Published
Tue, Dec 6, 2016, 18:35
- The promoter lost €70,000 at its most recent event, incurring too much debt to continue.
Romanian festival Interval is putting all of its future events on hold after suffering "massive financial losses."
The news comes a week after the second edition of Interval 100, a 100-hour house and techno event held across various clubs in Cluj-Napoca, Romania's second city. A poor turnout left the organisers €70,000 in debt, forcing them to announce the indefinite hiatus. "We will need to focus all of our time and energy on finding the much-needed support from third party financiers and sponsors to help us pay back our partners, vendors and suppliers as well as a few of the artists who played at Interval 100," the festival posted on Facebook. "We cannot go on until all of our debt has been paid."
Interval also runs another festival called Interval Natural, which was scheduled to return for its second edition in 2017. Speaking to RA over email, co-founder Irina Bako is still confident it will go ahead, though with a reduced lineup. "It's likely to happen since it's ten months from now. The size of its lineup is the only variable and the problem we have right now is with some agencies we need to delay payments or half-payments for. Hopefully we can make Natural happen—we have a contract with them—but for now we need to focus on recovering some money through the labels and other work." Bako went on to say that Interval is "planning on entering the Romanian version of administration."
This isn't the first time the promoters have faced financial hardship. Last year's Interval 100 event in Bucharest had its lineup slashed after several venues were forced to pull out at the last minute.
Read Interval's Facebook statement in full.