BMF 2021 Cancellation
Some Insight Into Our Decision
In an effort to be both open and informative, we thought we would provide some further detail around our decision to cancel BMF 2021.
We didn’t have the luxury to “play it by ear”
In a perfect world, we could have waited it out a little longer and gathered more data on what is working and not working for other events. But the reality is that our staff, bands and vendors (and guests!) need to plan. Deposits were due and many bands had already started booking travel. Out of respect for our incredible team of artists and entertainment production professionals, we needed to commit to the festival or allow them to find other gigs. It’s been a really tough 18 months for everyone in music and events. Going any further with our planning not only would have cost us money but, even more importantly, the relationships and trust we have with our artists, vendors and staff.
Reports of kids and vaccinated adults getting sick
Many new details around Delta were just emerging in early August. Most alarming to us were reports of young kids and older vaccinated adults getting sick. With much of our audience being both older adults and kids it felt risky to barrel ahead without a better understanding of the situation and its effect on public events.
Onsite testing is very expensive and not incredibly reliable.
With so many kids at BMF a fully vaccinated festival wasn’t possible. We thought perhaps onsite rapid testing could be a solution but after consulting with a number of health professionals, not only was the cost prohibitive for a small festival like ours, but we were also told rapid tests aren’t reliable.
People had already started to cancel
Even before we decided to cancel, people were cancelling their cabins due to concerns about the Delta variant. Producing a professional music festival is expensive and we need to run as close to capacity as possible just to break even. Already, due to COVID, we were required to reduce our attendance to 65%. Going much more below that number wasn’t financially feasible.
NOTE: The above is a quick overview of a handful of the issues related to our decision to cancel BMF. Every event and gathering is different and the above info is not meant as a recommendation to others but rather to provide some further insight into our specific decision.