As most readers will be well aware by now, Soundwave Festival will no longer be travelling to Adelaide. Citing dismal ticket sales, festival founder AJ Maddah confirmed earlier this month that he can no longer afford to bring the event to the South Australian capital.
Speaking to the Sunday Mail last week, the outspoken promoter claimed that this year’s ticket sales dropped to a four-year low of just over 12,000. “In 2012 we had 37,000, in 2013 we had 45,000, last year we had 20,000 and this year we’ve got around 12,000,” he said.
While the figures are obviously startling, Maddah has now revealed that the hit taken in the South Australian market was so great this year that it almost “wiped out” the festival. Speaking to FasterLouder, Maddah said he “lost the equivalent of the family home in one weekend”.
“We lost a modest amount of money last year – $300,000 – and that’s subsidised out of the other cities,” Maddah explained. “But this year it’s ridiculous. We were basically 8,000 people short, which is crazy.”
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“And that’s basically wiped out everything we’re making [after costs] in the other three cities, because we work on very small margins. Every cent we have goes into more acts or making things more comfortable for punters.”
“Your average Soundwave bill is somewhere between 10-15 million dollars in artist fees, and it costs between 2-2.5-million dollars to put on each show. So when you’re 8,000 seats short at $180 per ticket, then that’s $1.4 million. So essentially I’ve lost the equivalent of the family home in one weekend.”
Maddah said that 2013, a year in which he booked a super-bill featuring Metallica, Blink-182, and Linkin Park, was the only year the festival made money in Adelaide. “Generally speaking we bankroll Adelaide [shows] out of the other cities,” he said.
Asked why he thought sales in the city were so low, the promoter attributed it to the general malaise currently afflicting Adelaide. “Everything from One Direction to the Foo Fighters is failing in Adelaide, I don’t think it’s an isolated thing,” he said.
“Nothing has worked in Adelaide in the recent past aside from the Rolling Stones and Katy Perry. I’ve had to cut down the club and theatre shows I’ve been putting through Adelaide simply because nothing’s selling.”
“There is a general aura of depression in Adelaide at the moment,” Maddah continued. “Obviously, how much bad news can you take – from the federal government not backing the auto industry down there to the uncertainty about submarine [construction].”
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“But it’s not just a financial depression, it’s a mental depression because there’s just so much bad news and people are worried about the economy. And South Australia has the highest youth unemployment rate in [mainland] Australia, and guess what? That’s the market that we’re selling tickets to. We’re not selling tickets to wealthy retirees.”
While the touring mogul insisted that Adelaide was his favourite stop on the festival circuit, citing the “nice” and “genuine” punters, he predicted the event would have to “sit out at least a couple of years until I’ve got enough of a war chest to take the risk again, or until we see signs of recovery in the Adelaide market”.
“We’re going to keep testing the water,” he continued. “We’ve cut down the number of shows that we send to Adelaide, but every fourth or fifth thing we do in Australia we’ll send to Adelaide and that’ll give us an idea of what the market’s like.”
“And should we see any signs of recovery or enthusiasm, we can start having a go back in Adelaide [with Soundwave]. But it’s definitely not going to happen next year.”
