Music Festival Outsourcing Support Services.

This year has been a huge challenge for the music festival sector with multiple factors impacting on organisers. Every week there seems to be news of yet another festival cancellation, can festival organisers outsource some services to help mitigate challenges and avoid future cancellations?

As the world emerged from the coronavirus pandemic with a positive outlook for the future it immediately faced new challenges with rising prices, supply chain issues, labour shortages and a raging war in Europe. The impact on festival organisers has been severe with very few events expected to make any money in 2022. Most music festivals run on a skeleton staff to plan and organise every aspect of their festival and this can lead to budget overspends and logistical issues. With a wide range of festival production and service companies operating it may be wise to outsource some aspects of the festival organisation, particularly anything that is either taking up too much time or not being executed effectively. What services can the external supplier provide to festival organisers to help achieve a well-run and profitable event?

Design and Production. 
Outsourcing the design and production scheduling can remove a big burden from organisers so they can focus on the elements they are good at. Leaving the booking of suppliers, logistics and scheduling of site build up to an external supplier can free up enormous amounts of time for festival staff.

Artist Curation. 
Although many music festival organisers build their events around their skill in curating the best artist talent if they need to source several hundred acts this can soon start to eat into staff time. There are a number of artistic directors that work on a freelance basis that can be contracted on a short time basis to deliver the best possible line-up within a specified budget.

Sponsor Acquisition. 
Acquiring sponsors for a music festival is never a strong point of many organisers and is often left until the last minute. There are companies and agencies that can be contracted specifically to secure sponsorship deals, they understand the sponsorship sector and have the right contacts to close deals quickly. Employing the services of such an agency at an early stage in the planning process can increase the chances of selling sponsorship packages and guaranteeing revenue for the festival organising entity.

Marketing. 
There are a plethora of advertising and marketing agencies to choose from but it would be wise to select one that has a track record of promoting music festivals and achieving ticket sales targets. Most specialist agencies will also have good contacts in the right media for press releases along with experience of social media marketing to increase customer engagement.

Whilst any external contracted service will cost money in fees and commission it may end up being money well spent. External sourcing of services can fill any talent gaps that the organising entity has helping them achieve a successfully executed music festival.

For festival organisers planning their events using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, cashless payments and contactless ordering. 

Photo by Alexander Nadrilyanski via Pexels

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