Decline of nightclubs feeding demand for festivals – event organiser

The decline of the nightclub scene is helping to boost demand for music festivals, the founder of an award-winning event has said.

James Ralls helped launch the Victorious Festival in Portsmouth in 2012 when it was a modestly sized event held at the Hampshire city’s historic dockyard.

The event moved to Southsea Common two years later, where it has expanded in size and ambition, with headline acts including Sam Fender, Mumford and Sons and Jamiroquai.

Last year’s top acts, Biffy Clyro, Snow Patrol, Jamie T and Fatboy Slim, helped the event win the major festival of the year category at the Live Awards 2024.

Mr Ralls said the success of regional festivals such as Victorious showed a changing dynamic with fewer people regularly going to nightclubs and people of all ages seeking alternatives to the often sold-out major events such as Glastonbury and Reading and Leeds.

Victorious has grown from about 40,000 people attending in 2013 to around 170,000 last year.

The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) released data last year showing 37% of nightclubs had closed across the UK since March 2020.

Mr Ralls said: “Traditionally you’ve had nightclubs, but with the loss of some of the night-time economy, people are going out to festivals as an alternative.”

He added: “The scene has definitely changed, I think some of the big players are still big but the independent festival sector has grown massively.

“Since Covid, we’ve lost a lot of festivals, but there’s still many more festivals than there were.

“There’s still much more options for people to go to. People are expecting more of a product than they were, you can’t just stick a band on a stage and expect them to run to buy tickets.

“They’re expecting decent food, decent toilets, not massive queues, easy to get in as well as other entertainment, comedy, the list is endless.

“The metropolitan festivals like us have taken off, it seems like every field in London has a festival now at some point in the year.”

He said there is now demand from multiple generations for festivals, with not only young people attending, but their parents wanting to carry on enjoying the events.

Mr Ralls said city centre festivals also help attract children and their parents because their closeness removes the need for camping, with Victorious only providing camping for about 10% of those attending.

He added that some families treat smaller festivals as a “training ground” for youngsters attending their first events.

He said: “If you’ve got a kid and it’s their first festival, you’re going to be a bit nervous about throwing them into a festival (which) might be a bit of a step too far.

“But I think they are coming here and seeing that festivals are safe and then they go on to some of the big festivals.”

Mr Ralls said one of the biggest challenges in organising festivals is the demand from social media-savvy youngsters looking for an “immersive” experience beyond just seeing headline acts.

He said: “We’ve still got a lot of good content, but I think you’re going to need more content, better content, better produced content.

“They want to feel engaged by it, they just don’t want to come see a band, they want to see, they want to be part of the story of things, so there’s a lot of immersive things that are coming down the pipeline.”

Describing his own personal highlight, he said: “I love the headliners, when the field is full, I’m always like, ‘This is amazing’.

“It feels the same every time. Although we’ve been doing this for years, we’ve only done 30 of those days in all those years so it feels crazy every time – that’s great.”

Victorious Festival will be held over the August Bank Holiday weekend with headliners Queens of the Stone Age, Kings of Leon and Vampire Weekend.