EUROPEAN FESTIVALS – SUPERBLOOM festivalgoers are looking for a more comfortable experience, and that’ s not just the older demographics.
How does a comfort ticket differ from VIP?
The main idea is to have a hideaway. It’ s not about exclusivity, it’ s about wellbeing. You need to buy your drinks and your food but comfort ticket holders get shaded rest areas, seating, sun beds, and quiet spaces to relax. We also do side programming such as Yoga and Tai Chi. The space provides a breathing room for attendees, and it has been very well received.
How much do the comfort tickets cost, and is their room to expand the offering?
The tickets cost around 50 % more than a regular ticket. It’ s around 2000 people, and we are already at capacity. We don’ t want to expand the capacity because we want it to be an area where people can truly relax. We have also introduced a‘ next generation’ ticket for 16 – 17-yearolds. It provides very affordable access for young people and is another ticket category that sells out very fast.
The increase in artist fees and exclusivity issues have led many festivals to increase investment in the wider experience rather than the biggest name headliners. Is that the case at Superbloom?
Completely. In fact, that’ s been my philosophy my whole career. A festival is far more than its line-up. I worked at Sziget between 2008 and 2014 as a programming and artistic director and for me it was a natural thing to create a balance between the wider experience and the music. I grew up in an artistic family, so it has always been in my DNA. I always thought a festival isn’ t just stages, drinks, and food, it’ s a playground where you can experiment and program new ideas. It’ s about creating an environment where people can be surprised, inspired, emotionally moved, and creatively stimulated. Dream big, then scale back if you must but start with the dream.
Fruzsina Szép
We are all architects of dreams, because these festivals are utopian worlds we are creating. When I was asked in 2014 to leave Sziget and move to Berlin and help build up the first European Lollapalooza, my first thoughts were that it should definitely not just be about the music. We shouldn’ t be looking to sell tickets on the back of the lineup, it should be the festival brand, its identity, because that is what people are buying into. If you go to Glastonbury. Roskilde or Øya you know what you are getting. That ' s why the people behind festivals are so crucially important, because they are the architects; they create the dreams.
Last year, many festivals faced criticism for their ties to certain brands or investors, while also facing political pressures to remove outspoken acts from lineups. Did you experience anything similar?
There ' s one thing we can ' t control, and that is what happens on the stage. Freedom of speech is something that we stand for as a festival. Festivals are places where people can gather in peace and unity and have the freedom to express themselves the way they want to. Festivals are about arts, culture, uniting people and giving people the freedom to breathe and live freely. They are more important than ever because in the world today the possibilities to behave freely are reducing. Politicians should never get involved in the organisation of a festival. I believe many festival promoters could be better diplomats and better politicians than most people ruling the world at the moment.
Superbloom is rare in that most of the festival audience are women. Was that an intentional target from the outset?
I hoped for 50 / 50 balance but it went beyond that. The name Superbloom is very important, it ' s soft and uplifting, and we booked the artists and created the whole experience around it. For the programming, I have always tried to achieve a balance of male and female but the focus is never gender specific, it is focused on booking the right artists for the festival. For Superbloom, that is good mainstream popular music that includes everything from EDM to singer songwriters, but not hard rock. I also created areas for design, fashion, beauty, health, new technologies, medicine, new circus, sustainability and other topics that interest a lot of females. Since the outset, the festival has attracted a lot of brand partners that are more focused on the female audience. As a result, we see diversity across the bill and the audience.
How much of a focus is there on accessibility?
I wanted to create a festival that was as inclusive as possible across genre, race and religion but also people living with disabilities. It is something I believe in deeply, it is very personal, because I grew up with a blind father, and he taught me that I should not only see with my eyes, I should feel with all my senses. When I created Superbloom I wanted to give something back to people with disabilities. We have an inclusion team made up of people with lived experience of disabilities, and an all-year service to support people with disabilities. In our first year, around 100 visitors with disabilities came to the festival. In subsequent years, that number jumped into the hundreds, and last year we had more than 1,000 from seven countries. It is an investment but it is worth every cent.
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