The festival summer fell into the water this year due to the corona virus. Sportpaleis CEO Jan Van Esbroeck looked ahead to the next in ‘Gert Late Night’. He fears financial dramas for the next canceled festival summer.
These are difficult times for the culture and events sector. Due to the nature of their profession, they are one of the last to be able to count on relaxation. This meant a lot of canceled and rescheduled concerts for the Sportpaleis. Especially the canceled show of Billie Eilish stuck in the mind of Sportpaleis CEO Jan Van Esbroeck: “The moment we had to postpone Billie Eilish’s concert, which is a concert that should have taken place in mid-July, then we had people on the phone who were crying.”
Festivalzomer
For the time being, the future looks bright for the Sportpaleis Group, which operates a lot of halls ranging from Lotto Arena to Ethias Arena Hasselt: “You can hold your breath for a while, luckily we were a company with healthy reserves”. Although the situation should not continue until the end of next summer, Van Esbroeck warns: “If this situation will continue over the summer of next year and we will not have a festival summer again, it will be particularly dire for our sector.”
Check out the fragment from ‘Gert Late Night’
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