Previously, Fest300 looked into why at least nine music festivals in the U.S. cancelled this year.  Now, we’re exploring why others survive. While we don't know the full story on why all the fests that canceled chose to do so this year, we'd like to salute the festivals that are doing their part to stay viable and sustainable, in their own respective ways. 

A Festival's Mission

Gasparilla Music Festival’s David Cox sighs when he thinks about BayFest. Alabama’s largest music festival took place in downtown Mobile every year for 20 years before canceling two weeks before its 2015 event. BayFest is another causality in a recent trend of festival cancellations in recent years; this season alone, nine U.S. music festivals suspended their events. Location, lineup, finances, and market saturation proved pivotal factors in festival failure rates. Conversely, though, creative business models and community mindfulness seem to be two ways other festivals are surviving.

Like BayFest before it, Gasparilla is a not-for-profit organization with a music festival as its focal point. This means Gasparilla’s income sources differ from major summer events like Coachella or Bonnaroo.

“We’re a non-profit, so we have a little bit of a different model. We’re guided by a mission statement and goals for the organization,” explains Cox, Executive Director of the Gasparilla Music Foundation. Staying profitable, he continues, “isn’t necessarily a driving force for us.”

That mission, established five years with the inception of the Gasparilla Music Foundation, involves becoming a sustainable community organization that benefits local businesses, food, economic development, music education, and more in the Tampa Bay area. And while Gasparilla hosts a number of other year-round programs, its annual weekend-long festival in the recently revitalized area around the riverfront is the primary event.

Cox also emphasizes the importance of learning from other festivals like BayFest, as well as from other industries, in order to actualize this festival. As a result, Gasparilla depends on a wide range of stakeholders like individual ticket buyers, members, sponsors, volunteers, and local institutions. They also generate a percentage of their money from public and private grants. “The more people we have buying into us,” intones Cox metaphorically, ethically, and financially, “the more we continue to grow.”

A Festival's Musical, Art and Speaker Lineups

Although Gasparilla is just a fledgling fest compared to its models like the Newport Folk Festival and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival , another Florida event has taken the non-profit approach and endured the ever-evolving market for more than 30 years. SunFest , which took place in West Palm Beach last weekend, began in 1983 as a community event to draw tourists. It has since evolved into a jazz festival, and within the past decade, into a general interest pop music festival encompassing 50 bands playing on three stages over the course of five days.

Executive Director Paul Jamieson recalls that during the most recent period of change, “We identified ourselves more as a community event.” Yet, he continues, “The community viewed us as a music festival...Our lineup was going to make or break us.”

When he and the SunFest team realized that music was the primary draw of their fest, they began to invest conceptually and monetarily in their lineup. In fact, SunFest has doubled its talent expense in the past three to four years, yielding headliners like this year’s slate of Duran Duran, Meghan Trainor, Jason Derulo, and Steve Aoki. ”Everything we do is about generating more revenue that we can turn around and spend on talent,” says Jamieson. “We call it ‘feeding the beast.’”

Revelers in What The Festival's famous Splash Pool. Photo by: Matt Hanna

Although focusing on just the lineup can be a slippery slope, and the "community" that Jamieson refers to is maintained by a symbiotic relationship between music, art and people. For Oregon-based What The Festival founder and producer, Tiffany Boyd, this balance is always on her mind and a key to building a complete experience. 

"Though we do focus heavily on the music, we also put a great deal of energy and budget behind the entire experience of our participants from start to finish," Boyd says. "The standard business model for the majority of music festivals in the U.S. has been to focus purely on the musical talent and infrastructure. While those are areas of high importance to What The Festival, we also do put a large percentage of budget toward art and experience and a big focus into our community."

The VIP Packages and Sponsors

Another way SunFest generates income is by upgrades and VIP programs. While a base ticket to the festival only cost $80 this year, the Club SunFest experience (including better viewing areas, restrooms, food, and drinks) began at $230, while the Ultimate All-Inclusive Gold Backstage Pass Package began at $3,200. According to Jamieson, upgrades like these have been a growing source of revenue for about five years now.

Bottlerock Napa is another festival that knows how to appeal to high rollers. Given the frothy nature of the Bay Area economic scene, it’s only natural that BottleRock would have generous VIP passes with great benefits. But what set this festival apart was the Platinum Pass that ranged from $2,500 to $3,000 a piece. The head of Bottlerock's production company Latitude 38, David Graham, elaborates, “You pull up. Get champagne. Front row seats. Get a massage. Get to meet the bands.” You can watch almost any band in the Platinum seating area which was basically a suite overlooking the stage with free food and drink flowing liberally.

VIP ticket holders watch Snoop Dogg side stage at Bottlerock Napa. Photo by: Brian DaMert

The finances of a music festival can be challenging and, just like with a sports arena, sometimes the way to get a venture into the black is to charge the well-off big-time for Platinum Passes or luxury boxes.

Sponsorship is a vital tactic enabling both of these Florida festivals to subsidize their events. But while Gasparilla tries to work with local business (like its three-year presenting sponsor Sykes Enterprises, which is an international outsourcing and consulting company headquartered in the area) for key support, SunFest’s stages—Ford Stage, Tire Kingdom Stage, and JetBlue Stage—are all named for the mega-corporations that help fund it.

A Festival's Creativity

Being a non-profit is not a swift guarantee for festival longevity or stability, though. Boise’s Treefort Music Festival, which just celebrated its fifth year in March, is yet another example of a fest that’s finding creative ways to establish itself in an industry teeming with large-scale musical events. Just last year, Treefort became the first music festival in the U.S. to be a B Corporation—which, according to its site, constitutes, “for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.”

Although the certification itself doesn’t provide Treefort with additional income, festival founder Drew Lorona believes that the designation helps validate the event’s diversity, methodology, and overall business practices.

“B Certification is one way (but definitely not the only way) that a festival can communicate its values to customers, its community, and the music industry,” writes Lorona. “For Treefort, we see it as giving our fans the assurance that when they trust us with their hard-earned cash, we're going to put on a great festival that doesn't just focus on the lineup but also tries to do the right thing.”

Treefort’s methods of generating revenue don’t drastically vary from those of other festivals. Its primary sources of income come from ticket sales, concessions, merchandise, and sponsorship. However, Lorona emphasizes not just the importance of selling tickets and festival passes, but also how Treefort chooses to price itself. “Most people familiar with the national festival landscape know how relatively affordable Treefort is. But Boise being a small and growing city, it was our priority to keep ticket prices where locals felt like they weren't getting priced out of their own festival,” he writes. “As a result when we do raise prices, the increase is commensurate with the increased cost of doing business or to add more features to the festival.”

Although Treefort has increased its revenue over its five years, the fest is not yet self-sustaining. However, it is continuing to grow, attract local partnerships and national attention, and its B Corporation certification and commitment to the local scene are two important elements that are helping it to do so.

The Common Threads

The key element uniting these four festivals – and many more like them – is a sense of community derived jointly from patrons, businesses and entrepreneurs, sponsors, grant-giving entities, and civic representatives. Each fest incorporates a broad range of musical genres in order to appeal to as many people as possible. And finally, each makes an effort to stay in tune with its communities and constituents in order to adapt with their interests.

Back in South Florida gearing up for the 33rd SunFest, Jamieson summarizes, “Long-running festivals have learned to balance out the business versus the passion for the music versus the changes in the industry.”