The Future of Festivals: UK Festival Places Drop by a Third

What does the future of UK festivals look like after the pandemic?

Demand for live music festivals is set to soar after COVID restrictions are eased. With more and more people hoping to get back to 'normal', there's sure to be plenty of live events in the pipeline. But, will there be enough tickets for music lovers? 🎟

We took a dive into the stats, and found there will be 33% less festival tickets up for grabs at the UK's major festivals.

The good news is that over 37 live music festivals are set to go ahead this year. With the likes of Latitude, Tramlines, Wireless and Reading & Leeds all in the pipeline, students won't be short on choice.

However, there could be a potential drop of over 600,000 less tickets due to event cancellations and restrictions. 

So far, six major festivals remain cancelled for another year, including Boomtown, Glastonbury, and Download, wiping out a combined capacity of 532,000.

A further four, including Lovebox, continue to hang in the balance. This means capacity could be cut by a further 84,500 should they also fail to go ahead.

In total, COVID could still cut festival capacity by 33% this year - despite the easing of restrictions.

Sadly, this means there will be a bunch more competition when it comes to grabbing tickets to attend your favourite festivals. 

Those in Scotland, Wales and the West Midlands face the toughest time securing a ticket; just one festival is set to take part in each area to a combined capacity of just 80,000. 

It’s not just festival goers that will be hit hard by this reduction. Based on the cost of a weekend ticket to each festival, UniHomes predicts that lost ticket revenue sits as high as £129m for those festivals which have already been cancelled. A further £14.3m is potentially lost across the four that are yet to confirm.

However, there's good news for those in the South East! This region is the UK's festival hotspot this year. It's not only home to the most festivals, but the highest capacity at 375,000.

The North West also ranks high with festival capacity at 230,000 this summer, with the South West sitting third at 168,000.