Michael Eavis thinks festivals are totally over

‘It’s on the way out. We’ve probably got another three or four years,’ 75-year-old festival guru Michael Eavis told The Times about Glastonbury last week.With 40% of tickets still available for this year’s Reading and Leeds festivals, and Latitude still not being sold out for this weekend, the future is looking as bleak as the weather for the crowded festival market in 2011.

Eavis believes the public are becoming “tired” of festivals. Although Glastonbury continues to thrive – this year, Beyonce, Coldplay and U2 pulled in 130,000 festival-goers – he argues that this is down to their ability to secure huge headline acts.

“Partly it’s economics, but there is a feeling that people have seen it all before,” Eavis goes on, indicating that the slump in interest in festivals is not merely a reflection of the luxurious price of tickets in a harsh economic climate, but additionally a feeling of apathy towards festival culture itself.

Elsewhere, however, Eavis is being proved wrong, as T in the Park this weekend was sold out, seeing Arctic Monkeys, Foo Fighters, Pulp and Coldplay playing to 85,000 people in Kinross-shire.