Survey: 82% Ready To Return To Live Events After Lockdown

It’s a question many promoters are worrying about in the current shutdown of the world economy: how comfortable will festivalgoers feel about returning to live events, once the lockdown has been lifted?

To find an answer, Festicket surveyed 110,000 festivalgoers from countries including the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

The survey found that 82% of fans would feel confident attending a festival within one to six months post lockdown. Within that group, 66% would feel confident enough to attend within one to three months, while 30% would happily do so immediately after lockdown is lifted. 

Unsurprisingly, one-day festivals top the list of events that fans will return to first, still, just under 70% said they’d happily go to a weekend festival.

59.5% of people said they would feel confident attending both domestic and international music events next year.

75% of respondents said they’d feel confident booking a festival ticket for next year within the next two months. As many European promoters have been experiencing, fans are happy to hold on to their 2020 tickets if validated for next year.

Their spending abilities don’t seem to have been affected too much by the current crisis, with 34% saying they’ll spend between €250-€500, while another 24% said they’ll spend more than €500 next season.

According to a summary of Festickets’ findings, “festival-goers do expect live events to introduce a number of extra measures when they do return, including clearly communicating health and safety measures in advance, setting up hand sanitising stations, operating at a reduced capacity, and offering free cancellation on tickets.”

82% of festival-goers said “free cancellation would be a key consideration when booking future events,” which is why Festicket recently introduced its FlexTicket initiative to mitigate the uncertainty over the state of events in the coming months.

60% of those surveyed said they watched at least one live stream during lockdown, a further 58% said they’d happily pay to watch a live stream, either via a typical ticket or by donation. 

Festicket’s marketing director Luis Sousa commented, “Despite all the current uncertainty, it’s reassuring to see a high percentage of festival-goers have a positive outlook for the live events industry, backed up by over 75% saying they’d feel comfortable booking events for 2021.”