FOMO – fear of missing out. When it comes to events in South Australia fear of missing out isn’t something Adelaidians have had to worry much about as there is normally tickets still available on the day (if it’s a ticketed event) however FOMO is something every South Australian should start worrying about not due to the fact tickets will be sold out but the fear of events not being held in Adelaide unless events start getting the support they need. At the moment in Adelaide events are struggling and putting on an event isn’t worth it to the organisers. South Australia was just awarded the best event state in the country however it needs the public to turn up to events to keep that title.
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Recently Justin Bieber announced his Australian tour and left Adelaide off the list– but to be honest I don’t blame them. Why would they come to Adelaide where if lucky only 50% of tickets would sell and they would end up losing money. It happens time and time again with events being advertised and then a couple months out the event is cancelled normally due to not enough ticket sales and then South Australians complain “we miss out again”. If they supported the event right from the start we would no longer be the state that misses out.
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FOMO is common in every other state in Australia where people realise if they don’t get tickets as soon as they go on sale they will miss out. These states support local events and appreciate the different experiences they are being offered where as Adelaide has the attitude of everything should be free and if it’s not I’m not going and even if it’s free I may go I’ll decide on the day. It’s this attitude that is making South Australian event lose money, as putting on an event is not cheap when you have to consider people’s safety.
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When organising an event you have to ensure for health and safety you have catered for the max number of people that may turn up – do you have enough toilets, do you have enough water, is there enough security, will vendors have enough food – and if you don’t have enough of everything and more people turned up those people will troll you on social media for months and make you feel like your event is shit. All those “enoughs” cost money which most of the time have to be paid for before the event opens - if no one turns up that money has come out of the organisers own pockets or worse they end up having to take out a loan after.
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Security for an event is also a hard one. If you have alcohol at your event when you apply for your liquor licence you have to advise the CBS the max number of people who may attend the event and it is then up to them to decide how many security guard you have to have. Our last event we had to have a min of 9 guard on as that is what our liquor licence stated yet only 40 people turned up, even though over 1000 people said they were interested in attending the event – we had to keep those guards on even with only 40 attendees because if we didn’t we would have been in breach of our licence and fined. Seriously what happened to those 1000 people who said they were interested in it and didn’t turn up – what better offer did they get that day? Why did they decide not to support a local event?
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When people don’t turn up to events it doesn’t just affect the organisers it also has an impact the vendors at the event. Vendors cater for the estimated number of people that are expected (if they don’t and they sell out of food what happens – more online trolls attacking their business they have worked hard on creating). If people don’t turn up not only do the vendors lose money and can’t pay their bills, they then can’t afford to pay their staff and food/drinks go to waste.
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It not only small local events that are suffering atm it’s also major free events and charity events. Numbers have been down on events this year with many organisers struggling to break even and wondering if it’s really worth it. An upcoming major event has sold out in every other state however in South Australia it still has over 5000 tickets still available with organisers being talked out of cancelling it. Major events that have been held for years in Adelaide are starting to be scaled back to smaller locations for next year as organisers can no longer afford to keep losing money.
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We are considering if it’s worth doing events in Adelaide. Our major event Nutella-Palooza which was a world first event that saw 20,000 people attend a one day event and we would love to keep as an Adelaide only event (the world’s only Nutella festival held in South Australia each year) is struggling with no support from government or businesses with funding or sponsorship. We know both Melbourne and Brisbane want us to bring Nutella-Palooza to them and we know we would make more money taking it there so why are we trying to keep it in South Australia? quite frankly it’s because we love this state however this state doesn’t seem to be loving us back.
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\n\nwords by Tash
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