Berlin, Germany. Photo Credit: Stefan Widua
Organizers have canceled a number of German music festivals, including Deichbrand, Rock am Ring, and Greenfield, due to continued COVID-19 concerns.
Ticketing and live-entertainment giant CTS Eventim, and specifically its Eventim Live division, announced the 2021 cancellations in a formal release, attributing the move “to the ongoing uncertainty about infection rates and mutations.” A total of seven German music festivals – Deichbrand, Hurricane/Southside, Rock am Ring/Rock im Park, SonneMondSterne, and Greenfield – have been shelved for the second consecutive year, according to the announcement message.
Ticketholders will receive “a convenient opportunity to attend the 2022 festivals,” the text proceeds, with additional information available on each event’s website. For instance, higher-ups associated with Deichbrand, which reportedly attracted some 55,000 guests in 2019, indicated that the 16th edition of their late-July festival will now take place between July 21st and 24th, 2022.
“All tickets purchased so far will automatically remain valid” for the rescheduled happening, officials also specified. SonneMondSterne organizers struck a similar tone in a message of their own (“under the current conditions, no festival with tens of thousands of international visitors is possible, let alone plannable”), besides establishing a ticket-exchange window of June 1st-30th, 2021 and a 2022 festival date of August 12th-14th.
Hurricane/Southside are now slated for June 17th-19th, 2022, and previously transferred passes (from 2020 to 2021) will be valid for next year’s festival. Sometime during the next three weeks, Rock am Ring/Rock im Park (set for June 3rd-5th, 2022) will debut a new ticket-exchange platform, while Switzerland’s Greenfield (June 9th-11th, 2022) intends to roll over 2021 passes to 2022’s event.
The latter festival’s team didn’t mince words when explaining the reasons for the 2021 cancellation: “Since we do not know whether major events will be allowed at all, we simply lack planning security. We do not know which rules have to be complied with, which capacity is allowed and which measures we would have to integrate.”
More broadly, the German music festivals’ cancellations appear indicative of a potentially rockier-than-expected comeback for non-socially distanced live music. Last year, CTS Eventim (like Live Nation) struck an optimistic tone when discussing the prospects of a 2021 entertainment resurgence. That ongoing restrictions, stemming in part from a comparatively slow vaccine rollout, have put the plans on ice is significant.
But in spite of a couple high-profile stateside setbacks this month – organizers canceled both the CMA Fest and Lightning in a Bottle – Live Nation and financial professionals are still banking on a live-music return later in 2021. Fan demand for concerts and music festivals is decidedly strong, and Insomniac Events (about half of which belongs to Live Nation) is preparing to welcome fans to an inaugural Abduction music festival in Orlando about one month from today.