Peter Gabriel: Running a Festival Today Is 'Always a Gamble'
The Genesis frontman says even a beloved institution like WOMAD isn't guaranteed to survive Britain's tough festival market
By Dexter "Box-Office" Reel
Peter Gabriel has been putting on WOMAD in Wiltshire for more than four decades, and he says it still doesn't get any easier.
The Genesis frontman, who founded the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival back in 1982, told the BBC that staging the event is "always a gamble" — a blunt admission from a man who has built one of Britain's longest-running cultural exports around the risk.
Gabriel's comment lands at a rough moment for the UK festival circuit. A string of smaller and mid-sized events have folded or scaled back in recent years, squeezed by rising costs for insurance, security, staging and artist fees, alongside audiences who've grown pickier about where they spend limited disposable income. WOMAD, held each July on the grounds of Charlton Park, has weathered those pressures so far on the strength of its distinct identity — global music acts that rarely headline elsewhere in Britain, and a loyal audience that treats the festival as an annual pilgrimage rather than just another weekend out.
But loyalty isn't the same as insulation. Gabriel's framing — a founder-owner calling his own festival a gamble, not a sure thing — is a rare bit of candor from someone with every commercial incentive to project confidence. It's worth taking at face value precisely because it isn't the usual promotional line.
[The BBC report does not specify current attendance figures, ticket pricing changes, or financial details behind Gabriel's remarks — worth flagging for readers who want the full picture.]
What's clear is the stakes: if a festival with Gabriel's resources and 40-plus years of goodwill is still calling it a coin flip, smaller organizers without his cushion are almost certainly feeling the squeeze harder.
Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Entertainment & Arts.
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