A Victorious decade
In the 10 years since its launch , Portsmouth ’ s Victorious Festival has grown to become the UK ’ s biggest city-based festival with a local economic impact of more than £ 15m . Access caught up with the festival ’ s director and co-founder James Ralls to discuss changes to the event this year
Words : Christopher Barrett
Launched by Andy Marsh , James Ralls and Ben Miles in 2012 , the past decade has seen the Victorious Festival become one of the industry ’ s major success stories .
Originally a free two-day event at Portsmouth ’ s Historic Dockyard that was attended by around 40,000 people , Victorious is now a multistage , three-day festival on Southsea seafront that contributes around £ 15m to the Portsmouth economy and is attended by around 160,000 people . It has an 80,000 per day audience capacity on Saturday and Sunday , with a limit of 45,000 on Friday .
The festival is operated by a core team of 12 at Victorious Festivals Limited but when the event is up and running the workforce is expanded to around 3,000 .
Ralls , Victorious Festival ’ s MD , says the event team is focused on using local suppliers and production professionals where possible : “ We are always looking to spend and use employees in the local area . That ’ s a big part of keeping the community happy .”
Among the new initiatives this year is Neighbourhood Eats , which will see subsidised pitches offered to local independent caterers .
Sound investment Victorious has seen performances by many major acts over the years , including Nile Rogers , The Prodigy , Madness , and Manic Street Preachers . Ralls says the artist booking budget has been doubled this year , and among those to perform at the 26-28 August event are Sam Fender , Stereophonics , Paolo Nutini and Anne-Marie .
With the events industry facing severe cost rises across almost every element of the supply chain it seems an unlikely time to hike talent expenditure by so much , but the move appears to be paying dividends .
“ We have sold the most tickets we have ever sold at this point in the year . It ’ s looking like we will sell out for the first time , we ’ re about 40 % ahead of where we usually are ,” says Ralls .
He says there has been investment across the board for this year ’ s festival : “ We have extended the dance area , the outdoor arena , and we ’ ve got a bigger comedy area so we ’ ve booked in bigger acts – everything is just getting incrementally bigger .”
To fund the increased spending on infrastructure and talent , and to mitigate the impact of inflation , weekend ticket prices have been raised to £ 155 . They were £ 110 in 2019 and £ 135 last year .
“ We are still one of the least expensive festivals in the country for the content we offer ,” says Ralls . “ Portsmouth is like a northern city in the south – people don ’ t have a lot of money , there ’ s a lot of deprived areas , so we ’ ve always tried to keep the festival affordable for locals .”
Superpower While the event ’ s production is handled in-house , led by head of technical production Ben Miles , the festival team is able to draw on the international perspective and knowhow at its owner Superstruct Entertainment – which acquired it in 2019 after radio group Global divested its festival brands .
Los Angeles-based Superstruct
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