HUNGARY: Hungary's Sziget music festival too expensive for Hungarians due to financial crisis

Record ID: 726134

  • Title: HUNGARY: Hungary's Sziget music festival too expensive for Hungarians due to financial crisis
  • Date: 26th June 2009
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) BUDAPEST RESIDENT, SZIMONA MATE-KISS, SAYING: "I think the Sziget is far too expensive, it's not worth it, and it's not really clean either, so I will not spend any money on it this year." PEOPLE TALKING IN PUB (SOUNDBITE) (Hungarian) BUDAPEST RESIDENT, SZIMONA MATE-KISS, SAYING: "More and more of my friends give up the idea of going to the Sziget and instead choose other festivals and I would do the same if I had the time."
  • Embargoed: 11th July 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Hungary
  • Country: Hungary
  • Topics: Entertainment,Economic News
  • Reuters ID: LVABRPERREMDTM4RKSWEJ34TQLED
  • Story Text: Hungary's August Sziget music festival is seen as too expensive for Hungarians to attend as the global financial crisis bites.
    As the global financial crisis continues to bite, Hungary's Sziget music festival in August is being seen by some Hungarians as too expensive to attend.
    The seven-day Sziget festival has been running since 1993, when it started as a relatively low-profile student event but has grown to become Europe's third largest music event after Roskilde in Denmark and Glastonbury in the UK.
    However, this year as the economic crisis impacts on Hungarians, many say they simply cannot afford to buy even a day-pass let alone a weekly pass and will choose to go to cheaper music events held elsewhere.
    The average monthly take-home pay is around 400 euros (560 U.S. dollars). A week-long pass to Sziget costs 150 euros (210 U.S. dollars) and sleepover passes cost 180 euros (250 U.S. dollars).
    Sitting in a cafe in Budapest, resident Szimona Mate-Kiss said the high price for a day-ticket was a drawback.
    "I think the Sziget is far too expensive, it's not worth it, and it's not really clean either, so I will not spend any money on it this year," she said. "More and more of my friends give up the idea of going to the Sziget and instead choose other festivals and I would do the same if I had the time," Mate-Kiss added.
    It's a sentiment another resident, Daniel Palfi, agrees with.
    "The crisis has forced many Hungarian people to not buy a daily ticket for Sziget but to use the money, say, going to the Balaton to have a good time there. Out of that money they can get a four-day ticket including the motorway fee," he said.
    Sziget means 'island' in English. The festival runs from August 11-18 on the little island of Obudai-sziget (Old Buda Island).
    This year, with the thought that crowds might be thinner, the organisers of Sziget have tried to woo locals with deep discounts including reducing the ticket price by half for groups of 45 people.
    Unemployment in Hungary is near 10 percent, its highest in at least 13 years, and growing. Recession is also the steepest since the end of communism. The country hinges on a 25.1 billion U.S. dollar IMF loan package. Public sentiment is in an abyss.
    Sziget's financial director Gabor Takacs admits fewer Hungarians will come to this year's festival.
    "We are expecting that fewer Hungarians will come to the festival this year since they mostly buy daily tickets and not a weekly pass. As we have raised the price of the day tickets in recent years the number of Hungarian visitors has dropped. So we are expecting further a drop but it will probably not be a drastic one," Takacs said.
    Festivals outside the euro zone also got caught up in stormy currency fluctuations as well. The biggest expense, foreign headliners' fees - which can reach as much as 1 million USD - grew some 20 percent as the forint weakened this year, Takacs said.
    However, foreigners can afford more, he says. In the last few years, Hungarians have been outnumbered by French, German, Dutch and British tourists, whose home-grown events can be much costlier, especially including food and drinks.
    "Hungary is much cheaper for foreigners this year than last year when the euro was 234 forints and now it's around 280. So the whole country will be cheaper and so the stay in the Sziget will be cheaper for foreign visitors and we are actually bringing attention to this in our communications abroad," Takacs added.
    This year, however, Western tourists might also be slow to come. According to Hungary's statistical bureau KSH, foreign visits are down by a fifth so far in 2009.
    The Hungarian Tourism Board is expecting a five percent drop for the season, but Budapest will suffer disproportionately as domestic trips, a common holiday plan B, rarely target the capital.
    An established music festival typically receives less than 10 percent of its budget from sponsors, relying instead on ticket revenue and concessions. In Eastern Europe, only Sziget has reached that ratio. Other regional festivals sell tickets cheaper, and sponsors cover at least a quarter of the budget.
    But this year, even Sziget is not safe. Already some corporate sponsors, including Nokia and Magyar Telekom, have pulled out.
    A Nokia spokesperson declined to comment. Magyar Telekom said in a brief e-mailed statement that they would "focus on business communications" this year.
    The festival caters for many music genres - from rock, pop, world music and party. Among the headline acts this year are Snow Patrol, Primal Scream and Manic Street Preachers.
    The crisis is having an impact on other festivals as well Even among those that fill up months before opening day, there is an urgency. Glastonbury, Britain's largest festival with about 600,000 visitor days, managed to sell out by putting tickets on sale in October last year, to avoid falling behind rival events. According to spokesman Chris Aubrey, the last stubs this year were gone by April. Romania's B'esfest's says sponsors had also scaled back some budgets. For a festival which relies on corporate partners for over half its revenue, such cuts are painful.
    Among sponsors who are sticking with the festival market, brewers in general are keen: with the world's top four beer makers headquartered in Europe, the festival landscape is a patchwork of labels. Keld Strudahl, the global sponsorship director of Carlsberg, whose brands back festivals from Glastonbury in Britain to Exit in Serbia, says a festival is a natural environment for the drinking of beer.
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