Sierra Nevada World Music Festival @ Boonville

[Drunk Monk]

'We're f—ked': California's music festival bubble is bursting
The culprit isn't something as simple as inflation alone

Protoje performs at the 2023 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival in Boonville, Mendocino County, Calif. The 27th edition of this popular roots reggae music festival was to be held in 2024.Lee Abel
By Timothy Karoff,Culture ReporterOct 15, 2024
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For a moment, it seemed like the Sierra Nevada World Music Festival would weather the storm. 

Founded in 1994, the festival usually draws a dedicated crowd of a few thousand to the Mendocino County Fairgrounds to sway to roots reggae under the summer sun. Although modest in scope, the festival’s tasteful bookings and community-oriented atmosphere earned acclaim. “Trust me, all over the world, people know Sierra Nevada World Music Festival,” reggae artist Luciano told the Ukiah Daily Journal in 2023. “This festival is on par with all of the great ones.”
After a rocky post-early-pandemic return in 2023, there was reason for initial optimism. In the winter, early-bird ticket sales were “gangbusters,” said Kaati Gaffney, a spokesperson for Sierra Nevada World Music Festival. But in the summer, the outlook took a turn for the worse. Typically, the festival sees a surge in ticket sales in June, but in 2024, a surge never arrived. With stalling sales and mounting bills — deposits for stages, bands, portable toilets and security — the outlook was grim.
The festival announced its cancellation just days before the planned start date. In lieu of cash refunds, would-be attendees were told that their festival passes would be honored at Reggae on the River, a festival in Humboldt County.
Sierra Nevada World Music Festival’s tale is a familiar one for California’s music industry. While the names, locations and details vary, the story beats are similar: A beloved event is canceled at the last minute; an apology letter is posted describing financial strain; fans get refunds, or they don’t. 
Gyptian performs during the 30th Annual Reggae on the River Festival on Aug. 3, 2014, in Piercy, Calif.
C Flanigan/Getty Images

Desert Daze, which boasts 10,000 attendees and was scheduled for October, was canceled in August, a month after its lineup was released. After a decade, Lucidity Festival is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Grateful Dead-themed Skull & Roses festival in Ventura canceled 10 days before its start date. Even Coachella, which reliably sold out for years, felt the pinch, with tickets moving more slowly than they had in a decade. And the trend extends outside of California — Float Fest in Austin was officially canceled just days before the event. According to a British trade association for independent music festivals, more than 50 UK festivals have been canceled or postponed in 2024.

Why have so many reputable events been folding? To understand the crisis facing the music festival circuit, SFGATE spoke to several promoters. The culprit, it turns out, isn’t as simple as inflation or a tight economy. Promoters faced a perfect storm of high hopes and terrible conditions — one that shattered a fragile equilibrium.
‘The business of risk’
To industry outsiders, the story of Sierra Nevada World Music Festival might sound risky. But for an independent promoter, throwing a music festival isn’t just risky business. Risk is the business. 
“I always joke that we’re professional gamblers,” said Amy Sheehan. “We are in the business of risk and we are well aware of that.” 

Sheehan co-owns Good Vibez Presents, the promoter behind California Roots in Monterey and several other West Coast music festivals. Small promoters, she explained, work on thin margins. They lack the robust financial war chests of their corporate competitors. Without the financial backing of cash-flush sponsors or generous donors, festivals rely on ticket sales, and occasionally loans, to pay bills as they go.  
“If independent promoters had to wait until they had all of their money to produce the festival, they would never do the festival,” Sheehan said. “That’s just not the way it works.”
Kabaka Pyramid performs at the 2024 California Roots festival.
Phil Emerson
Tickets aren’t small festivals’ only sources of revenue. Many also rely on merchandise, vendor booth fees and sponsorships. The proportion of nonticket revenue varies from promoter to promoter. Scotty Stoughton, founder of Bonfire Entertainment, told SFGATE that “success would be impossible” without sponsorship, food sales and merchandise. Chris Mitrovich, the booker behind the Skull & Roses Festival, told SFGATE that around 90% of his revenue comes from ticket sales. Getting sponsored isn’t always easy, he said: “It’s a huge crazy world of its own dealing with sponsorships.”

Festivals that rely heavily on ticket sales must budget based on projections: how many tickets they expect to sell based on past sales and the state of the market. It’s a mathematically-educated guess. If that math works out, they pay their bills. If it doesn’t, they go belly-up.
For years, that model could sustain small festivals. But for many California promoters, 2024 was the year when the numbers stopped adding up.

Commitment issues
When Good Vibez first introduced payment plans for festival tickets — the option to purchase tickets in several installments rather than paying up front — only “a handful” of attendees used them, Sheehan said. Last year, 70% of California Roots attendees purchased their tickets through a payment plan. In Sheehan’s words, it was “a massive jump.”

That figure is indicative of a broader trend. Whether because of economic pressures or changing preferences, fans are holding onto their money tighter and waiting until the last minute to commit to buying a ticket.
As a client success manager at the ticketing agency Tixr, Edwin Lopez works with several West Coast music festivals. Lopez told SFGATE that for some of the events he’s worked with this year, attendees were buying similar numbers of tickets to past years, but later than normal.
Coachella festival attendees with a cowboy aesthetic during Week 1.
Timothy Karoff/SFGATE

A large promoter like Goldenvoice (Coachella, Portola) has the financial cushion to withstand a delay in sales. But for independents, not all ticket sales are equal. Many small festivals rely on early-bird ticket sales to get the ball rolling on their expenses. Even a behemoth like Outside Lands offers discounted Eager Beaver tickets for those brave enough to buy before the lineup drops. (Another Planet Entertainment, the independent promoter behind Outside Lands, declined an interview request for this article.) To cover costs, some promoters have to bet on a 

“A lot of events had to withstand a little bit of the storm of not having that money up front,” Lopez said. Local California festivals that don’t have the budget to absorb those losses have “definitely suffered because of that,” he said.
This is the reason why Sierra Nevada World Music Festival couldn’t bank on gate tickets to pay the bills, Gaffney said: “There would have been no gates to walk up to. Because you have to pay all these things in advance. You have to pay the security, the stage, the lights, the toilets. And the cash wasn’t there. Because if you’re not [Live Nation] or Goldenvoice, you rely on ticket sales for money.”
Lopez noted that sluggish ticket sales were a national, not statewide trend, and that they were affecting the entire event industry, not just festivals. “All events that are happening are seeing similar challenges,” he said. “So it’s not just in the music festival world, it is a larger trend.”
Still, he suggested that California’s saturated music festival circuit may bear the brunt.

‘Inflation is f—king real’
Last year, Good Vibez paid $10,000 for portable toilets for California Roots Music and Arts Festival. This year, they expected a quote of $11,000, consistent with a typical year-to-year cost increase. Instead, the price for the same service as before rose to $16,000.
As costs of labor, gas and transportation go up, so do the price tags for amenities. Artist fees, lodging, hospitality, production and rentals all cost more. Sheehan said the cost of insuring the Lake Tahoe Reggae Festival has doubled over the last two years, even as the festival’s scope remains almost exactly the same. “Inflation is f—king real,” she said. 
At the same time, festivalgoers appear to be increasingly reluctant to buy tickets. Promoters are faced with a bind: raise prices and risk losing some fans, or attempt to push through with even thinner margins.

Faced with this bind, Stoughton of Bonfire Entertainment decided to opt out. A little over a month ago, he canceled 2025’s WinterWonderGrass Tahoe, an annual winter bluegrass festival at the Palisades Tahoe resort, citing “rising cost of doing business in Northern California” in an announcement. The costs have gone up, he said, but lodging has become especially expensive in the Tahoe area. Without a robust free bus system in place, he’s had to set one up for past events. Now, that’s become financially unfeasible.
Fans crowd the barrier at the 2024 California Roots festival.
Riley Kathleen
“I’m probably not the best businessperson, because I could raise prices….  But I can’t do that,” Stoughton told SFGATE. “I can’t in good conscience constantly say, ‘Well, let’s just pass it off to the consumer.’ I would rather just take a pause and reevaluate and see who comes to the table to help me subsidize in the future.”
Survival of the fittest
Two years ago, the outlook looked much, much brighter. COVID-19 lockdowns were ending. After spending a year and change cooped up, consumers were restless, eager to lay out their picnic blankets on patchy fairground lawns and day-drink to folk, funk, reggae and — what the hell, why not? — ska. As would-be festivalgoers got vaccine shots in their arms, it looked like the live music industry would get a shot in the arm of its own. 

Promoters saw an opening and jumped into the ring. “Coming out of the pandemic, everybody and their grandmother threw a festival,” Sheehan said. 
Lopez noticed the trend as well. “Everyone wanted to rush out and be outside in the world and do things, so there’s a big rush. 2021 and 2022 were pretty good.” 
If 2022 was any indication, 2023 was supposed to be a great year. 
2023 was not a great year. In fact, it was a bad year. That deluge of demand dried up, and California was suddenly left in the awkward position of having too many music festivals and not enough fans. When describing the festival circuit, a word that came up in several interviews was “oversaturated.” The bubble had popped.

“Post-COVID, there was a lot of pent-up demand and there was a lot of money out there,” Stoughton told SFGATE. “And now there’s not.” 
Before the pandemic, Skull & Roses drew around 1,500 attendees. In 2022, that number jumped to around 6,000, including gate crashers. “We weren’t prepared for the onslaught that came,” Mitrovich told SFGATE.
A baby Deadhead enjoys the music at the 2019 Skull and Roses festival.
Skull and Roses
In 2023, Mitrovich was prepared. He increased the festival’s capacity to 5,000 and budgeted accordingly. But two months after tickets went on sale, Phish announced a series of nearby shows for the same week. Jam band aficionados had a choice to make, and only 3,000 fans showed up to Skull and Roses. The festival went into debt.

In 2023, some festivals folded, and many of the survivors entered 2024 bruised and cautious. That year, Good Vibez lost money on two festivals. (“To be completely frank, it almost destroyed us,” Sheehan said. “We’re still climbing out of it.”) In a letter announcing the cancellation of the 2024 Skull and Roses festival, Mitrovich blamed the “financial devastation” of 2023’s event. 
“We were the first ones who came out and said, ‘F—k. We’re f—ked,’” Mitrovich said. “And then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of them did. This was a crucial time this year where everybody was finally willing to admit it — emperor’s got no clothes kind of thing, you know what I mean?”
The house always wins
The event industry is looking to the next summer with a mix of optimism and trepidation. Lopez said he could see an upswing on the horizon, but in the meantime, industry players would need to tighten their belts. Stoughton also expressed confidence that things would turn around, and that new, more efficient events would pop up to cater to “the discerning festivalgoer.”

Sheehan wasn’t so sure. Independents are going to have to “bob and weave” to survive, she said: “It’s kind of like survival of the fittest right now. Some festivals are going to go down and unfortunately never come back.”
Even in hard times, a few genuine success stories pepper the bleak festival landscape. Gaffney said that when the Reggae on the River festival, where she also works as a media coordinator, returned in August after a five-year hiatus, it was “gangbusters.” Good Vibez’s new line of Holo Holo festivals seem to do consistently well, Sheehan said, possibly due to their small scale. Among larger festivals, Goldenvoice’s Portola Festival has found its niche in a year where Coachella couldn’t, and sold out handily.
Mitrovich is planning the next Skull & Roses, this time with fewer frills and more emphasis on the music. To make things work, he’s considering a different ticketing model, one that relies on early sales and customer loyalty.
Rebelution performs at the 2024 California Roots festival.
Riley Kathleen
If small festival promoters are professional gamblers, then well-heeled, multinational bookers like AEG and Live Nation are the house they’re betting against. Coachella can weather a rough patch. Lucidity Festival cannot. Small promoters have to hold out hope that fans value intimate festivals enough to open up their wallets in the coming years. The house may always win, but that never stops the gamblers.

“People want what we offer,” Sheehan said. “They don't want the Coachellas of the world. They don't want the giant corporation, big sponsorship names, all of that.”
Stoughton had a more existential outlook.
“They’ll survive,” he said of the major festivals. “And the question is, will we?”