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The Variety Bazaar


JoeyT
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13 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Some ideas for the possible site here...

http://www.somersetlive.co.uk/glastonbury-festival-variety-bazaar-potential-sites-respond-to-eavis-interview/story-30068575-detail/story.html

... tho with each of them ruling themselves out ... apart from the Bathurst estate/Cirencester Park.

15,000 acres. Christ. Even if they only get 10% of the space, 1,500 acres is still a huge amount more than the current festival. They could do something really special with that as a blank canvas. To me, VB would need two key elements to have a chance of retaining meaningful link to the Glastonbury spirit

1. No camping/arena set up - everyone inside, BYOB

2. Keep it a 5 day event.

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I do love a good old Michael Eavis interview, you never know what he is going to say. and if what he says is actually what is going on , or just saying things to get a reaction from the Land owners.  You can picture Emily with her head in her hands every time Michael strolls off to do an interview. 

 

 

it's like that Uncle you have who comes out at Christmas and rattle son with stories that in the back of your head you are screaming, "you can't say that"

God Bless the Eavis

Edited by shuttlep
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4 hours ago, Respectfatfrog said:

the only issue with announcing its the last one would be crowd trouble people would want to say bye weather they had a ticket or not and the fence would come down im sure the police would advise not to announce until after.

I think you over-estimate how many people care that much about the festival (at least that don't already have tickets). 

4 hours ago, Tartan_Glasto said:

If it is down to money then I can't help but think a very small increase in ticket price would cover this? I may be being very naive.

With 135,000 tickets sold. Add £10 on for example. This is an additional £1,350,000 which split between 22 land owners is an additional £61k each per year.

Then you're in the same scenario whenever the next renewal is unless there's a viable alternative.

If you start looking at Glastonbury as a business, that aims to still be around in 10/20/30 years' time, rather than Michael Eavis' hobby, then this all makes loads of sense.

It's not necessarily about specifics with landowners demanding more, or Emily wanting to do something different. Or even the issues with weather last year (and honestly I think we were far closer to Glastonbury having to kick in some emergency plan than people realise). But if your business is running a single event with significant risk associated with it, and you have some money available to invest, any business advisor will have a single suggestion: diversify. You don't keep spending that money on even more drainage and keeping other landowners happy. You spend the money on setting up an entirely separate income stream. Because then you have redundancy, if the first event fails for any reason, you remain in business and people still have a job. And you don't have to sell out to some greedy investor either.

Also by running a festival on a new site, they prove their ability to create a festival elsewhere - they demonstrate that they're capable of creating festivals. Not just running a festival on Worthy Farm. Which is a somewhat different thing.

They're not going to want to drop the Worthy Farm festival, because that then puts them in the same position again - of being dependent on a single event.

Once the new festival is established, there's no reason Glastonbury couldn't run both festivals annually. Sure, it'd need more people, but it wouldn't need twice as many people. So much of what you're doing is the same. I struggle to see a scenario where that isn't their ideal outcome. That they're looking at a new festival demonstrates Emily is interested in actually keeping Glastonbury Festival Limited as an ongoing concern. I'd be more worried if they just carried on as usual because that would suggest an attitude of "ah well, if it gets impossible to run it here we'll just pack it all in".

Crucially, I doubt they know what they're doing yet. They won't have to make a call on 2020 until after this years' festival at the earliest. Whether to plan for a festival on the farm, or plan to do the new one again. Of course, with the latter option they'll need a plan to weather another potential fallow year if 2019 doesn't go to plan. So it may depend on how much money they have left over after this year's festival. Which is why I think a festival at Worthy in 2020 is very likely. Any choice on what happens after that will depend entirely on how 2019 goes: did it sell, was it a success, how much time and effort did it take and so on. And I think at that point they'll make a choice on what to do in 2021 - which could be running either festival, or both.

TLDR: this is perfectly normal behaviour for a business. It's crazy not to have a backup plan for if there are issues with Worthy Farm, and that backup plan can't just be "move it". They need a new income stream that's independent from Glastonbury.

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14 minutes ago, Cooter said:

There was actually an announcement from Mike on the Sunday evening last year, there are a million other songs he could have sung........

 

 

 

eta...or was that Saturday evening?

He did This Could Be The Last Time in 2014.

Edited by DeanoL
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5 hours ago, eFestivals said:

yup, that's my take too, with a subtext of a threat of the festival being taken away from those required Pilton landowners if they won't commit to realistic rental prices.

And that's probably in the context that Emily and the team would rather look at a new location than have to deal with 22 increasingly difficult landowners. The negotiations for land sounds like something Michael handles personally, and it strikes me that all this talk of a change of location is tying in with his previous decision to wind down involvement from 2020.

Michael will stop handling his neighbours, Emily doesn't want that headache, so they're looking to uproot to somewhere else.

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33 minutes ago, Pinhead said:

It pisses me off though that they are not prepared to fight for it as much as they did back in 2001 when the future of the festival looked to be in serious doubt.

I think they are. But they're fighting for the long term. Not just for the next festival. 

I know it sounds backwards but the best position Glastonbury (the company) can be in for running Glastonbury (the festival) is to be able to survive without having to run Glastonbury (the festival).

If your entire company has a single point of failure then it's always going to be vulnerable, and those who can trigger that failure are essentially in a ridiculously powerful position over you

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45 minutes ago, Pinhead said:

It pisses me off though that they are not prepared to fight for it as much as they did back in 2001 when the future of the festival looked to be in serious doubt.

But aren't you getting pissed off about what *might* be happening based on what people are saying on eFests (always dangerous) rather than what the Eavii are *actually* doing (which you don't know)?

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For what it's worth, Michael genuinely does say things completely wrong. He told me in 2015 Van Morrison was playing and even told me the slot... he never played that year but went on to play the Extravaganza... Might have changed but things he says may also be wrong/misleading deliberately. He talks in a very 'loose' way.

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15 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I think they are. But they're fighting for the long term. Not just for the next festival. 

I know it sounds backwards but the best position Glastonbury (the company) can be in for running Glastonbury (the festival) is to be able to survive without having to run Glastonbury (the festival).

If your entire company has a single point of failure then it's always going to be vulnerable, and those who can trigger that failure are essentially in a ridiculously powerful position over you

So you reckon by doing this... Bizarre thing.... A he.. The company.. Will be making money in a fallow year and B being able to turn to the other 22 landowners and showing them that they CAN do the festival elsewhere..... Hence taking some of that power away......... 

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1 hour ago, Waapster said:

But aren't you getting pissed off about what *might* be happening based on what people are saying on eFests (always dangerous) rather than what the Eavii are *actually* doing (which you don't know)?

This. Other than "the word in the village", there doesn't seem to be much actual evidence of anyone giving up on Worthy Farm. At least no more than when Longleat was going to be a thing.

As for taking "remain at Worthy Farm" to mean Glastonbury is finishing, well I suppose it's possible, but that's a hell of a stretch.

There's been talk of an alternate site for ages now. The only thing that's changed is that we know they won't try to pretend it's Glastonbury, but held somewhere else.

What am I missing that's causing all these premature obituaries?

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3 hours ago, Pinhead said:

It pisses me off though that they are not prepared to fight for it as much as they did back in 2001 when the future of the festival looked to be in serious doubt.

 

Agree, but sadly I think it's ME (the fighter) that's thinking of throwing the towel in after so many successful years and then passing on the fight to EE who can't be bothered to fight for everything the festival stands for, let alone the festival itself.

Edited by Cooter
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9 hours ago, stuartbert two hats said:

What am I missing that's causing all these premature obituaries?

There's been no statement about GF continuing, only that GF's home is worthy farm.

There's been lots of statements about the difficulties of those landowners, with Michael just having added that he doesn't think Emily wants the hassle.

I know that Michael is rather keen to return the farm to (just) a working farm - it's what he regards as his legacy - and I also know that Emily is keen for GF to continue at the farm. But that continuation isn't something within her control, as it needs those landowners to allow the use of their land and at a reasonable price.

I take all this stuff about a new festival as part of a game of chicken with those landowners (while also being an honest intention to start another fest), so how it pans out we've yet to see. 

But I don't think it's impossible that no agreement will be reached with those landowners. They're just as likely to think it's a game of chicken as anyone else, while some also wouldn't be sad if the festival ended.

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10 hours ago, Cooter said:

EE who can't be bothered to fight for everything the festival stands for, let alone the festival itself.

That's a bit harsh! We don't know what's going on in the background but to say EE can't be bothered to fight for the festival is a bit out of order. She's devoted her adult life to it!

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29 minutes ago, Keithy said:

That's a bit harsh! We don't know what's going on in the background but to say EE can't be bothered to fight for the festival is a bit out of order. She's devoted her adult life to it!

And she's the one that rolled back the corporate branding at the start of the century.  She's also created The Park and been running the operations of the festival for a few years now.

What more does she have to do to prove she cares about "what the festival stands for"?  Grow a moustacheless beard?

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Of course EE has been instrumental in Glastonbury's recent history since she became increasingly involved and has added many important and positive elements in that time. Its my belief however that she is now focussing on her entertainment management and creative interests outside of Glastonbury Festival, repositioning GFL as GFEL, and looking towards a future of running a pantheon of different festivals and events without the associated hassle of using the Pilton site, which likely due to family constraints as much as uncooperative landowners, has become less viable.

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2 minutes ago, Pinhead said:

Of course EE has been instrumental in Glastonbury's recent history since she became increasingly involved and has added many important and positive elements in that time. Its my belief however that she is now focussing on her entertainment management and creative interests outside of Glastonbury Festival, repositioning GFL as GFEL, and looking towards a future of running a pantheon of different festivals and events without the associated hassle of using the Pilton site, which likely due to family constraints as much as uncooperative landowners, has become less viable.

My take of Emily says you couldn't be further away from what she's about.

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Heh - yeah I suppose ultimately the lesson is here that it helps to ask the person rather than speculate about their intentions. "plenty more we hope" - we all hope very much too Emily - very much indeed...

And hopefully at Pilton ;)

Edited by Pinhead
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2 hours ago, eFestivals said:

There's been no statement about GF continuing, only that GF's home is worthy farm.

There's been lots of statements about the difficulties of those landowners, with Michael just having added that he doesn't think Emily wants the hassle.

I know that Michael is rather keen to return the farm to (just) a working farm - it's what he regards as his legacy - and I also know that Emily is keen for GF to continue at the farm. But that continuation isn't something within her control, as it needs those landowners to allow the use of their land and at a reasonable price.

I take all this stuff about a new festival as part of a game of chicken with those landowners (while also being an honest intention to start another fest), so how it pans out we've yet to see. 

But I don't think it's impossible that no agreement will be reached with those landowners. They're just as likely to think it's a game of chicken as anyone else, while some also wouldn't be sad if the festival ended.

Neil do you think the weight of worthy farm and its legacy ever gets too much or do they embrace it?

stupid question I know

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16 minutes ago, Funkyfairy! said:

I tweeted Emily - and she responded :-)

me - Is 2017 potentially the last Glastonbury - historically its heart will always be Worthy farm

Emilys response - no not at all. There will be plenty more we hope !

(2 minutes ago :-)

 

 

 

which only makes clear it's far from certain. ;)

I *KNOW* Emily wants to continue at the farm, but whether its possible to do that is something else entirely.

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