Peter Black
March 27, 2024
Local Journalism Initiative reporter
peterblack@qctonline.com
Festival d’Été de Québec (FEQ) organizers have said they did all they could to ensure a fair sale of festival passes in the wake of complaints about a system that left thousands of fans disappointed.
With only half an hour’s notice, passes went on sale an hour earlier than planned, at 11 a.m. instead of noon, on March 20, the morning the festival announced the line-up of artists at a news conference at the Bell Imperial theatre.
Festival spokesperson Samantha McKinley explained the move was a means to thwart robo-callers and to relieve pressure on the online system given the enormous number of people on the waiting list hoping to get passes.
McKinley told Radio-Canada the festival recognizes the problem and will look at better ways to organize the sale of passes. She mentioned the example of the huge Glastonbury festival in England, where passes are distributed by lottery.
The root problem is the escalating demand for the passes, which, at $150 for the full 11 days, are priced far below other large festivals. Ottawa Bluesfest, for example, charges $150 for a day pass and $450 for the 10-day event.
The festival said about 70 per cent of passes sold went to fans in the Quebec City region.
FEQ programming director Louis Bellavance told the QCT the festival is committed to keeping the festival accessible and affordable. He said the business model, based on selling a large number of tickets at low cost, works because FEQ has the capacity, with a main stage that can accommodate 80,000 fans.
Bellavance said FEQ can sell 125,000 tickets knowing that with the diversity of programming at other sites, not all ticket-holders will want to go to the huge Plains venue for a specific headliner.
The huge crowds FEQ can draw for most acts is a powerful pitch to artists, Bellavance said. “Even if your name is Post Malone, I’m probably the only buyer out there that can look his agent in the eyes and say he is going to play for 80,000 plus.”
Bellavance said raising ticket prices to reduce demand is out of the question. He said the result would be that only people with money would be able to afford passes, and “you’re not gonna get the craziness on the field. It will become the high-end festival for people with money. And you know what happens with people with money…. They don’t cheer. They don’t cry. They don’t dance. So here you go. You, you killed the magic.”
Selling more tickets is not an option either, Bellavance said. “There would be a lot more people upset if they could actually get a ticket and could not get on the field to see Post Malone.”
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