Electric Picnic boss Melvin Benn has said that he is confident that his three day EP Festival will return to Stradbally this September. He also said that it should go ahead in much the same way as previous years.
This comes as a series of pilot events for live music took place in Liverpool recently, something which Benn was encouraged by. Check out more on the pilot gigs in Liverpool here.
Benn had also recently said that he was hopeful of the music festivals in both Leeds and Reading going ahead as planned.
“This is a pilot event and I’ve been pushing to create something like this for a year now”, he said. “What I’ve been saying for the whole year is, if we adequately test people before they come into a gig, there’s no reason why the gig can’t happen”, he said. More on that here.
“Can see no reason why it wouldn’t be” – Benn on EP return
“I can see no reason why it wouldn’t be?”, Benn said when asked if he could see Electric Picnic returning this year.
“I can see no reason why the Irish government, wouldn’t be saying, ‘You can be back to normal by August, or in August’. The event in Liverpool was extraordinarily similar, it felt like you were in 2019, pre-Covid”, he continued.
Speaking again about the pilot events in Liverpool, Benn added, “It felt normal. Of course, there was additional hand sanitisation but in the knowledge that everyone had been tested everyone was super comfortable”.
“Up and running by August”
MCD boss Dennis Diamond also echoed Melvin Benn’s hopes of a return of live events to Ireland, saying that he is hopeful outdoor events could be “up and running by August”.
“We have two sold-out concerts, in Cork at Pairc Ui Chaoimh. It is the third weekend in August with 70,000 tickets sold”, Diamond revealed.
Diamond also said that he was hopeful that people will be able to attend sporting events such as All Ireland Final Day.
He also added, “I think the priority has to be outdoor, and an ideal scenario would be indoor shows happening at reduced capacity and we do some tests and we do the pilots”.
You can also see what the CMO Dr Tony Holohan and Minister Catherine Martin had to say on the possibility of live events returning to Ireland here.
