Unfortunately for those excited about the new Karoondinha Festival, the festival has been cancelled. Planned to have its first weekend take place over July 20-23, the multi stage, three day festival did not meet expected ticket sales and could no longer afford to operate.
Karoodinha’s social media accounts vanished and the website had been turned into an apology letter Tuesday morning. Billboard spoke with festival organizers Kaleena and Paul Rallis about Karoondinha, explaining why the festival can longer run:
“I think what we’ve learned in all of this is that the key part of putting on a successful festival is having a sustainable business model, which we obviously didn’t have going into this…The way this was structured in terms of its scale and projections was not sustainable.”
With an original expected attendance of 30,000 people, demand was nowhere to be found thus causing the collapse in appropriate funding. Sponsorship sales didn’t meet expectations either; sponsorship teams were paid $15,000 a month plus commission on anything sold. Despite having raise over $5 million from local investors, marketing, publicity, and site preparation costs posed a challenge for the organizers.
With artists such as Chance the Rapper and John Legend booked, artist fees may have also been extremely high as well. Keith Shackleford of Paradigm had booked Porter Robinson and Odesza for the festival, but had expected something fishy when his calls started to be ignored.
Fans who did happen to purchase tickets shouldn’t stress, as Eventbrite and Karoondinha are working closely to get refunds back to prospective festival goers:
” We care deeply about the experience people have with Eventbrite and go to great lengths to ensure all customers are treated fairly when an event is cancelled or significantly changed. We have been in communication with the organizers of Karoondinha, which has been postponed. We will work closely with them to process refunds as quickly as possible for those interested in cancelling their orders. Details on timeframe to follow.”
