PUTTING PORTSMOUTH ON THE MAP

Leading the field

For the last nine years, Victorious Festival has welcomed thousands of festivalgoers through its gates, but now, as the festival prepares to celebrate its tenth anniversary, what have the festival’s cofounders learned? Andy Marsh and James Ralls reveal all

When Victorious Festival launched in 2013, it pitched itself as a “super affordable” festival, with reasonably priced tickets and a family-friendly blend of entertainment. Since its inception, Victorious Festival has grown significantly, and despite rising costs, it continues to remain inclusive and accessible. The festival’s founders remain proud of this fact; a fact bolstered by Victorious’ £53,600 contribution in 2021 to charitable causes across Portsmouth.

This figure was revealed in February when Victorious Festival also announced that the festival’s outing in 2021 had contributed £15,525,675 to the Portsmouth economy. An economic impact study found that Victorious contributed around £2 million more than the 2019 festival. In fact, a visitor’s average daily spend increased to £146.67 with local businesses benefiting from visiting festivalgoers and local and loyal fans.

The Victorious team actively looks for new ways to support local businesses, and this year it has announced a new area at the festival called Neighbourhood Eats, which will showcase local independent caterers and pop-ups. It will offer subsidised pitches to help local businesses make the most of the festival trading opportunity on their doorstep.

James Ralls, managing director and cofounder of Victorious Festival, commented that the three-day event is proud to be part of the Portsmouth community and wants to leverage the festival to help the local area and economy.

CUSTOMER CONFIDENCE

Victorious Festival is lucky. Unlike other organisers, the festival team managed to “put on a show” last year with no capacity restrictions. The team used more open-air stages, created different queueing systems, added extra delay towers, and installed larger screens so that people at the back could see and hear the action and the audience could spread out more. The moves worked.

“Our changes worked well,” explained Andy Marsh, festival director and co-founder of Victorious. “People are investing in us because we managed to pull off a show last year and if we managed to do it last year, with COVID, then we can do it again this year.

“It’s looking like we will sell out,” he continued. “We’re 40 per cent ahead of where we’d normally be, compared to 2019. Consumers have got their confidence back.”

BUILDING TRUST

Over the last ten years, Victorious has evolved into a “weekend event”. Conscious decisions have been taken around programming and planning. For example, at this year’s event, Primal Scream will open the event on August 26 with a set at 1pm. Adding “more” to the line-up is merely a reaction. “The customers are dictating how we look at the festival and what we do,” Marsh said. “That’s what we’ve learned in the last ten years; we don’t do or try anything unless we’re led by our customers.”

He continued: “I was talking to the team at Boardmasters two nights’ ago and we were talking about how you want everything to happen now. They said it’s taken them 20 years to get where they want to be, and it’s the same for us. It takes years to build trust. You can’t rush it and you need to take your time.”

Ralls echoes Marsh’s comments on trust. He talks of close-knit supplier and freelancer relationships. Costs have gone up, but the Victorious team is not concerned. Crew and staff are booked for the event [August 26-28] and lessons in “resilience” learned in 2021 are also being applied to 2022.

“In 2021, each member of staff shadowed one or two other roles so if someone went down with COVID, we had cover,” said Ralls. “Before, if one or two people got run over, so to speak, we were OK but now four or five people could get run over and we’d be fine.”

MAINTAIN RELEVANCE

Terri Ralls, head of procurement and budgeting at Victorious Festival, explained that she and the team are ahead with planning and that it’s nice to drill down into detail with contractors. She said: “It’s bloody brilliant to plough ahead, knowing that the festival is on and that there’s certainty. Last year, we didn’t know that we were definitely going ahead until six weeks out. This year feels like it’s going to be brilliant. Lots of lovely customers are starting to get to grips with what we’ve created, and they trust us.”

One of the big changes for 2022 is the doubling in size of the Victorious Festival campsite. Also, some areas of the festival will be “card only”, as there has been noticeable decline in the amount of cash being spent on site. Plus, there’ll be more loos, more showers, more of “everything”, and, Tiffany Gaskell, head of operations and infrastructure, is trying to make Victorious as green as possible. But more importantly, Victorious is trying to maintain its relevance; ensuring extra spend on infrastructure is balanced by extra spend on the line-up, giving customers the best experience possible in terms of facilities and entertainment.

“We need to have another good year and make it perfect for the punters,” Ralls concluded.

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