Published
Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 16:50
- After this year's edition, the team expects to be between €1.5 and €2 million in the red.
The future of legendary German festival Fusion is under threat due to mounting debt.
Earlier this week, Kulturkosmos Müritz eV, the company behind the event, wrote a lengthy post on its website explaining the reasons for the "very large financial deficit" and how it plans to raise money. The team estimates the debt to be between €1.5 and €2 million.
"[We] must act quickly so that the entire Kulturkosmos project doesn't slide into an existential crisis," the team wrote.
Fusion 2022, which took place earlier this summer, was the first edition since 2019. In 2020, Kulturkosmos raised the ticket price by €70 to help with costs incurred during the pandemic. The company also received state and federal subsidies. But according to the post, this wasn't enough to cover the 20 percent hike for "almost all materials" plus "services, technology and infrastructure" at this year's festival.
The price hike also dovetailed with lower ticket revenue due to the so-called "police merger" of 2019, which saw the authorities capping the event at 80,000 people and demanding a presence on-site for the first time in 22 years.
"In the end we had 64,000 paid tickets from the raffle and only 3,000 of the expected 6,000 Sunday guests came," the post read.
As a result, Fusion now faces insolvency unless it can raise money quickly. Options include a bank loan, finding private lenders and selling 10,000 early bird tickets for the 2023 edition, starting on September 26th. The team ruled out raising ticket prices again due to the current cost-of-living crisis. (The team also ruled out a price reduction.)
On a grander scale, Kulturkosmos is selling several assets, such as a three-storey, 100-year-old house by a lake in Wesenberg. The property was bought in 2015 and renovated to accommodate refugees. Nine plots of land on the outskirts of Lärz, near the Fusion site and a lake, are also up for sale. The plots are "ideal for those who have fled the city, are tired of the pandemic, and are Fusion-savvy home builders with children," according to the post.
Fans of Fusion can also donate to the fundraising effort via PayPal and buy "Fusion-themed shirts, hoodies and other solidarity items." More info on the merch will be revealed soon.
Kulturkosmos plans to follow up this post with a more detailed financial breakdown "to make the situation transparent." Read the latest post in full.
Running since 1997, Fusion is one of Germany's largest and longest-running festivals, famous for its countercultural character and broad electronic music programme. It takes place annually at Müritz Airpark in Lärz, around two hours from Berlin.