Sziget 2014 – Organisers Eye Record Attendance

(MTI) – The Sziget Festival has a good chance of bringing past years’ downward trends to a halt and setting new attendance records, the head of the company running the event told Thursday’s business daily Vilaggazdasag.

Organisers have already sold more weekly passes for this year’s festival than during the whole of last year’s event, Karoly Gerendai said.

Business has shot up in Britain, Germany, France and Italy, showing a 100 percent increase, he said. Hungarian ticket sales are showing signs of a similar surge, and the event is likely to break previous attendance records if day tickets also sell well, he said.

Last year Sziget only managed to attract 362,000 visitors, the lowest attendance figure over the last decade.

Gerendai said the costs of bringing a band to Hungary are higher every single year.

“A band’s asking price could even exceed the previous year’s price by 30 percent. Competition among festivals is also a factor that continues to drive up costs, but we simply can’t raise ticket prices by the same margin,” Gerendai said.

He is also hoping that Sziget will finally be able to pay off its 400 million forint (EUR 1.3m) loan early. Gerendai and his business partners regained ownership of Sziget in autumn 2012.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters