WISEMAN’s FERRY, NSW (CelebrityAccess) — Australia’s Return To Rio has joined the rising ranks of canceled music occasions after organizers introduced that the competition is not going to be happening as deliberate in 2024.
Return To Rio’s organizers shared the information of the cancellation by way of social media, citing new licensing necessities for EDM occasions which have pushed up prices and made the competition too costly to stage.
“Because the introduction of the NSW Competition Act in 2019, nearly each digital music competition in NSW has been deemed ‘topic’ (or ‘excessive threat’). Which means NSW Police and Well being have full management over how a lot a competition pays for policing and medical, in addition to some other further prices they deem needed for hurt minimisation (e.g. riot squads, police boats, interrogation areas, strip search services, CCTV…the listing goes on).
“Return to Rio has a wonderful report as a protected and well-run competition and has operated efficiently for over a decade with none main incidents. However final 12 months it was determined that our police and medical prices ought to improve by a whopping 529%. This, mixed with the additional guidelines and laws we’ve got to stick to, meant final 12 months we incurred greater than $300K in further prices. For a small family-run enterprise, this makes it nearly unattainable to not run at a loss.”
“NSW Police is charging what’s reported as twelve occasions greater than in VIC. And simply to cowl all these exorbitant further prices we’d have so as to add a minimum of $100 per ticket. With so many individuals struggling financially proper now, passing these crazy-high charges onto you will not be one thing we’re ready to do. The unhappy actuality is that in NSW digital music is unfairly focused. And if this continues, we’ll solely be left with beige government-run occasions and business mega-corp festivals, whereas the smaller various and boutique occasions die out. “
Organizers went on to state that they hope to revive the competition in some kind in 2025.
Previous editions of the competition have featured lineups that included each Australian and worldwide EDM artists, together with Nick Warren, Mark Farina, De La Soul and Sneaky Sound System.