When I first heard about the Pickering festival I thought the organisers were brave to put on so many top acts at a new festival and wished them well in a thread somewhere in this place. I wouldn't, for commercial reasons, have pitched it on the same w/e as Saltburn but in all probability it would have drawn some new people in, anyway, difficult one to assess really.
The weather was foul, bloody awful, for an established festival they might have got away with it but for something new there would have been too many unknowns, a logistical nightmare and a lot of extremely disgruntled, wet, miserable punters to deal with. One might have suspected they had a "wet weather plan" (what in August!)but I doubt if that stretched to a "flood plan" and if it didn't flood there was an exceedingly strong chance that it would, the Vale of Pickering was an inland sea and is as flat as a pancake and the water doesn't run anywhere at any sort of pace.
Having dealt with all that, the ticket sales are of relevance to the knockers in an "I told you so" sort of way and to the organisers who will hopefully come back next year having learnt a lot and not been put off with the experience.
There are concerns in this place about whether this festival was solely for personal gain, well events need to make money to succeed and if everyone grafting was to be paid, from artists to lavatory cleaners it ain't cheap if I wanted to make money I would have put a few rock bands on and filled the place with screaming teenagers and got sponsorship from the record labels ( do teenagers scream these days, oh dear, I am so out of touch)
Anyway to the organisers, give it another go, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and maybe work a bit harder to get more people on board.
See you all on next years thread!