The circus that was Rewind 80s Festival Australia has ended and thankfully refunds will be given to the few people who did buy tickets. Clearly, the promoters were the problem, although it seems they are trying to blame the Wollongong public for not buying enough tickets. One thing amateur promoters need to learn is that blaming punters for not buying tickets to a festival that didn’t end up happening doesn’t come across well.
The fact that the Department Of Fair Trading had to get involved shows how bad the judgement showed by the Rewind Festival Organisers was and the only common sense we have seen is the cancellation of the festival itself.
What is really sad about all of this is the bad image it gives other promoters in Australia. Shambles like this are only going to cause Australian punters to hold off on buying tickets in the future. We see time and time again, unknown promoters think they can just jump in and run a festival without the proper research or knowledge that it takes to pull of a festival of this size. Soon after we hear the excuses…
There has been no official statement from Rewind Festival Australia yet but last night one of their Facebook admins posted a bizarre rant that was later removed. They then followed that by removing all posts that were ever made on their Facebook wall, you can read the unofficial statement below.
Rewind Festival Australia Unofficial Statement:
A full statement of what went wrong and why will be released very soon, before you cast your stones i suggest you digest the journey then make your honest judgment of the situation, i have been reading various suggestions over the past days on how we got everything wrong from start to finish, let the truth be the judge of that…i have today been cleared to release your refunds back for tickets purchased hopefully this will go some way to settle those who thinks someones run off with the money here, in the end it was a simple fact that not enough tickets by a mile was sold to carry out a production of this nature, we all tried very hard to pull this together and would have done no matter what reports say of license/visas/bookings ect had the ticket sales been correct, the reports i have seen from Wollongong saying i/we let them down…….i can tell all now that 1/3 of 1% of the population of Wollongong bought tickets to this event and with the reluctance of the mass of Sydney people not wanting to travel to Wollongong made the festival un-workable
I have also noticed a batch of nonsense comments from Damien Negus on this face book page stating he knows this and knows that, the truth of him and his partner in crime Kerrie Jarvis is they came up with a nonsense production budget that would have made the festival bankcrupt before it started, if he continues to preach his nonsense i will post on the page the the budget for the festival they created, all in that industry we showed it to fell over with laughter, in fact Damiens partner told us before they wcould get involved we had to pay for a new jaw/teeth operation for her to the tune of $40,000 dollars, needless to say the deal never got off the ground, oh and then out the blue 2 weeks ago he called to try and lay claims on the festival, Do you still want a share now Damien????
We have nothing to save here , the festivals cancelled all tickets will be refunded, all are very disapointed at the outcome, I /we will loose the rights to host another Rewind, thats our loss, its a very good concept thats why i brought it over to Australia in the first place, all the comments on DAs, Visas ect ect would not have been the issue, the simple problem here is not enough tickets sold to support all the other issues on the table and for the changing of why the festival was moved, this was just down to saving face for the area (Wollongong) and trying to rescue something from the ashes, re the weather and the land been a factor, in fact it was a major factor just not the only factor.
