comes with a host of significant challenges at the best of times, and we currently aren't even close to the best of times," Adam says.
"Everyone that I know has been feeling the sting with the cost-of-living crisis, and one of the consequences of this has been a much slower than usual and very much last minute sales, for boutique events like Coastal Jam.
"As [music fans] only have enough money for a few things now, naturally leading to the major festivals, massive international tours being the priority, which I fully understand. Unfortunately, it's led to smaller boutique festivals and events such as ours to fall by the wayside.
"I did everything I could to keep ticket prices as low as possible, while also trying to put together a solid line-up with the core Coastal Jam ethos in mind, to bring world-class, fun, light-hearted parties to locations across the beautiful Victorian coastline over summer. But sadly, it wasn't enough this time to warrant a commitment to buying tickets earlier to allow us to justify pushing forward.
"The concept of pop-up music festivals is very expensive to run and there's minimal upside at the best of time. It's been something that we've done for the love and desire to keep serving the coastal regions as the best we can.
"Because the reality this year is that there's a pretty significant chance that if we did continue and didn't sell enough tickets, it would result in a potentially catastrophic loss that could ruin everything. And I'd like to avoid that if possible.
"I've tried everything I could think of to steer the ship back in the right direction and not have to make the call, but nothing I've come up with has worked. . . and I'm sorry for letting people down."
To somewhat mitigate the circumstances, Adam and his team have created an event to be headlined by Set Mo at Portsea Hotel on Saturday 13 January. A standalone show with Austin Millz will take place at Max Watts (Melbourne) on Thursday 11 January.
A range of Coastal Jam ticket refund offers are available including a complete refund; visit the event's page for more details.
