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Speaker 1: We have an end of an era for the iconic

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Speaker 1: Splore Festival. The owners have announced this morning that next

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Speaker 1: that this year's festival actually will be the last, citing

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Speaker 1: lower than hoped ticket sales. Now John Minty explores festival

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Speaker 1: on and is with us morning.

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Speaker 2: John, kyahada, nice to be talking to you this morning.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's lovely to have a chat to you mate.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Although although on a sad subject, I mean

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Speaker 1: this must have been a tough call.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it has been. I've been involved in Spore for

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Speaker 2: twenty years. Since Spoor has been running twenty seven years,

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Speaker 2: so long it's running festival New Zealand. It is a

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Speaker 2: beautiful event. Everyone that comes and totally enjoys it, and

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Speaker 2: I always had this vision that it would last forever,

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Speaker 2: long after me. But yeah, just the last couple of years,

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Speaker 2: the market seems to have changed. We're not selling sufficient

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Speaker 2: tickets to make it financially viable and the writing seemed

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Speaker 2: to be on the wall. Tickets have been quite slow

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Speaker 2: this year, so I just thought, well, you know, if

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Speaker 2: we can't sustain it, let's just wrap it up next

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Speaker 2: year and have one big party of celebration.

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Speaker 1: John, Are you doing? Are you being premature and making

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Speaker 1: this call because this has been the toughest recession that

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Speaker 1: the country's been in decades and decades, and surely when

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Speaker 1: we come out the other side and we've got money

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Speaker 1: in our pockets again, we'll get into it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking like that either, and we've

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Speaker 2: been waiting all this year, I think, like all of us,

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Speaker 2: for those green shoots and for people to be spending more. Yes,

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Speaker 2: potentially premature. I mean I could sort of hang on

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Speaker 2: for another year and just hope things get better for

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Speaker 2: next year. But I've got to the point where I've

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Speaker 2: been involved in spore for twenty years and I just

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Speaker 2: feel that personally, from a financial point of view, I

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Speaker 2: just can't really take that risk again hoping that things

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Speaker 2: will improve next year. They may or they may not,

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Speaker 2: So I don't particularly want to take that risk.

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Speaker 1: What do you think? I mean, you're not obviously the

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Speaker 1: only person who's found festivals very, very difficult to run

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Speaker 1: in the last few years because of the increased costs

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Speaker 1: and the lack of cash and stuff. What do you

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Speaker 1: reckon the future of festivals are?

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Speaker 2: I do worry about it. I mean, specially because it's

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Speaker 2: a three day camping festival, which is quite rare now

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Speaker 2: and the benefit of three day camping festival it creates

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Speaker 2: a community. People are committed for that whole three days

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Speaker 2: that camping, makeing new friends, people get married at four

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Speaker 2: because they meet future partners. It's for so it's maybe

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Speaker 2: the camping side. It's quite difficult for people. I mean,

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Speaker 2: the younger generation are not so much into going into

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Speaker 2: tense et cetera. So maybe it's more than a six

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Speaker 2: hour concert in a park, which is more attractive as

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Speaker 2: a trend. And I think a lot of it is

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Speaker 2: to do with I guess the attractions of certain headliners.

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Speaker 2: There's certain acts which attract a crowd, so it's an

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Speaker 2: easy decision for people to say to go and see

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Speaker 2: a particular artist. For those artists are increasingly charging two, three,

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Speaker 2: four times as much as they used to, so that

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Speaker 2: scenario is quite difficult too. So it is quite a challenge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, John, listen, thanks for talking to us through it

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Speaker 1: and beast of like and hopefully the thing does go

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Speaker 1: very well for its last one. It's John Minty, a

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Speaker 1: Splow festival owner.

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