WHILE financial collapse and plummeting ticket sales have forced the cancellation of many music events in major cities, savvy promoters and councils in regional NSW are cashing in on music lovers’ will to travel.
According to Destination NSW, stalwart events like the Parkes Elvis Festival, the Tamworth Country Music Festival and the Byron Bay Bluesfest played a major part in enticing more than 19 million visitors to regional NSW in 2015. They helped grow the number of domestic overnight trips to regional areas by 5.2pc this year, a figure which is up 13pc compared to four years ago.
These events continue to grow in size, boosting the already whopping financial benefits they deliver to their local economies. Tamworth’s festival injects a $50m to the local economy annually, Parkes’ generates $13m and Byron Bay’s drives $20m. Tamworth’s festival attracts 40,000 people each day; Parkes’ 20,000 each year and the Bluesfest, just on of Byron Bay’s mega festivals, attracts 100,000 people each year.
In recent years concert tourism has become the Hunter Valley’s bread and butter.
Sell-out concerts in the Cessnock region can easily book out the entire Valley’s accommodation, according to Cessnock mayor Bob Pynsent.
“A two-night sell out concert, like the Bruce Springsteen concert recently, can generate up to $25m for the region,” Mr Pynsent said.
“The concert season supports our entire economy through the part-time work it creates and many small businesses wouldn’t exist without them.”
New events are also springing up in NSW to cater to younger audiences.
Last year Temora locals and father-and-son duo Grant and Matt Clifton teamed up to bring some of Australia’s best artists to Forbes. They hired the Forbes showground for $500 and held a one-night music festival for 8000 fans called Vanfest.
According to Matt the first installment of Vanfest was a major success and last month they followed up with “an even bigger and better” one.
“It was a great opportunity to make live music more accessible to the people of Forbes and surrounds but people came from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide to be there,” Mr Clifton said.
Mr Clifton, who has worked in the industry in Australia and the US for 18 years, said the operational costs of holding a music festival were significantly lower in regional areas.
“In Sydney, for example, venue hire can be upwards of $250,000 and a single road closure can cost $25,000. In regional areas you don’t need to sell 20,000 tickets to sell costs.”
The Forbes business community was highly receptive of the event.
“Local businesses loaned us things like forklifts and we worked closely with them to ensure they could cash in on the captive audience we had,” he said.
“On the weekend of the festival the accommodation was booked to 110pc capacity. One cafe owner told us he had more business on one day than he had for the previous three months combined.”
Tamworth Country Music Festival manager Barry Harley said the key to ensuring a successful music event in a regional town was ensuring sound financial backing.
Mr Harley has been involved with the festival for 44 years.
“Part of the festival’s success is the fact the risk is shared among many stakeholders including major commercial sponsors, local business houses and local and state government,” Mr Harley said.
“Events are far more costly to host than ever before due to the price of workplace health and safety requirements so any funding helps the event organisers to sustain it.”
He said regional towns should use their relative isolation as a selling point.
“Tamworth’s festival is world renowned because of the fact it is in regional NSW. If it originated in Sydney it would just be one of many events there.”
He said making it a family affair helped its longevity.
“More than 80pc of our music events are free which helps make it an affordable family activity. We also have alcohol free-zones to support this.”