The Pensacola News Journal reports that the Springfest board wants more time to “land a national management company to produce the festival.” This will be the fourth time the board has tried to use outside help to run its once successful downtown music festival.
In September 2001, the non-profit overseeing SpringFest sold the rights to the music festival to the Classic Sports Group, the organizers of the Emerald Coast Classic, Northwest Florida’s Senior PGA event. In exchange for paying off SpringfFest’s $150,000 debt, Classic Sports Group got the rights to run it for the next three years.
After two years, Classic Sports Group gave up after losing more than $650,000 and seeing the attendance plummet below 50,000.
Into the breech stepped SMG and the Pensacola Civic Center in February 2004. SpringFest was moved to June to give SMG time to book the acts. The heat and change in venue from Spring Street to the Pensacola Civic Center cut the attendance to 15,000. More money was lost.
Still, SpringFest didn’t die. June Guerra, Tom Carmichael and their company, Quietwater Entertainment, tried to revive the event. Their SpringFest cost $915,798 to produce and lost $112,000. Attendance jumped to 46,000 fans, but it wasn’t enough. There was no SpringFest in 2006 or 2007.
None of these concert management companies were national – except for SMG.
I don’t blame SpringFest for not wanting to run the festival themselves and looking for others to foot the bill. We put on Hawkshaw last May and it wore us out – not to mention the bills we still paying off.
The era of huge outdoor music festivals may have past. We may need to look at a different model that involves film, art, theater, music and several venues around town like South by Southwest in Austin or even Spoleto.
