A Festival for business

Each year festival season seems to get bigger and better, with this year’s Glastonbury a reminder of the scale of the business enterprise. Before you read on, have a guess at what are some of the biggest jobs for suppliers to the event.

According to The Guardian tickets to this weekend’s four-day extravaganza of music, mud and art were priced at £195 but still sold out in under four hours. The promoters turn over £28m from the event and it is also a crucial profit-driver for hundreds of businesses – from FTSE 100 giants to family-run cake stalls. Thousands of people are working quietly to ensure that the 150,000 revellers are fed, the toilets emptied and would-be fence-jumpers are kept out and the lights stay on.

The job of providing electricity alone has kept 75 employees been busy on site for a month or more. More than 250 generators have been set up to supply “every ounce” of power for the festival. “There’s enough electricity to power Bath,” says the firm’s manager. Alongside the power, the toilets are one of Glastonbury’s biggest costs: there are 4,800 toilets on site. “We’re talking more than £200,000 on toilets just for the general public,” says one provider. “Then there are the fancy ones backstage”. A team of almost 300 people are employed on toilet cleaning duty, and more than 20 plumbers are on site in case anything leaks. The cost of supplying the toilets is one of the reasons Glastonbury is taking a break next year, when demand for portable toilets will jump because of the Olympics.

The Olympics will also put an added strain on the country’s limited supply of temporary roads and fencing. 9,700 panels – almost 27km – of metal road has been painstakingly laid down since March at Glastonbury. The road panels alone are worth between £10m-£14m, and it takes 500 articulated lorries to deliver it. Then there’s a team of 40 people to erect Glastonbury’s 3.5-metre-high, £1m “super fence”.

There’s more here about the long term changes in the way festivals are marketed.