WLB: The full line-up for the upcoming Sziget Festival has been announced. Are you already negotiating with next year’s performers?
Tamás Kádár: Yes, as these negotiations are relatively lengthy and you never know when there might be an outcome. Our years of experience say that you can never start early enough as performers plan their tours well in advance.
WLB: Is there a performer in this year’s line-up whom you’ve been chasing for a long time?
TK: We’d been trying to bring Lana Del Rey to Budapest for years.
Károly Gerendai: It was always: “unfortunately not this year, but maybe next time”...
TK: The year before last it looked like she’d come, but then in the end she didn’t. So something long-awaited is happening this year (he laughs).
KG: I normally no longer talk about this year’s festival, but it is important to highlight that a lot has changed over the past decade. During the first ten to 15 years, going to a festival was interesting and new to bands; more and more venues popped up and meanwhile, the record business pretty much crashed, so headliners wanted more concerts. Today, there is basically a festival every weekend and they keep outbidding each other, fighting for the most popular performers.
And this means that while in the old days, performers planned ahead for six months or for the length of their next tour, now they have so many possibilities that they plan for years ahead. Now when you start negotiating with managers, they often say that this year the band isn't coming your way, but let’s talk about the following year.
TK: A popular headliner can be on a tour for two years nowadays.
KG: A major difficulty is that the price of a band depends on their current hits and their actual status as well. If they know that they are about to release a hit that will peak in the charts they will be more expensive. I think they always wonder whether they should play it safe and make fixed plans for even the following year, or wait a little while until they release their next big hit, which will put them in a better position to negotiate. But what we used to do, fixing a concert just a few months before, only works today if the performers have a free day to fill in between two gigs. But if they are not on tour, they will probably not come just for us. These one-off shows are super expensive, we can’t afford them. A new option that the investors opened for us is package offers; joining bigger events together and make an offer for several shows.
TK: We’ve always negotiated with other festivals that we have a good relationship with, but now our chances are a lot better.
KG: We’ve always had a portfolio and made offers for performers accordingly: pick a festival from our selection that suits you best. But now it is a huge help that there are more and more events that we are associated with.
WLB: Are you not afraid that you’ll feature all of the most popular headliners within a relatively short time and then they will not be that special for your audience any more?
TK: This will happen anyway as the biggest names go to every festival if they are on tour. If they are already in Europe, distances don't matter so much.
KG: Competition between European festivals used to be a lot more serious in the past. But now, festivals often join forces, at least to get a certain performer to come to Europe instead of Asia or America.
TK: A bigger danger is that there are certain festivals in the region that keep fighting for exclusive rights, trying to secure that an artist would only perform at their festival. But this is so horribly expensive that we could never afford it.
KG: One more thing to add is that some might wonder why we would bring the same performer twice to Sziget – but seen from the other side, it is totally different. What matters for the organisers is to bring performers who are currently popular. Most of our visitors don’t mind if somebody has already been here – if they like them, they’d want to see them again.
A true fan wouldn’t say no to a live concert the second time. Others think that this decreases the chances that someone they like would come instead. But from the organises’ point of view, it doesn’t matter if a performer has already been invited, the only thing that matters is to put a line-up together that would be popular and for which people would want to buy a ticket.
TK: I’d like to add one more thought to my answer: headliners tour around all of the major festivals anyway, so it is not just the line-up that needs to provide something special, but the atmosphere, ambience and other attractions. This is really strong at Sziget – there are countless young people from Western Europe who’ve already seen a major headliner, or could see them at home, but they still come to Sziget as even if it is the same gig, the festival is more memorable and more fun.
WLB: It is interesting that you mentioned Western Europeans, as in an other interview you said that this will be the first year in the history of Sziget when British visitors will outnumber the Dutch and other nationalities.
TK: There are many reasons for that. On one side, we already exploited the market in the Netherlands, it would be difficult to do more there, while on the other hand, this year’s line-up is Brit-heavy, so to speak (he laughs). There are many performers who are super popular in England, so we can strengthen our marketing there. And there’s no Glastonbury this year.
KG: Glastonbury for the English is like a national institution and it attracts hundreds of thousands every year. However many festivals there might be, if you ask anyone, there’s a big chance that they’ll know Glastonbury. But every five years, it takes a break, so regulars then wonder where else to go that particular year.
TK: Five years ago, before the last break, Michael Eavis, the founder of Glastonbury, said: Go to Sziget instead of Glastonbury. That helped us.
WLB:The official reason behind these breaks is to let the soil on Eavis’s farm recover. How much attention do you have to pay to this at Sziget?
TK: I don’t think that’s the only reason. It is extremely difficult to organise a jubilee festival, so they just don’t do it (they laugh).
KG: Obviously the soil and rain are important factors – and Glastonbury gets notoriously muddy even after little rain. But I don’t think that this alone would cause a severe problem. I think they just realised that it is best to go on holiday instead of work every now and then (they laugh).
TK: There’s some truth in that.
KG: But if I remember correctly, their first break was after a major tragedy had occurred at Roskilde (in 2000, nine people died in the mosh pit at a Pearl Jam concert – ed). Glastonbury then stated that they had rethought the whole safety concept of the venue. And then there was a break again, when the festival would have been at the same time as the Olympics. They didn’t want to take the risk. And then they realised that there are some positive aspects to skipping a year every now and then.
WLB: Could Sziget afford to skip a year? Was this ever a possibility?
KG: There were years we would rather have skipped (they laugh). But, jokes aside, there was a year when we didn’t know if we’d be banned or not. Otherwise I don’t think we could afford it, as there is just too much competition between major festivals anyway. And our company is still based on Sziget, as this event brings the most profit. If we decided not to organise it in a year we would have to think about letting some colleagues go. And it would raise other questions, too. Glastonbury is interesting as they didn’t skip the first year intentionally from a business perspective, but rather fearing that something similar to Denmark could happen.
TK: It wouldn't be beneficial for marketing either. It would be difficult to maintain interest if we skipped a year.
KG: Glastonbury was very fortunate – if I remember correctly, the first year after the first break the tickets sold out in an hour for the first time ever. They managed to create an increased interest, but let’s not forget that this was a long time ago, when competition wasn’t so serious. It worked for them back then, but that doesn't mean that the number of our visitors wouldn't drop if we chose this route.
WLB: The difference is huge between the quality of the upcoming festival compared to previous years. Does this have anything to do with the new investors?
TK: There are two sides to this. The difference is significant, but only when you compare it with last year. There have already been years in Sziget’s history when the line-up was incredibly strong. So I think the contrast is only big between 2017 and 2018. On the other hand, the new investor did designate a huge amount of money for the line-up itself and I think this shows.
KG: It is important to understand that there are several performers who we reach out to every year but it never works out. Not that we didn’t try to bring big names to Sziget last year, who would have made your question invalid had they come. There is a lot of luck in this, but it is true that a bit of extra money helps. If a band says no to a million dollars, they might say yes to one and a half.
This is the plus that the new investor brings in; that we have more money to negotiate with. But then again, when we had a strong line-up in previous years, it wasn’t necessarily because of the money, but because it just all worked out well in that given year and we were lucky. Last year even we weren’t satisfied with the line-up either. It was still very expensive though (he laughs). All I’m saying that this could only be called a conscious business move if we didn’t try bringing the same performers last year as well.
WLB: Last year you said that Sziget’s concept was a bit tired and needed refreshing. What do you think, how successful was this?
TK: It is true that by 2017 ,we had reached a point when we did everything in marketing and image building that we could. This is the area we needed to take further and I think it reflects in the programme as well. The whole Love Revolution will have a new image and it will feature a lot at the festival. But these innovations are not not because the concept was bad, quite the opposite, in fact – when we started using The Island of Freedom motto, it was a big step ahead, but we kept it and we’ll keep using it.
KG: Again, it is important to look at the big picture. An event always has some fundamental values, which are apparent at Sziget – openness, human rights, tolerance, etc – but where you put your emphasis always depends on the current situation of the world at that time. What is the world sensitive to at that particular point in time. Here’s a silly example: if in Canada or Switzerland, a festival emphasises how important the right to freedom is, nobody would be interested, as they wouldn’t understand why this needed to be pointed out – it's natural to them. Contrarily, over here it is important to react to things that are happening in the world. At a time when the whole world is a bit upset with Hungary because this country does not respect those rights, we can highlight that these are, in fact, very important to us. Still, those who come here, primarily come for the line-up. But it is also important where you advertise it a bit more.
I think it is a big advantage that Sziget wasn’t a copy of other festivals, as when we started it, we didn’t have the faintest idea what other major festivals were like. Only later did we realise that this was a massive advantage, because by the time festivals flooded the world, we already had certain characteristics that made us different and unique. When we started emphasising these, other festivals started copying us. We had to decide how to react to this and create a way to go.
This is why it is important to say that this is the end of en era. I think that – however egoistic this may sound – those past years when Sziget ran under my name was a certain era in the festival's life. But I think it’s a good idea that since that my colleagues – especially Tamás – have taken over, they want to give the festival something that would make it feel more like their own. It is important that they become attached to it so much that it becomes their baby, and they don’t just continue what I built. We’ve been working together for a long time though, so this change won’t be dramatic.
TK:(interrupts) From now on everything will be different! (They laugh)
WLB: What do you think, was there a festival in, let’s say, the past ten years that managed to show something innovative in any sense?
TK: Lollapalooza in Berlin. It didn’t necessarily bring about anything new, but it proved that Germany can have its own Sziget, too.
KG: Well, here we have to mention that the festival’s director was Fruzsina Szép, who was our programme manager in the past, so she worked with what she had learned.
TK: Yes, but German festivals are always a bit looked down on: they are very line-up-oriented... there’s a concert, everyone finishes their beer and go to bed. But now there is a festival close by that is very much like Sziget and for us, this was a massive challenge.
KG: I think there are many things that Sziget started and became popular, like cashless payment and other innovations. But of course, there are other things that we improved upon because we saw others doing it. To mention one, visuals at Sziget have always been very important: from the luminarium to the labyrinth, there are several amazing attractions that aren’t designed to bring more visitors, but rather to give visitors a plus. Something extra that they wouldn’t find anywhere else. But when Tomorrowland was born, it created something new by putting the emphasis on visuals. This was our inspiration to keep further improving our visuals, too. And it motivated us to dare to improve them even more, in order to give a plus for our visitors and stand out from the pool of festivals that can basically all bring together the same line-up.
Plus many people didn’t understand the many genres at Sziget. Not everyone could get their head around why we spend money on various artists that don’t attract big crowds. But in a few years, this became an international trend, and more and more festivals had theatre and circus performances in their programme, as others realised as well that visitors need something extra beyond concerts. And there are significant differences between the nature of festivals, too. In America, for instance, accommodation and the festival are generally two totally separate things, and sometimes the festival venue even closes for the night. The same sometimes happens in Europe, too. This is a totally different experience than what you get at Sziget, where everything is so fast-paced and all in one. We believe in this method, that’s why we do it. But it is apparent that other models work, too. There are also festivals who build on just one genre. We probably would not even have started Balaton Sound (an annual electronic music festival at Hungary's Lake Balaton - ed.) if we had not seen international examples for it working. Personally, I actually hate this music (they laugh), so if we made decisions based on what we like, Balaton Sound would probably not be in our portfolio. But I had to realise that just because I don’t like it, it works all the same, and fortunately I have colleagues in the team who do like it and can be enthusiastic about it.
Event organising is something you start without thinking about how big your company can grow. You rather do it for your own entertainment a little bit. Although in time you realise that it does grow into a company, where other things become more important than your personal preferences. This is what indicates a professional: if you can leave your selfishness behind for the sake of your audience. Many people think that my quitting was a selfish decision, but I think it was time, as now I am more of a damage to this organisation than an advantage. My everyday life is totally disconnected from our audience. I don’t even know how Facebook works, so it would be a foolishly brave decision to base our communication and advertising strategy on my knowledge, when it is one of the most important channels to reach out to our audience.
WLB: Let’s steer back to personal taste a bit. How much does Sziget’s line-up reflect your taste? Was there ever an act that you brought to Sziget even though you knew that there wouldn’t be much profit in it, but you just wanted to see them?
TK: Of course, more than once! We all really wanted to see Prince on the main stage. At the time, it wasn't profitable whatsoever (he laughs) but it was fantastic.
KG: There are certain stages that only exist because of this (he laughs). For instance, it would be very difficult to justify the World Music Stage from a business point of view. Jokes aside, there were definitely examples of this in the past, but normally the two go hand in hand. Just because I really like David Bowie or Manu Chao it doesn’t mean that others won’t. So there is nothing wrong with the fact that their show makes me happy, too, when hundreds of others feel the same way. Well, there was a time when we brought Peter Hamill to the main stage and, apart from me, only a hundred people knew who he was – but I wanted to see him live and have others see him as well. On the other hand, I knew he wouldn’t be too expensive, and that it wouldn’t break the budget. Still today, there are several performers – for instance on the A38 stage – we just believe in and we don’t think would be so popular, but we want people to get to know them. It is fortunate that our international audience is so wide that even if somebody is not so popular in Hungary, they already are elsewhere.
WLB: You said in previous interviews that the American investor opens up new opportunities to export the Sziget brand abroad…
TK: It is a slow process but we are not giving up. We found two places that the investors found too risky: Ukraine and Israel. We chose these places because they do not really have a festival culture yet, but a foreign mindset saw them as a bigger risk than we did. We still haven’t given up on this yet and hope we’ll have a chance in the future. We are going abroad to check venues again and we’ll see.
KG: We tried something similar even before the investors joined – we had events in Transylvania, Austria and negotiated with other countries, too. But it is not very easy, as for the Western European market, it is like adding water to the sea… We could come up with an idea of our own festival in England or the Netherlands, but we would be trying to break into a really crowded market. Other markets haven’t been tried out for a reason: the economic or political systems are not ready, general safety is weak and things like that. We tried in Turkey, but I don't think I have to think too hard why it wouldn't work out now. And it is important to note that even our existing festivals do not just operate automatically, they still take up most of the company’s human resource capacity.
WLB: And since you mentioned the sea... you have a new project, Lake Lupa. What are your plans with it? How are you going to use your spare energy after leaving Sziget?
KG: I partly quit because I needed some spare energy (he laughs). I was trying to do too many things at once, and this wasn’t too good for a lot of reasons. I had to prioritise to see what I still wanted to do and where I was still needed. I had and still have new ideas that I would like to take further, but only if I have time left for my family. With this in mind, I decided years ago that I would leave Sziget to someone else, but I had to find and train my successor. I announced to my colleagues that the 25th would be my last Sziget one and a half years ago. This tidied up my life completely – now I basically only work as much as a normal person. I get more than five hours’ sleep a night and I can take days off, even during summer.
Now Lake Lupa is my new love, where I can once again build up something big from basically nothing. This is a bit different to Sziget though, as I am building this company in a way that I do not want to participate in its operations. With Sziget, I was there every day for 25 years, but now I wouldn’t like to do more than just create the strategy. To answer the original question, again, I would like to create something that hundreds of thousands would enjoy. An important criteria is that not Hungarian lidos, but the best beach resorts are the example to follow.
WLB: Only one important question remains – how much will a beer cost at Sziget this year?
TK:(laughing) Even I don’t know that yet as negotiations are still ongoing, but we are not planning to introduce a drastic rise.
KG: Fortunately, I no longer have any idea.
