Future Music Festival will not return in 2016

The Mushroom Group have revealed that the Future Music Festival has been scrapped due to low ticket sales.

Brett Robinson, who ran the festival for 10 years, told Fairfax "we were more than 30% off where we wanted to be and that's a signficant number of tickets (and) if we can't get (the required) attendances it is untenable.

“We all have to move on. It's a really sad day for me personally and all of our team, we would live eat and breathe this festival around the clock."

Robinson hoped to be working in the festival scene in the future but said he and Mushroom would be "drawing a line under it and going our separate ways."

The Mushroom Group, which in 2013 stepped in to partner Robinson's Future Music group after it ran into financial trouble, said in a statement that the "day of the large scale travelling festival in its current form is unfortunately numbered".

Mushroom Chairman, Michael Gudinski, explained that rising costs and falling ticket sales have combined to make delivering a "high quality event with the best available talent" too hard in the two years since he bought into the festival

Gudinski told themusic.com.au “the cost to physically stage the events has significantly increased, even in just two years.

“The fluctuating dollar also hasn't helped and the increasing popularity of EDM in the States has seen DJ fees escalating out of control.”

In the statement, Mushroom said that "despite the considerable critical acclaim of the 2015 festival, the last two years of ticket sales for the festival have underperformed, meaning Future Music Festival will not be returning in 2016."

However, the announcement was not without a promise that a "new festival concept" was being planned for the same dates previously held by the Future Music Festival.

Gudinski added “a point came though where it simply no longer made sense to continue.

“We believe in the festival industry in Australia and plan to announce an exciting new festival concept in the coming month.”

The announcement comes about a month after the festival was held in Sydney, with major international artists Drake (who is believed to have cost the most for organisers to secure), The Prodigy and Nero appearing.

Gudinski sees this as part of a wider trend internationally and not just in Australia where Future Music joins a string of other live music festivals that have been cancelled in recent years including The Big Day Out, Homebake, Harvest, Movement and Pyramid Rock.

He concluced “in my opinion, Australia is following a trend that's already been seen in

America where touring festivals have become a thing of the past

"Instead, stand-alone location festivals such as Coachella and Lollapalooza are going from strength to strength.

“In England and Europe, travelling festivals just don't happen."

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