Low Ticket Sales Force Blissfields Festival 2008 To Cancel

• 4th Jun 2008

The Blissfields Festival in Hampshire has had to cancel this year’s event. The winner of 2007’s small festival award was unable to sell enough tickets to finance the event. Organisers have stated that full refunds will be made automatically to the card they were purchased on in the next few days.

“We are devastated to be in this position and could not have foreseen it”, say organizers Paul and Mel Bliss. “With such low sales the financial burdens for ourselves were incredibly high and we would not have been able to put on an event with the atmosphere and passion that festival goers expect. This would have left us with an insurmountable problem in staging an event for next year.”

Blissfields is run without major financial or commercial backing and the family-friendly festival has blamed the economy, bad weather and festival overload for the decision. Festival goers have the option of nine major events on the same weekend as Blissfields – 4 – 6 July – in the south of England alone. Leeds’ festival Wax:On Live blamed the credit crunch for their cancellation and the Bliss’s feel that people are having to cut down on the number of festivals they are attending. With many of last summer’s events washed out sales were even lower than could have been expected.

Blissfields’ line-up included The Whip – pictured, Ronnie Size, The Wonder Stuff, Maps, Noisettes and The Rumble Strips. See link for further details.