Barcelona (EFE).- After last year’s historical record, Primavera Sound Barcelona has attracted fewer spectators to the Parc del Fòrum this year -65,000 on average daily, compared to 80,000 last year-, it has offered a more comfortable and pleasant experience , without the crowds of 2022, and hopes to consolidate the double headquarters with Madrid.
“Although we have not sold out locations, we feel comfortable with these figures, because we know that the public has had a very good experience. This year’s is a good format for us and for the city”, the director of the event, Alfonso Lanza, said this Saturday at the press conference to assess the festival, which today Saturday faces its last day at the main venue, although tomorrow the Spring in the City continues.
Between the public in the halls and the public in the main venue, Primavera Sound Barcelona 2023 has attracted 253,000 people, 193,000 of them in the Parc del Fòrum, with a slow day on Thursday (54,000 people), more lively on Friday (68,000) and it is expected that especially crowded this Saturday (70,000).
Figures in general lower than those of last year, when the post-pandemic effect, added to the increase in capacity and dates decided by the organization, made Primavera Sound collide with its own limits.
a future model
Primavera Sound 2023 has been resized, has redistributed stages and “has found the format” and “a model for the future”, according to Lanza.
The profile of the festival’s visitor has also changed, with 52% foreign audiences, compared to almost 70% in the previous edition.
Lanza has blamed this decrease on the increase in the prices of planes and hotels, “which are very expensive because it coincides with the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Barcelona.”
“We don’t have in mind to reconsider what happened last year in Barcelona -Lanza stated, referring to the special edition of 12 days in a row-. We want to give continuity to the three consecutive dates in the Iberian Peninsula: Barcelona, Madrid and Porto”.
The first edition of Primavera Sound Madrid
The first edition of Primavera Sound Madrid, which will take place in the Ciudad del Rock in Arganda del Rey from June 8 to 11, is a “demanding financially, because it requires articulating a mobility plan”, but Lanza is confident that it will be a success and will be consolidated in future editions.
The space that it will use has a capacity for 120,000 people, but Primavera Sound has enabled only a part of the surface because the transport system that it has devised between Madrid and Arganda del Rey has a capacity for 50,000.
Even so, the rate of ticket sales suggests that the first edition of the Madrid festival will not reach this figure and will remain at 40,000 daily attendees on average, “numbers with which we feel comfortable”, according to Lanza.
Primavera Sound Barcelona has also modified the system for obtaining free tickets for concerts in venues in the city, to which all those with a season ticket for the main venue have access, and “things have worked better this year, although they are still they can improve”, according to Lanza.
With a global budget of 65 million euros, 15 million more than last year with two weekends in Barcelona, Primavera Sound has organized this year a weekend in Barcelona and another in Madrid, in which the same bands will perform.
A luxury line-up that opened New Order and Blur on the first day and will close today Rosalía, with a long-awaited concert that will end at dawn and that, like all those at the festival, will be repeated in Madrid.