Promoter of Inveraray’s Connect Festival goes into red

The company promoting the annual Hydro Connect Music Festival in Inveraray has revealed a pre-tax loss of around £1.1million in its accounts to year-end March 2008, the year in which the Connect Festival was launched. This loss compares with a modest pre-tax profit of £21,267 in the accounts to March 2007. The group’s gross profits has slid to £2.9m, compared with £3.5m the year before.No turnover figure was provided.

DF Concerts, the company in question, suggested that its downturn was, in part, due to the significant investment it had made in establishing the Connect Festival.

The company’s Managing Director, Geoff Ellis was in London yesterday for the UK Festival Awards, with the company’s main festival promotion, T in the Park, now in its 15th year, named last month as the 4Music Festival of the Year, seeing off Glastonbury and Leeds. (And – 1st November footnote – T in the Park won the UK Festival Awards’ prize for best line-up.)

He has pointed out that as well as the cost of establishing the Connect Festival, the company had invested heavily in its infrastructure and in a new accounting system. These are obviously foundation-building actions for the future strength of the company.

The figures have been described by Mr Ellis as ‘expected’, with the comment that they: ‘don’t obviously represent how positive this year has actually been for us’. He evidenced this year’s stable audiences for the flagship T in the Park festival.

There are some illuminating additions to the picture. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Argyll and the Islands, the enterprise body for the area, invested a significant amount of public money in the Connect Festival for a three year period. This year’s (2008) Festival, while hit by heavy rain on its last day, attracted significantly more support and markedly more positive responses from its local audiences than was the case in its establishment year.

A cynic is never taken by surprise, so let’s pose a cynical perspective on the statements around the publication of DF’s summary accounts. Without access to the details of specific costs on the ‘infrastructral developments’ and the ‘new accounting system’ in relation to the cost of establishing Connect – with the enterprise sponsorship set against this – it is impossible to get a clear picture of the relative facts.

However, the almost by-the-way focus on the set-up costs of Connect in the revelation of an accounting loss may be worth a second look. This could be hoped to have a diuretic impact on the funds available from a rural enterprise agency anxious to see tourist industry development on its patch.

Should such a consideration arise, HIE Argyll and the Islands would be advised to stay the re-opening of the purse strings until they have concluded a rigorous analysis of DF’s overall accounts.

It is understood that DF Concerts were delightedly surprised to be offered the three-year enterprise funding for the event in the first place. Urban businesses routinely regard rurally-based agencies as wet-behind-the-ears soft touches. There’s something of a smack of this in the current DF song-and-dance. Caveat emptor and all that.