Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch sold 55,000 tickets this year, 5,000 less than in 2012. The festival, which this year was held from 1 to 11 August, did attract more crowds for the free offerings on the festival square. This brought the total number of visitors to the festival this year to 145,000, 5,000 more than in 2012. As the venue occupancy is still nice at 85%, the drop in ticket sales will mainly be due to a smaller offer of performances.
In 2012, the festival was already shrinking sharply in terms of the number of performances. Under pressure of cuts by the state and province, at least €400,000 less was available for programming. That 60,000 tickets were still sold then was a blessing. At least if we can go off the director, Geert Overdam.
"We are at a lower limit now; if it goes any further, we will sink through the ice," he said in reference to that edition, even though it attracted as many visitors then as in 2011, and 10,000 more tickets were sold than in the year before. Apparently, that lower limit has not been reached now after all. After all, the festival is preparing for its 30th edition in 2014 full of fresh energy.
So far, the festival season presents a mixed picture. Over 't IJ in Amsterdam saw visitor numbers rise from 30,000 in 2012 to 33,000 this year, while tickets sold increased by 1,000 to 23,000. The Holland Festival reported earlier this year a drop in the number of tickets sold, but, like Boulevard, it did manage to keep audience occupancy high through sensible programming. Oerol trolled 50,000 visitors like every other year, and Karavaan in North Holland saw visitor numbers rise to 28,000, though no data can be found of the number of tickets sold, and figures from previous editions have disappeared from the site. Spring, the new festival in Utrecht that emerged from the small but high-quality festival Springdance and the more crowd-focused Festival a/d Werf, did not disclose visitor figures at all this year.
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