February 28, 2020 - Ultra Europe's main man Joe Basic talks about the potential of the music festival in Split - and things are just getting started.
Within the “Talk & Grow by UNIST" lecture cycle, organized by the University of Split, Joe Basic, founder and director of MPG, a leading marketing and promotional agency in Southeast Europe, and director and promoter of Ultra Europe, explained how Split had become the world's leading destination for music tourism.
Namely, Slobodna Dalmacija reports that in his lecture, which he called "A Small Country for a Big Music Festival", Basic said, among other things, that one music festival could generate more than HRK 10 billion in additional spending, as it manages to attract the attention of 200 million people from around the world annually, and how much that ad is really worth.
“When we surveyed young people in 2013, only 34 percent of them knew how to show Croatia on the world map. Today, thanks to Ultra, 67 percent know where it is,” Bašić boasted.
He did his best to explain all of what Split would lose in the next five years if by any chance that famous, world-renowned electronic music festival left our town:
“The numbers are large, they would lose two million overnights, one billion euro spent, 150 million euro in the name of taxes, and Split would definitely not be the number one European destination for young people between 18 and 35,” said Basic.
He answered the students, who asked him questions about the problems he had discovered with Croatian bureaucracy and about his Croatian roots, but he also emphasized that Ultra in Split had not yet reached its maximum.
“I’m sure we're only halfway there. We have the opportunity to reach half a million overnights. By comparison, in the beginning, the ticket cost 85 euro, today it costs 169 euro, then, seven years ago, Split had only 6,700 beds, today there are 36,000. Overnights in 2013 were 24 euro, and today it is 67 euro, on average,” Basic concluded.
Ultra already announced the new release of Ultra Europe, which will take place from July 10-12, 2020.
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