Pemberton Festival Cancelled, Bankrupt
In the current overstuffed and saturated music-festival environment, not everything is going to make it. There are simply too many festivals. And now there’s one less. The Pemberton Festival has been coming to British Columbia every year since 2014, and this year’s edition was set to go down in July, with Chance The Rapper, a Tribe Called Quest, and Muse as headliners. That won’t be happening. The festival itself has gone bankrupt, and this year’s edition is cancelled.
According to The Globe And Mail, tickets for this year’s festival started at $369, and buyers are now attempting to cancel their credit-card payments. Event promoters Huka Entertainment had only sold 18,200, compared to 38,000 last year. Ernst & Young’s Kevin Brennan, who is overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings, says, “Really it’s just driven by fewer ticket sales than they had hoped to achieve and operating costs that had continued to rise, partially a result of the exchange rate as well.” The event owes $2.5 million to creditors, which means ticket buyers could have a hell of a time getting their refunds.