The success of small festivals

In France, nearly 1500 festivals are organized every year and a hundred of them receive more than 15,000 festival-goers. The success of small festivals is just like that of the largest, with record ticket sales, sometimes sold out several weeks before the event.

A phenomenal success

According to the site “All Festivals”, the year 2019 did not escape the strong increase in the number of festival-goers. Indeed, no less than 7.5 million festival-goers found themselves in the biggest festivals in France. Thus, the equivalent of 12% of the French population visited music festivals this summer, or almost 1 French person out of 9. A significant increase since the attendance of festival-goers increased by 5% compared to 2018 and by 10% compared to 2017.

In 2019 the”Lorient Interceltic Festival” welcomed the largest number of festival-goers in total, 800,000 and 80,000 per day.

Small festivals are not to be outdone, here are four striking examples:

Pete the Monkey in Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer (Haute-Normandie) brought together a total of 15,000 festival-goers during its 8th edition in July 2019.

The Festival of Square Nights in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) brought together 5,500 participants in 2019. We highlight here a clear increase compared to 2018, when there were 4000 participants in 2014.

In 2019, for its fourth edition, the lyons Street Food Festival welcomed 30,000 gourmands to enjoy dishes from around the world. This year, 80 chefs came from all over the world, for 150 cultural workshops and 110,000 servings served

Finally, to close these 4 examples, the festival of Asian cultures Japan Matsuri from Montpellier attracted nearly 240,000 curious and passionate about Japanese culture for its 20th anniversary. A new record for the organizers.

Behind the success of small festivals

La French Federation of Music Festivals and Performing Arts notes that the success of small festivals is in part based on the birth of a community around the event. Indeed, festival-goers establish a particular relationship with their favorite event. They are proud to participate and contribute to growing success. As a result, an entire community is built and maintained to make the event a success.

In addition, by relying on strong identities, solidarity or simply joyful reasons, festivals are unifying and unifying. Thus, Jean-Pierre Roland, director of Les Eurockde Belfort, states in Le Parisien that “the successes (of the festivals) of this summer reflect the preciousness of our events in a slightly troubled society. There is almost an activist side.” An intuition confirmed in the latest report of Live barometer.

An effective strategy

It should be noted that festivals also owe their success to a exclusivity effect. Thanks to the limitation of the number of tickets available, organizers can generate a buzz, a strong attractiveness, around the online sale of their tickets.

It can be seen that the small festivals are inspired by the big ones and are redoubling their efforts to tempt their participants:

• Progressive announcement of artists and animations,
• Teasing on the date when the tickets will be put online,
• Communication around the number of tickets available,
• Sale of different types of passes including goodies and special accesses...

Thanks to sustained communication on social networks, the Festival Crossover de Nice succeeded in making it sold out on a majority of its evenings.

Online ticketing at the service of all festivals

As we said, dematerialized ticketing is playing an increasingly important role in ticket sales. Today, regardless of the size and theme of their event, organizers can easily use an online ticketing solution.

They thus have access to numerous services : mini-site and sales widget, invitations, control application, or even a cashless system. In addition, they can easily multiply their distribution channels using the various tools mentioned above.

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Discover Wilout, the self-service online ticketing system for all organizers.