Changes at the Reading & Leeds Festivals and Mercury Prize

Reading and Leeds Festivals always deliver one of the U.K.’s wildest weekends, but this year’s event was even more full of incident than usual.

The set by Lana Del Rey (pictured above) was cut short by organizers, who later apologized; Reneé Rapp walked off stage after being drenched when accumulated rainwater was blown off the stage roof (again prompting an apology); and there was the small matter of the Oasis reunion effectively being announced at the end of Liam Gallagher’s set.

But if things were pretty tempestuous on stage, they were even stormier off it — literally. Storm Lilian hit on the Friday morning of the festival (Aug. 23), meaning the Leeds leg had to scrap its BBC Radio 1 and Aux stages for the duration of the event, while the new Chevron stage also closed temporarily at the northern site.

Reading escaped the worst of the storm but, speaking to Variety backstage on the festival’s first day, Festival Republic managing director Melvin Benn says festival organizers will have to get used to such unpredictable conditions.

“The weather is the biggest challenge to outdoor events nowadays,” he says. “We can’t ignore the fact that we are impacting on our climate. I don’t think there’s any question the earth is warming up and that has really quite catastrophic impacts on us.”

Benn says all Festival Republic events are doing “everything we can” to reduce their own carbon footprint, adding that the unstable climate is also increasing insurance premiums, which leads to higher ticket prices.

“Unless businesses are proactive about it, we’re going to lose what we have,” he says.

The festival landscape is similarly volatile, with Reading – usually a banker for advance ticket sales – only selling out just before the festival began. Benn said ticket sales had been slow between February and April, before subsequently picking up, although he absolved the always-controversial line-up (featuring headliners Blink-182, Fred Again, Catfish and the Bottlemen and Gerry Cinnamon as well as Del Rey and Gallagher) from any responsibility for the unusually sluggish response.

“The economy’s still struggling a bit,” Benn says. “Certainly, some festivals have suffered as a result of it. The strength of our lineup is what carried us through; we’ve got the best lineup of the year, of any festival around. Without this caliber of artist, it would be very hard to sell the tickets.”

Benn said the proliferation of stadium shows this summer, most notably Taylor Swift’s all-conquering Eras Tour, also increased the competition for ticket sales.

“Five to 10 years ago, Reading Festival wouldn’t have been on the Taylor Swift audience’s radar,” he says. “And the Reading Festival audience wouldn’t have had Taylor Swift on their radar. That isn’t the case now; they’re on the same radar. So, she did hoover a lot of potential festival ticket income away from the market.”

Reading and Leeds attracts a predominately teenage crowd these days, meaning Benn has constantly had to update his approach, with 2024’s innovations including a hi-tech video canopy above the Chevron Stage crowd and bringing stadium-style production to the dance music-oriented arena, while the Aux Stage hosted social media influencers.

That drew criticism from some who believe Reading should stay true to its rock roots, but Benn says it’s simply a case of keeping up with changing tastes.

“Nothing’s happened to Reading Festival that hasn’t been happening since 1989 when Vince Power and I took over,” he says. “It doesn’t stand still. We move every year with the times; we’ve changed the music with the times – we’ve brought hip-hop, grime, indie and grunge in, whatever was relevant to the audience of that period, and we’re not changing now. It’s not taking over, it’s just adding to it.”

Benn paid tribute to legendary festival operator Power, with whom he built the modern Reading and who passed away earlier this year, as “a big loss.”

“Vince was a pioneer in this industry,” he says. “Reading Festival was bankrupt in ’88 – nobody was interested in festivals and Vince was the last person on the list to be asked whether he was interested. We agreed to do it together and quite frankly that changed the festival world. He really did help to transform the music industry in Britain and, down the line, the rest of the world as well.”

Meanwhile, Benn himself shows no signs of tiring of the festival circuit, saying he already has one 2025 Reading and Leeds headliner in the bag.

“I first came to Reading as a 16-year-old, and 16-year-olds still come here today, and that’s wonderful,” he says. “A lot of my contemporaries look at me with bewilderment like, ‘Why are you still doing this, Melvin?’ I do it because I absolutely adore creating festivals that people come to and have the weekend of their lives. I’m going nowhere, I can assure you.”

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Despite difficulties on the festival circuit, new figures from trade body LIVE show the overall British touring industry is booming.

The stats reveal that, in 2023, live music contributed £6.1 billion ($8 billion) to the U.K. economy – that’s up 17% on 2022 and now 35% above pre-pandemic levels.

LIVE CEO Jon Collins tells Variety that it’s larger concerts that are driving the boom.

“In 2023, the bigger the name and the bigger the venue, the stronger the performance was,” he says. “We still had quite a backlog of artists [post-pandemic] that wanted to get out and fill Wembley, fill the Etihad [Stadium, in Manchester] and put on multiple nights at the O2. That was the engine to the growth.”

With Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2024 and Oasis’ reunion dates in 2025, the disparity between the top and bottom ends of the industry could be set to grow. And Collins says the sector needs to come together to help make sure everyone benefits.

“One thing these figures don’t show is profitability,” he says. “There are a lot of tickets being sold and a lot of shows being performed, but it’s not necessarily at the same level of profit as it was pre-lockdown, because of the supply-side inflation we’ve had to deal with. The pressures are still there on that [grass roots] strand of the music ecosystem. Which is why we’re calling on government to take some of the barriers out of the way so we can do even more at the higher levels, but also provide some breathing space to independent festivals and grassroots venues.”

LIVE is calling for a VAT cut on concert and festival tickets, although Collins thinks progress on that will take time as the new Labour government concentrates on other matters.

In May, the Culture, Media & Sport Committee called for a voluntary levy scheme from top-end tickets to support the grass roots “to be in place no later than September 2024”. No such scheme has materialized, drawing criticism from LIVE member the Music Venue Trust, but Collins claims it is still in the works.

“Nothing’s gone wrong, it’s complex,” he says. “The arenas and promoters are behind the principle. What we need to do is pin down exactly how that translates through to funding. It’s there, it’s happening, but we need to dot some I’s, cross some T’s and get some commitment.”

The sector also has a Department of Culture, Media & Sport consultation into secondary ticketing to look forward to, now widened to include “dynamic pricing” after a backlash over its deployment during the Oasis ticket on-sale. But Collins warns about putting too much emphasis on that one incident.

“This is not typical of the U.K. live music sector,” he notes. “One of the biggest bands in the world suddenly coming back together after 15 years creates a cultural event unlike pretty much anything else than we can offer as a sector. What I don’t want is for government to view our industry just through the filter of one concert series from one artist.

“We are much more nuanced than that,” he adds. “£6.1bn is a tremendous number but, beneath those headlines, we’ve got different elements of the industry in different stages of health. Some need support to survive and some might need obstacles being removed so they can do more and drive growth.”

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One live event that definitely isn’t happening this year is the traditional Mercury Prize ceremony.

In recent years, the Mercury – which honors the best albums of the year by British and Irish artists – has been awarded in front of an audience of music industry tables and fans at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith, West London, with most of the nominated acts performing live.

This year, however, organizers the BPI will stage a “broadcast event” at Abbey Road on Thursday , live on BBC Four television and BBC Radio 6 Music. There will still be a winner’s moment but, while performances will be aired, they will have been previously recorded elsewhere.

BPI CEO Jo Twist tells Variety that the absence of a headline sponsor this year – ride app FREENOW had filled that role since 2022 – made the traditional live spectacular impractical.

“There was a timing issue,” says Twist. “Not all sponsors are the right fit. We had a lot of very valuable conversations, but to get the level of production values that we need to put on a live show at the Apollo, it’s really important we get the right fit.

“Sometimes it’s worth experimenting with these things,” she adds. “A live event of the scale of the Apollo is a ‘nice-to-have’ but it’s not an essential part of the Mercury Prize. What is essential is the media coverage the artists get.”

Twist says there are a number of “ongoing conversations” with potential sponsors for 2025 but, in the meantime, she hopes the increased BBC coverage and earlier time slot – with the prize awarded at around 9 p.m. U.K. time – should help the award reach the same level of audience as in previous years. She says feedback from the music industry about the changes has been “very positive.”

But, while winning the Mercury was once a guarantee of increased sales, the Prize has not always had the same impact in the streaming age, although Ezra Collective’s album, “Where I’m Meant to Be”, did return to the charts after its 2023 triumph.

“The fact is, it’s an arts prize, so it’s not based on commercial success, even though a lot of these artists are commercially successful,” says Twist. “It’s about that exposure. That introduction and reaching fans with music that they might not have known about before is really critical, and that’s what artists buy into.”

This year’s list is the usual eclectic mix, with Charli XCX’s “Brat” album the favorite ahead of the likes of the Last Dinner Party’s “Prelude to Ecstasy” and Nia Archives’ “Silence Is Loud.”

And, while U.K. artists have struggled to break through at home or abroad in recent years, Twist believes the list shows British music remains in good health.

“We’ve got an amazing diversity of talent in this country,” she says. “Yes, it is a really competitive global market and streaming has brought more and different music to people, which is fantastic. So, this critical selection by independent judges is an important moment to say, ‘Here’s a slice of incredible artistry and human creativity that’s full of emotion and meaning.’

“I’d love to see the Mercury Prize really punch through globally,” she adds. “It’s a real testament to our industry, and long may that continue.”