The organizer of a cancelled concert that was scheduled for Friday in Kelowna says lack of ticket sales was its undoing.
Brandon Cochran of Rock District, the concert organizer, reached out to Global News on Thursday regarding Wednesday’s announcement that the Magic! concert wasn’t going ahead. In an interview with Global News, Cochran said they had sold 295 tickets as of Monday, well below the 1,500 they were hoping for.
The event was to take place at Waterfront Park, on the first day of summer. Cochran said the venue holds 4,000.
“Our team is devastated that the community of Kelowna didn’t support our lineup this year,” Cochran said in an email.
“Kelowna is notorious for purchasing tickets last minute and we delayed as long as we could hoping that this would be the case, but it unfortunately wasn’t.
“We are still in disbelief that Kelowna wasn’t interested in the lineup we put together, because we know how amazing all three of these Canadian bands are and the summer solstice was the ideal day.”
WATCH BELOW (Aired March 11, 2019): Nicki Minaj offers apology after show in France was cancelled
Cochran added “we understand at this point it will be extremely difficult for you to accept our sincerest apology, but the last thing we ever thought we’d need to do was to hurt the people that supported our efforts.
“All we wanted was to create another memorable evening with our friends, family and music fans, but without enough community support a show of this caliber just isn’t possible.
“With the high expenses that come along with using one of Kelowna’s best outdoor amphitheatres the ticket money that was gathered needed to go towards expenses to lock the night in, and now we are facing the difficult challenge of gathering these deposits back to be able to refund everyone’s tickets.”
WATCH BELOW (Aired May 22, 2019): PNE announces Summer Nights concert series lineup
On Wednesday, it was announced that only those who lived out of town would have their money refunded. Those who did would have their tickets “honoured at any future Rock District Island Stage concerts of equal or greater value starting in 2020.”
On Thursday, though, Cochran said they are trying to refund all tickets.
WATCH BELOW (Aired June 12, 2019): Security shoves fan off stage at Lil Mosey concert
“We definitely understand that people are upset,” he said in a phone interview. “We are trying to manage this as best we can. It was a very quick turnaround for us and there’s just a lot of work involved with a cancellation of an event.
“We’re trying our best to handle the cancellation in a timely manner,” Cochran continued. “Obviously everybody’s upset and we’re just as devastated. It’s just one of those things where the community didn’t get behind this event, and, unfortunately, we just didn’t see enough people to justify moving forward.”
Cochran said those affected would be contacted by email, and that a second email was to be sent out at 6 p.m. on Thursday to everyone who opted out of receiving emails from Rock District.
Cochran noted that because some had opted out of receiving emails, they were only able to quickly email 41 ticket buyers.
“In terms of our small, home-based company here, we might send out an email a month,” he said. “If the month is busy, we might send out a couple.
“But typically, we’ll go months without sending an email because we don’t do that many events. Having patrons’ emails is every important to us because of situations like this come up.”
He added “we do want to, obviously, deal with this in a professional manner and as timely as possible. But when we don’t have patrons’ emails, it just makes it that much more difficult to respond back to them as quick as possible.”
The show was billed online as “the best outdoor concert happening all summer in Kelowna,” and was supposed to feature food trucks as well as two opening acts.
Comments