UK: Wheels and Fins Festival, the annual music and action sports beachside weekender, will be totally cashless for the first time this year. The seventh annual Wheels and Fins Festival is introducing new cloud-based cashless technology to help reduce queuing times and improve security for 2019. Wheels and Fins have partnered with event payment platform TicketCo to provide a ‘digital wallet’ for visitors to the two-day gathering at Joss Bay in Kent. The festival is expecting a 10,000-strong crowd over two days. Previous headliners at the popular independent event, which mixes music with surfing and skateboarding, have included Faithless, the…
Author: Festival Insights
UK: Organisers of the International Live Music Conference (ILMC) have revealed its conference programme for 2019. With 30% more sessions than any previous edition of ILMC, topics range from ticketing, agency, investment and management to diversity, streaming, digital marketing, new technology and more. “This year’s ILMC agenda features more sessions, more speakers and more topics,” said conference head Greg Parmley. “From our keynote interview with Roger Daltrey, to the most immediate issues in the international business and the launch of the new Futures Forum day for young professionals, it’s a packed schedule.” A committee of over 100 professionals worldwide helps…
UK: Festicket, the world’s largest platform for music festival experiences, has received $4.6 million in funding from creative specialists, Edge Investments. Edge’s investment follows a pivotal year for Festicket, which closed the year with an earlier Series D funding round led by transatlantic venture capital firm Beringea. Festicket partners with festivals to provide travel packages that combine tickets, accommodation and transfers in one complete package for prospective attendees. The company has four additional offices alongside its London HQ – in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Berlin and Porto – and has worked with more than 2.5 million customers, over 1,200 festivals and…
FRANCE: RFID specialist PlayPass has acquired Yuflow, a pioneering French cashless payments provider to the live events sector, as part of its global expansion drive. Lyon-based Yuflow was founded in 2014 by Martin Rigot-Muller and Jean-Alexandre Janoray, and has processed more than 2 million visitors at over 200 events with its cashless payments solution using NFC wristbands. The two co-founders will remain at the helm of Yuflow, which will keep its name and identity, operating as an independent subsidiary that will now use PlayPass’ technology. David de Wever, CEO of PlayPass, explained: “Yuflow has established strong commercial and operational footprints…
Dave Cooper is an environmental activist, food vendor, and organiser of Kentucky’s Whippoorwill Festival. I operated a food stall at a small music festival in Kentucky a couple of summers ago. My food costs were just over $400. After two days of preparation and two days of vending, I had reclaimed just $95. Food vending can be a tough business, and festival organisers should endeavour to understand the difficulties that vendors face before they start booking them for their event. After all, having happy food vendors means good food and happy attendees. My unsuccessful food vending experience was mostly due…
MALAYSIA: The Rainforest World Music Festival in Kuching, Malaysia, is renowned for placing grassroots Malaysian world music on the same stage as well known stars. During each afternoon, cultural workshops take place combined with lectures on ethno-musical topics, jamming sessions and breakout gigs, and then in the evening the main performances hit two stages erected by Kuching-based rental company Projection House. Kevin Phua has been a key figure at Projection House throughout its 18-year existence, and for the past four years has deployed the d&b V-Series at the festival. This year the Jungle Stage and the Tree Stage were once…
UK: Energy Revolution, the sustainability charity helping to tackle the environmental impact from fossil fuel travel to events, has partnered with the Solar for Schools project. In 2018, Energy Revolution helped its members – encompassing festivals, suppliers and touring artists – to balance or ‘offset’ the carbon emissions from over three million average car miles – the equivalent of 962,274 kg CO2e. One hundred percent of balancing donations from 2018 will to go to Solar for Schools, an initiative that puts solar panels on the roofs of schools in the UK, allowing them to produce low-cost clean electricity while also…
NETHERLANDS: International not-for-profit organisation A Greener Festival (AGF) has announced the 35 recipients of its eponymous Awards for 2018. Festivals and events from 14 countries achieved the prestigious accolade in 2018, which is awarded to those events and festivals that have demonstrated conscientiousness with regards to sustainability and a reduction in environmental impacts in 11 areas including transport, waste, power, water, and the local area. Applicants undergo a rigorous assessment, site visit and post-event analysis of their event’s sustainability actions. The awards ceremony was held at Eurosonic Noorderslag, Netherlands on January 18 2019. AGF Directors Ben Challis, Claire O’Neill and…
UK: RAW Bottles has become the exclusive reusable bottle supplier to the Association of Independent Festivals (AIF). The partnership is part of AIF’s Drastic On Plastic campaign, launched on Earth Day 2018, to reduce pointless plastic and waste at AIF events. It saw 60 independent festivals pledge to eliminate single-use plastics on their sites by 2021. RAW Bottles is the sister company to RAW Foundation, the charity that partnered with AIF on the Drastic On Plastic campaign. RAW is ‘on a mission to free the world from pointless plastic’ and its founder Melinda Watson is currently on a four-month overland…
FRANCE: Weezevent has appointed Oliver Goddard as its new UK Country Manager, in a move to further develop the company’s ticketing, RFID access control, and cashless solutions beyond French borders. As the former Head of Ticketing, Touring and Festivals at Broadwick Live, Goddard has a strong background in the English festival industry. Overseeing the Global / Broadwick Live portfolio of 16 festivals, as well as the 5,000-cap Printworks venue, he worked closely with the teams responsible for these events and developed an extensive knowledge of the field. Active in the Live Event industry for over 11 years, he had previously…