Weather Changes Pose a Threat to Australian Festivals: Report

A Green Music Australia survey suggests that 85% of the country’s festival-goers attended events affected by extreme weather in the past year.

If it’s seemed like unfavorable weather has recently sidelined a number of your favorite festivals, rest assured that’s not your imagination. In Australia, at least, 85% of festival-goers have attended an event affected by such factors in the past year, according to a Green Music Australia report.

Titled Rain, Heat, Repeat: How Music Fans are Experiencing Extreme Weather, it cites surveys conducted by researchers at RMIT and La Trobe University in Melbourne. Their findings indicate that 85% of participants attended a live music event personally experienced extreme weather while there.

In fairness, the footnotes of the report mention that no definition of “extreme weather” was provided — but other data supports the dire picture it paints. It says that 68% of the individuals surveyed experienced extreme heat at a festival in the same time frame, with 45% reporting having experienced heavy rain. Perhaps most importantly, it notes that 29% of festival-goers said they check the weather forecast before buying festival tickets, meaning that they wait longer before making their purchases.

“The normal way the festival industry does business relies on a certain number of tickets to be sold early and often,” said RMIT Associate Professor Catherine Strong Strong, according to The Guardian. “People are now getting cautious enough about the weather that they’re starting to leave their ticket buying to the point where they can meaningfully look at a weather forecast, and this in turn affects how festivals can assess whether or not they are viable… and for a lot of them, that’s just not practical. A late cancellation means having to pay artists more for their cancellation fees, and it drives insurance costs up even more.”

Read the report in its entirety, and visit the Green Music Australia website to learn more about the organization’s proposed solutions.

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