Festivals market at record-high 600 ml lei due to staple events like Neversea, Untold or Electric Castle

The Romanian music festivals this summer and the high-profile artists scheduled to perform here will attract more than one billion spectators, taking the market to an all-time record high of more than 600 million lei, shows a survey by Frames consulting company. After Neversea, Ed Sheeran, Electric Castle, Bon Jovi and The Cure successively took the spotlight, with audiences running into several thousands, the festival season continues with Untold, AfterHills, the George Enescu classical music festival, the Metallica concert and other several dozens of such events all over the country . The Romanian festivals market has seen one of the most spectacular growths in the economy, not just in terms of audiences which - according to Frames estimates - stand at over one million people. Beyond the tickets sold, the festival business means tens of millions of lei in receipts from services, food and drinks, transport, tourism, promotional products and related businesses. Cluj is currently the sector's business yardstick. Apart from growing the tourist potential, the Untold festival it hosts means a horizontal business with dozens, if not hundreds of connected companies the entire city stands to gain from, beginning with tour operators, carriers, the food sector and ending with the authorities - in collected taxes and dues. According to the cited survey, business in this sector hit 472.6 million lei last year, by over 80 million lei more than in 2017. The significant investments in marketing and promotion, along with the implementation of state-of-the-art support services, from modern payment solutions to a broad range of offered products, have translated into increased ticket sales and higher consumption of products and services at festivals. This is how Untold has grown into a reference for the sector of international festivals, awarded as such by experts in the field. In a market where the number of companies has increased significantly in recent years, Untold SRL remains the main player with a turnover of 68.3 million lei in 2018, up by more than 9 million lei compared to the previous year. The organizer of the Untold Festival in Cluj-Napoca closed 2018 with a profit of 7 million lei, almost double the figure of 2017. Second in the ranking of the entertainment companies is, just like in 2017, the Constanta-based Global Records SRL, with a turnover of 45.8 million lei in 2018, by 13 million lei more than in 2017, and a profit of 3.7 million lei. The Cluj-based Festival Tickets Management SRL comes third, with a turnover of 26.9 million lei and profit worth 2.3 million lei in 2018. According to analysts, the Romanian entertainment market still has a significant growth potential. The new generations are more attracted to such events, to the Western culture where such festivals are in the spotlight. The Ultra Music Festival is an international touchstone, as a business that has grown over the past 20 years, with events gathering hundreds of thousands of people. "Untold, Neversea, but also the George Enescu Festival have proved that Romania too can host such large-scale events, of course, against the backdrop of the Romanians' growing purchasing power. We already have a calendar of high-magnitude events that attract many foreigners, apart from the local audience, so that besides the business per se, Romanian tourism also stands to gain," said Frames manager Adrian Negrescu. The establishment, in recent years, of a national calendar of festivals is yet another opportunity for developing new events with significant gain potential. "There is still room for festivals in Romania. The month of September, when the weather is still summery, the Christmas season, the New Year's Eve and the spring celebrations (March 1 - 8) create the premises for business associations with significant sales potential. In the West, for instance, the idea of Winter Festival is intensely capitalized upon and in the future this variant will probably be implemented in Romania as well," experts estimate. According to the survey, given the underlying investments in this sector (logistics, concerts, festivals, etc.) and the expansion of spectator categories, it is highly likely that at the horizon of 2021-2022, Romania's entertainment market hits the one-billion lei line. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Cernat, editor: Mariana Nica; EN - author: Simona Klodnischi, editor: Simona Iacob)

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