It's not just gig venues that are feeling the squeeze - it's festivals too. As the Guardian's Lanre Bakare has reported, nine festivals have been pulled for this summer already, and that number is only likely to rise as we move into spring.
Some are (hopefully) only going into temporary hibernation - Stanton Calling and, more disappointingly, Bluedot, no doubt still licking their wounds after the weather-induced carnage on site last year - but others won't be returning.
The article underlines the staggering increase in costs - up by around 30 to 40 per cent from pre-pandemic levels. The options for organisers are stark: put prices up to avoid shouldering the full burden of the increases, pre-emptively postpone or fold, or run the risk of racking up enormous losses.
Some will say that there are too many festivals anyway, and too many that are practically indistinguishable, so we could easily afford for a few to fall by the wayside. But when those include the likes of Bluedot - whose organisers have been assembling better line-ups year on year - then it's a real cause for concern.
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