It’s official, Big Day Out 2015 has been cancelled, marking the first time since 1998 that the flagship Aussie music festival hasn’t been held across the nation.

The future of the festival was thrown into doubt following yesterday’s surprise news that co-promoter AJ Maddah had sold his stake in the iconic Aussie festival, pulling out of his partnership with American co-owners C3 Presents, making the Texan festival presenters of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits the sole owners of Big Day Out.

C3 Presents has now issued a statement confirming that Big Day Out will not be returning next year, but also hinted at plans to bring the festival back in future.

“C3 Presents is proud to own Big Day Out, one of the most iconic and established festival brands in the world. While we intend to bring back the festival in future years, we can confirm there will not be a Big Day Out in 2015,” reads the statement, as published by Triple J Hack.

“We love working on BDO and are excited about the future,” C3 Presents concludes.

The cancellation of Big Day Out 2015 follows yesterday’s shock revelation of Maddah’s pull-out, less than a year after the Soundwave boss first purchased a stake into the Big Day Out last September, (shortly after the cancellation of his own Harvest music festival) from previous promoter and former rival Ken West.

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According to documents lodged with ASIC earlier this month however, West was out of Big Day Out last November, while as of 4th June, Maddah stepped down as Big Day Out director, the same day he (trading as Madjo BDO Pty Ltd) had transferred his 50% shares in the company over to C3 Presents LLC, who first bought into the Big Day Out in January 2012 with West.

Maddah had previously admitted that this year’s Big Day Out had suffered “ugly” financial losses and low ticket sales in an interview with Triple J’s Hack in February, but had indicated optimism the festival was still “a brand people will come back to.”

The former Big Day Out promoter is set to appear on the Triple J current affairs program once more this afternoon, set to deliver his official take on events, which he described as a “positive move” in a lone tweet.


Reports have been circulating for months about Big Day Out’s future, with speculation that it was in serious doubt after facing losses of between $8 to $15 million from lax attendance figures. There’s also been industry whispers that a lawsuit may erupt between Maddah and C3 Presents over losses accrued from the national one-day event, with Fairfax citing an anonymous source claiming that Maddah was unable to meet his obligations to pay off his half of debts incurred from Big Day Out 2014’s financial losses. 

Maddah has refuted the allegations, dismissing there was any souring in the relationship with C3, calling Fairfax “enablers of gossip… they will take any old rubbish from any idiot [and] run with it completely irresponsibly;” just one volley in a vicious war of words that broke out between the Big Day Out and Fairfax earlier this year.

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In a later interview in which Maddah discussed the moment ‘Big Day Out fucked their brand’, he admitted that “the event was seriously wobbly” before he bought into the company, revealing that the festival was “on the verge” of cancelling before he entered the picture.

“[I] got involved for very selfish reasons,” Maddah told Triple J’s Hack program in February. “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.”

Blake Kendrick, the same person listed as the festival’s Assistant Accountant, is listed as the newly appointed director of BDO Presents, while the festival company’s new registered address belongs to a law firm based in Australia.

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