Research Essay

Choose an Australian media organization that you think faces big opportunities and/or challenges.
Discuss: the origins, development and current state of the organization and the media sector or
sectors it operates in; the particular opportunities and/or challenges you think are most important
for this organization; and the main steps you think the organization should take over the next 3-5
years to try to seize those opportunities and/or deal with the challenges.

Festivals are one of the fastest growing sectors in the world leisure industry (Petrick & Li, 2006). An
increase from 40%–47% is reported in the number of people who attended at least one live music
event in the last five years in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007; Australia Council for the
Arts, 2010). Over 300, 000 people attended the “Big Day Out” music festival in 2010 (Big Day Out,
2011). According to Gibson and Stewart (2009), 2,856 regional festivals occurred in three Australian
states that made over $AUD10 billion in local economic activity. Gelder and Robinson (2009) argue
the importance of gaining a better understanding of the motives of festival attendance in order to
produce more targeted products and services to sustain and maximise attendance. In this essay, I
draw on research to consider the motives of attendance at a regional event, the Pitch Music and Arts
Festival, as a basis to examine opportunities and challenges in achieving sustainable development.
After exploring the current state of the newly-developed annual festival, I will use academic research
and draw from literature to determine how the organisation can improve over the next 3-5 years.
International (Gelder & Robinson, 2009) and Australian (Gration, Arcodia, Raciti & Stokes, 2011;
Ballantyne, Ballantyne & Packer, 2013) research suggests multiple motivations are behind
attendance at music festivals. It is, therefore, important that festival managers do not rely on one
factor only, such as the theme of the event itself, to attract attendees and generate profit.

Pitch Music and Arts (Pitch) is a young festival that takes place annually for a weekend in March in
the Victorian regional town of Mafeking, showcasing electronic music and visual arts. The festival
has only had two runs, beginning in 2017, yet is already confirmed to take place again in 2019. Their
websites describe the weekend as a “fount of sound. Four mercurial days of contemporary
electronic music steeped in visual arts and landscape. A yearling community assembled in Victoria’s
wide and promising plains – oracular international and local artists in the effervescence of plein-air”
(Pitch, 2018).

In 2018, the event sold out with nearly 10,000 tickets, doubling their attendance from the previous
year (Pickering, 2018). The 10,000 attendees were able to all fit in the camping ground, with several
kilometres of unused land beyond the camping grounds. Assuming that the festival had the rights to
this unused land, the actual size of Pitch will be no problem should the festival continue expanding
over the coming years. However, if the attendance number does continue increasing, the stage sizes
and numbers will need to be improved to fit more patrons in. In 2017, another Victorian music
festival, Falls Music and Arts, suffered at the hands of major controversy when a “human crush” left
nineteen people hospitalised and dozens more injured due to their inability to fit their patrons into
The Grand Theatre (McCormak, 2017). This flounder resulted in a class action lawsuit being filed
against Falls Festival, with 65 patrons of the festival a part of the lawsuit. Thus, to avoid danger and
legal issues, physical expansion is a necessity for a festival growing in popularity.

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The festival is reported to have provided an economical boost of $350,000 on the Grampians
community and suppliers, including the host town, Makefing, and surrounding towns, such as Ararat,
Halls Gap and Moyston (Pickering, March 2018). The Grampians, a national park which has become a
local tourist attraction, also would have seen an influx of hikers due to the festival, as the mountains
of The Grampians were easily visible from the camping grounds (Fenwick, 2018).

According to John Connell and Chris Gibson (2011), the traits that make a music festival unique is
that “they are usually held annually and generally have social rather than economic or political aims”
(p.4). Thus, a festival that brings like-minded people together for ‘fun’ or entertainment have proven
to be more successful according to studies conducted by Connell and Gibson (2011). Pitch Music and
Arts Festival appears to successfully create this environment by providing distinct electronic music to
cater to the audience, meaning there is a sense of comradery between all the electronic music fans.
The majority of the staff at the event are attendees volunteering, which creates a casual
environment between the attendees and staff (Fenwick 2018; Baris 2018).

The electronic/techno music is the highest selling point amongst the attendees (Fenwick 2018; Baris
2018), as it gives the festival uniqueness compared to other festivals in Victoria such as Falls Music
and Arts Festival, which provides music that is more hip-hop and indie. Pitch Festival received praise
in its first year due to their ability to secure high profile international performers such as Mind
Against, Fatima Yahama and The Field (Murphy, 2016). In order to remain competitive and
successful, the festival will need to continue providing performers of similar or bigger calibre.

Through a study conducted by Detox.net (Sanchez, 2017) concerning Instagram posts, the study
found that Coachella, one the largest and most popular musical festivals on the globe, had the most
drug and alcohol mentions despite the event explicitly prohibiting drugs at the festival. This suggests
that music festivals and illicit substances have a direct correlation with each other. Drugs such as
ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, mushrooms and opioids are all commonly popular within music
festivals, particularly one showcasing electronic music. Illicit substances are prominent issues
amongst many music festivals globally. In 2015, five people died from consuming illegal narcotics at
the music festivals Live Nation’s Hard Summer, Beyond Overland, Electric Daisy Carnival and
TomorrowWorld, and in 2016, five people died at a singular Argentinean festival (Earp, 2017). If
Pitch Music and Arts Festival were to develop a status of being drug-heavy, this could severely
damage their reputation, especially if fatalities are caused. Parents of the victims at Live Nation’s
Hard Summer sued the festival and caused the event to precipitate major changes (Legaspi, 2017).
As an attendee of the 2018 Pitch Music & Arts festival, I can say that the weekend-long event is
already building a reputation of having easily accessible illegal narcotics.

Although the use of these drugs attracts legal attention, the status of reputations within a musical
festival can become a selling point to particular patrons. Although Ararat Senior Sergeant Damian
Ferrari was pleased with crowd behaviour at Pitch, saying the festival was well planned and
managed (Pickering, 2018), the distribution and consumption of illicit drugs was large. Building a
drug-heavy reputation around a musical festival is extremely dangerous, and it would be wise for
Pitch to eradicate this custom from their festival by increasing security and conducting more
intensive searches of all incoming vehicles. Due to the fact that the staff monitoring the entrance of
vehicles are volunteers themselves, it would be smart to hire professional security to conduct this
task. At the 2018 Pitch Festival, Police conducted drug and alcohol testing for those leaving the

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festival, which was one strategy to prevent attendees consuming drugs, however only the ones
driving had this to worry about.

Ian McDonnell (1999) contends that “good strategic planning is crucial to the success and survival of
an organising” (p. 58). Thus, in order for Pitch to continue growing and generating income, the
annual festival will need to devise strategies to ensure its existence. Due to the massive financial
success of this year’s incarnation of the festival, the financial condition of the creators behind pitch
will be greatly improved. This means the festival will be able to afford greater means of promotion
and marketing. Promotion through social media is free, however advertisement through billboards,
television commercials and radio would require large sums of money which Pitch may soon be able
to afford.

Another means of promotion for Pitch would be to partner with local companies. The food sector of
the festival allows local business to sell their goods within the festival. However, with rapidly rising
attendance figures, even more companies would be willing to sponsor the festival in exchange for
promotion. For example, American festival Coachella has many sponsors, from Adidas to Heineken,
which gives them an extra source of income to improve the experience of the weekend.

It may also be appropriate for Pitch to develop a ‘network structure’. Robbins (1997) defines
network structure as “a small centralised organisation that relies on other organisations to perform
its basic business functions on a contract basis” (McDonnell, 1999, p. 71). This means, because Pitch
is of limited duration, the festival would be impractical to remain operational for the entire year. For
example, GMHBA Stadium in Kardinia Park is owned by O’Brien Group Australia, along with many
other stadiums and venues across Australia, meaning the staff of this stadium is employed by
O’Brien Group Australia and can work across all other stadiums owned by the company (Lynch,
2016).

Pitch uses the ticketing company Event Brite to sell tickets, however relocating to a larger and more
successful ticketing company such as Ticketek would expose the event to a wider audience. Ticketek
sells around 18 million tickets to over 13 thousand events annually (Ticketek), thus having tickets to
Pitch available on the site would give exposure to users of the site either purchasing tickets to other
events or users searching for musical/arts festivals.

To eliminate competition, Pitch could relocate the time of their annual festival to the weekend over
New Year’s Eve, competing against Falls Festival. Many music or festival lovers would not be able to
justify spending large sums of money on two weekend-long festivals within the span of three
months, thus creating head on competition could be beneficial. Right now, Falls Festival is far more
popular with nearly 18 thousand attendees last year. However in time, should Pitch continue to
grow in popularity, competition between the two Victorian festivals will be inevitable, and Makefing
has the room to fit more patrons than Falls Festival’s location in Lorne.

It is possible to learn about the motivations behind attendance at Pitch from formal and informal
reviews and feedback posted on online review forums. One critique of Pitch was that it did not
deliver on the Arts side of its promoted Music and Arts Festival (Fenwick, 2018; Baris, 2018). This is
an area that would seem relatively cheap and easy to deliver on in the next festival. The local towns
near the festival are potential sources of artists wanting a market to showcase their products. This
would also positively develop the needed relationship between organisers, attendees and locals.

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This essay has closely analysed how Pitch Music and Arts Festival can capitalise on opportunities to
improve the annual event, and also how they can eliminate any challenges they are or could face.
Due to the success the weekend-long festival has had in its first two manifestations, I contend that
the festival has great potential to continue growing in popularity and has opportunities to become
one of the leading annual music and art festivals in Victoria and indeed Australia.

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References:

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2007). Culture and recreation: Festivals. Year Book Australia.
Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/7d12b0f6763c78

Australia Council for the Arts. (2010). More than bums on seats: Australian participation in the arts.
Sydney: Australia Council for the Arts.

Ballantyne, J. & Ballantyne, R & Packer, J. (2014). Designing and managing music festival experiences
to enhance attendees psychological and social benefits. Musicae Scientiae, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 65-83.

Baris, A. (2018). There are festivals, and then there is Pitch Music and Arts Festival. Retrieved from
http://stoneyroads.com/2018/03/there-are-festivals-and-then-there-is-pitch-music-and-arts-
festival/.

Big Day Out. (2011). Past BDO festivals. Available at http://www.bigdayout.com/past-bdo-

festivals.php.

Earp, J. (2017). “Why music festivals need to get better about drugs”. [online] The Brag. Sydney.

Fenwick, J (2018) The highs and lows of Pitch Festival 2018. Retrieved from
http://www.purplesneakers.com.au/2018/03/review-pitch-festival-2018/.

Gelder, G. & Robinson, P. (2009), “A critical comparative study of visitor motivations for
attending music festivals: a case study of Glastonbury and V Festival”, Event Management, Vol. 13
No. 3, pp. 181-96.

Gibson, C., & Connell, J. (2011). Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia. Burlington,
VT: Routledge.

Gibson, C. & Stewart, S. (2009). Reinventing rural places: The extent and impact of festivals in rural
and regional Australia. Canberra: Australian Research Council.

Gration, D. & Arcodia, C. & Raciti, M. & Stokes, R. (2011). The blended festivalscape and its
sustainability at nonurban festivals. Event Management, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 343-59.
Legaspi, A. (2017). Parents of HARD Summer Fest Overdose Victim Sue Live Nation. [online] Rolling
Stone.
Lynch, J. (2016). Spotless loses 30-year-old stadium contract to O'Brien Group. [online]. The Sydney
Morning Herald.
McCormack, A. (2017). Class action lawsuit filed against Falls Festival over human crush. Triple J
Hack.
McDonnell, I. (1999). Festival and Special Event Management. Hoboken : John Wiley & Sons
Australia, Ltd
Murphy, S. (2015). New Australian Music Festival Pitch Unveils Full 2017 Lineup. [online].
MusicFeeds.

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Petrick, J., & Li, X. (2006). A review of festival and event Motivation Studies. Event Management 9(4),
239-245.

Pickering, P. (2018). “Pitch Music Festival 2018 sellout crowd”. [online]. Ararat Advertiser

Pickering, P. (March 2018). Ararat and Grampians region businesses prepare for sellout EDM crowd
for Pitch Music Festival 2018 near Moyston. [online]. Accessed from
https://www.araratadvertiser.com.au/story/5266309/ararat-region-businesses-prepare-for-10000-
music-festival-fans/.
Sanchez, D. (2017). “What Are The Most Popular Drugs at Music Festivals?”. [online]. Digital Music
News.
Ticketek. (2010). "About us". premier.ticketek.com.au.

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