Festivals in battle of the bands

IT IS usually the bands who are squabbling, but the scramble to secure a slice of Scotland's booming rock festival business has sparked an angry row between up and coming festivals and the well established, hugely successful T in the Park.

Promoters of the smaller events have complained that T in the Park is signing deals with bands which prevent them playing any other outdoor festivals that summer.

Geoff Ellis, the promoter of T in the Park – which in its 15th year will boast REM, Kaiser Chiefs, Kings of Leon, Amy Winehouse and KT Tunstall – denied he was trying to put other events out of business.

Exclusivity deals are the norm and the best way for festivals to maintain their success, added Ellis, who runs DF Concerts and also promotes HydroConnect in August at Inveraray, featuring Franz Ferdinand.

Squaring up against Ellis is Joe Gibbs, who promotes August's Tartan Heart Festival at Belladrum, near Inverness, and has signed up Scouting for Girls, The Waterboys and Idlewild. He is backed by Robert Hicks, who has lured Fatboy Slim, The View and Razorlight to next month's RockNess on the shores of the famous loch.

Gibbs, who started Belladrum on his family estate five years ago, said: "It's been a long hard struggle because you are up against corporate giants, particularly DF, who put exclusion clauses on the tiniest bands and artists, and tell them they can't play our event.

"In the end, it is audiences and artists who will lose out if the small independents like Belladrum disappear."

Gibbs said he had held talks with 30 acts this year who said they were unable to play Belladrum because DF Concerts would not allow it. "If they were right up the top of the bill, it's understandable, but for smaller acts it's crazy. They range from high-profile acts down to small Scottish breaking acts who want a wider platform and have been denied it."

DF launched Connect in the grounds of Inveraray Castle last year with the help of a three-year £230,000 start-up grant from public funds. "With T in the Park in July and Connect in August, bands are being taken off the market for the whole of the summer," Gibbs said. "That has further put the screw on the smaller independents."

As well as RockNess, Hicks runs the smaller Loopallu festival in Ullapool. He said: "When it comes to acts low down on the bill that haven't even been announced when tickets have been sold out, then it is doing the bands and the gig-going public a disservice."

Ellis, when asked if it was his intention to put other festivals out of business, replied: "Absolutely not. We invested loads of money into T in the Park in the early days and that has created a marketplace for all these other festivals to exist.

"I'm not trying to stop them happening, but when I book a line-up and spend a lot of money, our audience spend their money on a great line-up.

Other promoters would be annoyed if they announced an act and then I booked it a week later. It would harm their ticket sales."

Ellis insisted agreements that prevented bands from playing other festivals, sometimes for up to a year, were an industry norm. "That's standard," he said.

Mark Mackie, who runs Regular Music, which promotes concerts mainly in the major Scottish cities, said such agreements were "fair enough" in relation to headline and breakthrough acts.

"Geoff isn't doing it to scupper other promoters," he said. "He's just protecting his own business."