Rather unsurprisingly, a YouGov poll of today’s often-gentrified festival scene has discovered that more and more people – those older ones, of course - want a more luxurious festival experience, to the extent that 63% of this summer’s festival goers - or more correctly: of those polled by YouGov - were put off going to another because of the lack of comfort and hygiene.
We guess it comes as shock to some attendees to find out that summer festivals happen outdoors, in fields, in the countryside, and away from the luxuries of home. Once festivals crack how people can experience a festival from the comfort of their living room then we guess a rosy future is assured … or not. TV was invented a long time ago, and TV is not the festival experience.
In the days when a senior politician friend of the prime minister can be found (unfortunately, dead) having spent the night in a festival portable toilet it’s clear that the anti-establishment origins of festivals have long since passed, and that a growing part of today’s audience is from the safe, unexciting and unchallenging middle-ground of music … and a glance at the more-mainstreaming of the line-ups over the years of the largest festivals confirms that.
They want extra comfort; they want extra safety; they want convenient car parking; and most of all they want a good night’s sleep.
For more details of the YouGov poll see here.
Thankfully, as many festivals join this race to the bottom – and oblivion, or at least boredom, by their own safe choices – there’s still some events that cater almost exclusively for the drive and energy of the under 30s and don’t pander to the unnecessary wants of the staid and boring, or even provide a musical line-up that is familiar to many … but you probably won’t find these filling the pages of your daily right-wing newspaper or being polled by YouGov.