Wie geht es weiter?

Dear Resist fans,
Unfortunately, we as the organizers have to cancel Resist To Exist 2024 completely.

We have calculated all conceivable variants of a Resist Light, whether with two or three days, with different locations and with different equipment, and it is simply not financially feasible. If we were to go through with it, our sponsoring association would almost 100% likely be insolvent and the festival would be history. We don’t want to be responsible for that.

It pains us to have made this decision. We are sorry for all our supporters.
We will put all the more energy and optimism into Resist To Exist 2025!

In the course of the cancellation, we would like to address some points of criticism from the last few days:

A) No advance notice that pre-sales were going so badly. If we had communicated this immediately, we would have found a way:

Since Corona, many people seem to want to remain flexible and don’t want to be tied down by advance tickets. People are only buying tickets very late. This means that we can only determine very late on whether there is a major deviation with the comparative figures from the last two years. We are practically moving from week to week. In the two weeks before the cancellation, there was a glaring difference of almost 50% compared to the same time last year. Catching up in the few weeks we have left seems very unlikely.

B) Why not crowdfunding:

We know about the sums we would have needed. We are talking about around 200,000 euros. According to current ticket sales, we had only reached about 12% of that. Contrary to our experience with a fairly small scene with manageable financial strength and after the feedback from the low ticket sales, it seemed too risky for us to rely on crowdfunding and the like to fill the financial gap. Because if we knowingly went into insolvency, which we would have been threatened with in two weeks, as we already have to make financial commitments before the festival, then our board would be personally liable.

C) The tickets are too expensive:

Last year, we transparently disclosed how the ticket prices were made up. This year we have saved a third in booking, partly due to the rule that we don’t want to spend more than 5,000 euros on any band. But the prices for the entire infrastructure continue to rise, which is why a festival version with cheaper bands but open air including tents of this size cannot be realized with lower ticket prices.
That’s why we want to state once again that we offered 48 acts for 95 euros. That’s less than 2 euros per act. We think this is a fair price.

D) The lineup doesn’t work like that:

Two years ago, we did a survey on what is expected from the booking of a Resist To Exist festival in the future and the result was: More FLINTA* participation, more young, lesser-known bands, not always the same band soup. At the same time, we wanted to get away from the horrendous 15,000-25,000 euro fees that better-known punk and ska bands are now charging.
We can’t and don’t want to go along with this price trend any more.

E) As a festival you are too uncertain in your planning / your site is stupid:

In 20 years of Resist, we have had to change the site twice at short notice. Both times it was due to local politics / administration that prevented us. In 2020 and 2021, we had to cancel the festival due to coronavirus. In 2022, 2023 and also this year, we had a fixed site, but didn’t make this public for a long time because we were trying to find a more suitable site until the very end. That turned out to be difficult, as the rental prices were either very high or we would have needed an additional €20,000 to €30,000 for infrastructure if the site had been cheaper.
We want to remain in the region and naturally the choice of suitable facilities is limited as a result.

What happens now?
We will not give up on Resist To Exist. This year we’ve had a setback. We will try to find out why this might have been the case, why there were only around 250 pre-sale tickets. We will try to take into account the critical voices as well as the supportive ones.

The fields to those who dance on them!