The crisis engulfing Australia’s festival scene has claimed another victim with the cancellation of NSW’s Return to Rio.
Organisers of the boutique funk, soul and house event, which was first held in 2013, have pulled the plug on the 2024 edition, citing a 529% rise in police and medical costs amounting to A$300,000 (€183,370) as a result of new laws.
In NSW since 2019, festivals considered high-risk or “subject” events need to submit a safety management plan – usually requiring a bigger police and medical presence – and Return to Rio was considered a subject festival under the regulations.
“It’s devastating,” co-founder Alex Cooper, who runs the event with her husband Ricky, tells the Sydney Morning Herald. “There needs to be more done for the industry to survive. It’s just financially unviable.”
“For a few thousand people, we had to have a policeman, a medic, a security guard, a member of the production team, a member of the bar team and they had to stay in the central control room all day.
“In Victoria and the ACT, they don’t have this problem. In Queensland, they don’t have this problem. The rest of the world, they don’t have this problem. And we didn’t have the problem before 2019.”
Return to Rio organisers say they would have needed to raise ticket prices by about $100 to cover costs for 2024
More than 40 Australian music festivals have also been cancelled, postponed, or evacuated due to heat, fires, rain or floods over the past decade, including more than 20 in 2022 alone. More than one-third of festivals in the country lost money in the 2022-2023 financial year, according to a recent report from Creative Australia.
High-profile NSW festivals Splendour in the Grass, Groovin the Moo and Falls are all taking a break for 2024, while it was recently claimed that NSW police were charging some organisers up to 12 times that of Victoria.
The Coopers, who hope that Return to Rio will be able to come back next year, say they would have needed to raise ticket prices by about $100 to cover costs for 2024, which would have led to a “massive drop off in our expected numbers”.
A review of the Music Festivals Act, commissioned by the NSW Labor government last year, is still ongoing.
“We’re really starting to push into the next festival season,” says Australian Festivals Association head Mitch Wilson. “Organisers make all their plans six, nine, 12 months out.”
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