Forget what you’ve heard from organisers or read about on other blogs, we present the cold hard statistical evidence on why Splendour hasn’t sold out – and it doesn’t make for good reading, especially if you’re a Megan Washington fan.

So for the first time in a few years Splendour In The Grass didn’t sell out in a couple hours. In fact, you can still purchase tickets in every category a full week after tickets have gone on sale – from the $401.50 non-camping ticket to the $526.65 full enchilada.

You may not think this is a big deal, but internet message boards (ours included) and music blogs have has been rife with conspiracy theories as to why tickets to a festival featuring Coldplay, Kanye West, Pulp and Gareth Liddiard are still on sale. Over at Collapse Board, Justin Edwards claimed it was a combination of “ridiculously expensive” ticket prices and a piss-poor line-up that includes far too many Australian bands that we’ve seen a billion times. The line-up didn’t represent value for money, he concluded. “The reason Splendour hasn’t sold out instantaneously, as it normally does,” said Edwards, “is that the line-up doesn’t justify the price and there just isn’t enough quality for it to be a three-day festival.”

While those arguments may be compelling – although the price comparisons to Glastonbury and Coachella seem a little unfair given they’re double the size – event producers Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco have always maintained that a Westpac bank glitch in the early hours of tickets going on sale has been largely responsible for what they term a “break in sales momentum”. They even suspended sales for a 12-hour period until all technical issues were resolved.

“Social media makes it very clear that people tried for hours to purchase tickets through Moshtix, but couldn’t,” the pair said in a release. “Many people expressed immense frustration and affected card holders posted on social media sites and called our media partner triple j to ask if Splendour would do anything to counteract the disadvantage they faced in securing tickets.”

Their reasoning too has left us unconvinced, so we dug a little deeper, discovering a perfect storm of events that may go some way to explaining why Splendour’s 33,000 tickets have yet to sell out. Or not.

No Washington

Australia’s most bankable festival asset Megan Washington played 15 summer events in 2010/2011, more than nearest rival Cloud Control (10). Despite filling the main stage at last year’s Splendour – our reviewer Andrew McMillen called her “delightful” – she has yet to be announced for Splendour 2011; an oversight surely given her formidable festival strike rate (see table and corresponding chart below). Of the 21 festival dates Washington was scheduled to play in 2010/2011 (we’re counting every Big Day Out), 11 were sell outs, eight were near or partly sold-out, one (triple j’s Last Stand) was free and one was cancelled due to illness (Queenscliff). Do the maths, Piticco and Ducrou.

West Coast Blues and Roots SOLD OUT
Mullum NOT SOLD OUT
Peat's Ridge NOT SOLD OUT
Parklife NOT SOLD OUT
Queensliff N/A
Sunset Sounds SOLD OUT
Falls SOLD OUT
Full Noise NOT SOLD OUT
Southbound SOLD OUT
Verge SOLD OUT
BIGSOUND SOLD OUT
Funk N Grooves NOT SOLD OUT
Bluesfest SOLD OUT
Splendour 2010 SOLD OUT
BDO Melbourne SOLD OUT
BDO Gold Coast SOLD OUT
BDO Sydney #1 SOLD OUT
BDO Sydney #2 NOT SOLD OUT
BDO Perth NOT SOLD OUT
BDO Adelaide NOT SOLD OUT
One Night Stand N/A

Festival Fatigue Has Set In

Take last year’s aborted BAM! festival for example. On paper at least, it read like a winning concept: A dream line-up of 100 bands and 60 DJs (acts such as The Winnie Coopers, The Barons of Tang, Dallas Frasca and, in a rare performance, Chocolate Strings); low ticket prices ($205 INCLUDING camping); two-for-one ticket deals (yes, these were only offered towards the end, but the sentiment was there); a “VIP” stage that doubled as an open mic night; enthusiastic organisers with passion and experience in the travel industry; a unique ticketing system where bands essentially pay to play; non-stop music for three days. The list goes on and yet BAM! was still cancelled at the 11th hour, leaving only one logical conclusion: festival fatigue has set in.

White People Hate Kanye West

Coldplay Isn’t U2, Pulp Isn’t Blur

Coldplay is one of the biggest MOR rock’n’roll bands in the world, but not the biggest. Same goes with the critically acclaimed Pulp, who haven’t played in 10 years, but are still relative lightweights when compared to Britpop rivals Blur and Oasis. The charts below leave us questioning organisers’ ambitions.

Australians Don’t Like Camping

It’s true. Tom Morgan wrote a song about it.

Limited Support From Triple J

Triple J may be our national youth broadcaster and Splendour’s official media partner, but when it comes to spruiking sluggish ticket sales, their presenters have been found wanting. The one exception is Zan Rowe. Since tickets went on sale, the host of triple j Mornings has made 40 Splendour-related or #sitg Tweets, streets ahead of triple j’s official Twitter (11), Lindsay McDougall aka The Doctor (2) and music director Richard Kingsmill (2). Home and Hosed presenter Dom Alessio has made zero Splendour Tweets, as has Tom Ballard and Alex Dyson (Breakfast) and Lewis McKirdy (Lunch). What would Scott Dooley think?

The station still plans on “broadcasting sets live to air and giving you plenty of backstage gossip, news and interviews all weekend”, but with such a paltry social media campaign so far, that remains to be seen.

No Attack Attack! Or Attack! Attack!

One pioneered crabcore. The other is from Wales. Neither is on the bill.

Not Enough Metal/Striborg

If the recent success of Soundwave has taught us anything, it’s this: people love experiencing the extreme darkness of metal outdoors and in the sun. But has Splendour missed a trick in not catering for Australia’s huge metal market?

Aside from Sydney’s The Holidays, there’s nary a metal act on the bill. Ghoul, Warpaint and The Kills sound like metal acts, but Google research suggests they’re little more than piss-weak indie. And don’t even get us started on Tasmanian metal legend Striborg, who continually gets overlooked.

Floor Tom Denied

Nothing gets a crowd going quite like a floor tom. It’s been Laneway’s dirty little secret all these years (and that’s perennially sold out), while recent events like Sugar Mountain in Melbourne and last year’s Camp A Low Hum in New Zealand have embraced the aesthetic as well. Of the 78 acts confirmed in the first round of Splendour, only eight currently incorporate or have used a standing floor tom as part of their live set (see table and corresponding chart below).

Coldplay Y
Kanye West N
Jane’s Addiction N
The Hives N
Pulp N
The Living End N
The Mars Volta N
Regina Spektor N
Bliss N Eso N
Pnau N
Mogwai N
DJ Shadow N
Glasvegas N
The Grates N
Devendra Banhart N
Modest Mouse N
The Middle East N
Kaiser Chiefs N
James Blake N
Kele N
The Vines N
Elbow N
Eskimo Joe N
Noah and The Whale N
Children Collide N
Thievery Corporation N
Cut Copy N
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan N
bluejuice N
The Kills N
Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears N
Architecture In Helsinki Y
Foster The People N
The Panics N
Friendly Fires N
Jebediah N
The Vaccines N
Gomez N
Boy And Bear Y
Gotye Y
Does It Offend You Yeah? N
Cloud Control N
Mona N
Sparkadia N
Warpaint N
Muscles N
Fitz And The Tantrums N
The Jezebels N
Drapht N
British Sea Power N
Tim & Jean N
Leader Cheetah N
Grouplove N
Seeker Lover Keeper N
Yelle N
Kimbra N
Phrase N
Oh Mercy N
Dananananaykroyd N
The Black Seeds N
Marques Toliver N
The Holidays Y
Ghoul Y
Liam Finn N
The Herd N
Young The Giant N
Guineafowl N
Hungry Kids Of Hungary N
Jinja Safari Y
Wild Beasts N
Illy N
Cut Off Your Hands N
Gareth Liddiard N
Alpine N
World’s End Press Y
Mosman Alder N
Lanie Lane N

We Love Getting Pissed (On The Cheap)

During a public Q&A session at last year’s event, organisers Ducrou and Piticco fielded questions from attendees – ranging from the festival’s genesis to how much it costs to put together a bill. One punter lamented the scrapping of a can exchange scheme, whereby a $1 surcharge was applied to all canned drinks. That $1 would be refunded once the can was returned to a recycling station, but people still couldn’t get their heads around the inflated price.

“A lot of people object to even the idea that their drink seems a dollar more expensive,” Ducrou said. “They can’t wrap their head around the fact that it’s only paid once, and they can actually get it back in the long-term.” With organisers reportedly re-introducing the scheme this year, have punters been put off by the prospect of having to embrace social responsibility?

Splendour’s shift to Queensland has also affected beer consumption in potentially devastating ways. Where festival-goers at Byron Bay could blissfully skull a full-strength stubbie, mid-strength is the only option at Woodfordia thanks to the Queensland government’s draconian licensing regulations. “We went to inordinate lengths to meet with licensing to try and beg and plead to get full-strength,” said Ducrou. “The reality is that we’re in Queensland, and to a degree, we have to toe the line with what licensing want to give us.

According to recent statistics, full-strength beer accounts for 70.6 percent of the market, while mid-strength and light beer accounts for 12 and 9.6 percent, respectively. Has the prospect of drinking mid-strength for three days turned punters away? Statistics don’t lie.

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Splendour tickets are still on sale and can be purchased here. Despite many hours spent on Google, Wikipedia and YouTube, M+N makes no guarantees about the accuracy of the information printed above.