A statistical overview of the 2023 festival season
The UK’s festival season drew to its close in September, and what an unforgettable season it was! From the bleak and unprecedented rainfall experienced in the early to middle part of the season, which caused logistical headaches for numerous event organisers nationwide, to the record-breaking sales enjoyed in its latter half – this year’s run of outdoor spectacles will be one that’s remembered for months to come, for reasons both good and bad.
With the intention of assisting you with your own post-season evaluations, should you have staged a festival through the spring or summer, of course, we’ve put together this brief statistical overview, offering insight into the trends and data behind each sale whilst highlighting the work that’s been undertaken to help promote your listings.
Starting with some top line results, this year, an impressive 1.3 million festival ticket sales were recorded, correlating to a huge 30% rise on last year’s figures. Notably, revellers were seen to be more selective about which events they attended but willing to spend more on the events they chose.
What’s more, it seems the appetite for festivals taking place in 2024 has also surged this year. Our stats show a 51% increase in the number of sales already made ahead of festival season 2024, with customers choosing to spread the cost of their tickets by taking full advantage of our Payment Plan feature, where enabled, and the PayPal Pay In 3 payment option at checkout.
And that rain we mentioned earlier, well, after a pretty miserable spell of relentless wet weather through June and July, which negatively impacted the entire music industry and economy, it thankfully eased when August came around. And when the sun finally came out, so did the partygoers, with sales for festival tickets in August increasing by 83%. The biggest monthly increase in festival ticket sales Skiddle has ever seen!
And the big figures don’t end there.
In the build-up to and throughout the 2023 festival season, our Marketing department really put the hours in, working hard to deliver campaigns, optimise landing pages and create content of value to ensure all festivals listed on Skiddle got the visibility they deserved. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
A staggering 21 million festival page views were recorded during the 2023 season, up 150% from the previous year, with almost 8 million people landing on festival-related pages on the Skiddle site, up 67% on 2022. These figures can largely be attributed to the work done in optimising content and pages across the site. Skiddle now ranks for 16,000 festival-related keywords with 6,000 keywords appearing on the first page of search results.
Head of Account Management at Skiddle, Jemmy Varley, summarised the season:
“2023 was our highest-ever year for festival sales. From recent analysis, we found customers were more particular about the shows they were choosing to attend but willing to spend more per ticket price on average. This trend fell perfectly in line with festivals over the Summer.
“We put a lot of energy into analysing patterns of sales this year too – to ensure optimal marketing campaigns. Last-minute sales were higher than ever – on average for a small to medium festival, ticket sales in the 10 days leading up to the festival often accounted for 25-30% overall. That’s a big jump from previous years.
“Taking everything into account, the team were incredibly creative with their marketing strategies and the introduction of some brilliant new promotion tools also helped attract new sales. We’ve managed to achieve record sales and get our highest-ever percentage of festivals over the line.”
To find out how Skiddle can support your festival in 2024, give us a call on Give us a call on 03333010301.
Got a question you need an answer to? Give us a call on 03333010301 or ask us a question over on the Skiddle Promoter Twitter account by clicking or tapping on the button below. Alternatively, you can also find a list of our most frequently asked questions over at https://help.promotioncentre.co.uk/