Organisers are expecting over 150 000 visitors and confirmed that the event will stay in Split in 2017.
Love it or hate it, there's no denying Ultra Europe is one of the best things (in terms of numbers and revenues) to happen to Split tourism in the last decade and on April 13, 2016, we spoke to the management of Ultra Europe to chat about the upcoming event and its future.
Fresh off the press conference, management of Ultra Europe Music Festival which will take place this July in Split was more than happy to continue talking about their expectations in 2016 and whether the festival will stay in Split. It is no big secret many European cities were trying to lure the organisers into moving Ultra somewhere else (often with promises of hefty incentives), but it seems that the US principles and main organisers of Ultra music events are happy with the results and support they are currently receiving in Split.
- Ultra Europe Festival is one of the partners of Ultra World Wide and Croatians are majority owners. That is one of the main reasons why Ultra Europe is taking place on the Croatian coast. However, each year it is becoming increasingly harder to keep the festival in Croatia because its growth is attracting more and more offers from other European cities and countries that are willing to take over the organization of this event. For now, and I mean this year and in 2017 Ultra Europe Festival will stay in Split which makes us very proud but we are also aware that in the last two years we have received three very serious offers. In spite of it all, we have faith that we will not move anywhere and that Ultra will remain here, especially with the further growth of cooperation with Croatia – said Igor Bušljeta, director of Ultra Europe Festival.
One might say the this is just another way to force the local and State authorities to increase their subsidies for the event, but if we take into consideration how many other cities are paying to keep high profiled music festivals in their city, then we can say that Split is lucky to still have Ultra. For instance, Exit festival in Novi Sad receives a cool 1 000 000 EUR in subsidies just from the State in order to stay where it is. On the other hand, estimated revenues in Split during Ultra Europe are now around 300 million kunas and growing so no one can really be surprised by the foreign interest in this event. If we add the advertising effect (Aftermovie was seen by over 1.3 million viewers and total PR value of Ultra is now over 20 million Euros), then we can only hope that the new government and tourism honchos will really think twice before deciding how much they should invest in the event in 2017, especially when we all know their own PR efforts cannot come even close to the results achieved not only by Ultra but all other music events in the country.
Press conference presenting this year's Ultra Europe Festival was held in Zagreb, and Split and county authorities came down in big numbers proving that they are very interested in keeping the electronic music circus in Split Even Split mayor Baldasar, who doesn't really like press conferences made it to the capital to promote the event: "Ultra Europe Festival is the spiritus movens that gave a huge boost to entire region. We want to keep it here and that is why we are constantly negotiating with owners and partners" Baldasar stated.
And while all State and local administrative forces are negotiating, let's talk about this year's Ultra Europe. Production costs alone will climb up to 3 million Eros so we can expect state of the art stages and some serious sound systems. First line-up was announced just over a month ago and some of the biggest names in electronic music have already been confirmed for Split, Hvar, Vis and Brač: Above & Beyond, Adam Beyer, Afrojack, Alesso, Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox, Dash Berlin, David Guetta, Hardwell and 140 other performers. Organisers are expecting about 150 000 visitors (this includes guests that will participate in special regattas during the Ultra Music Festival) and regional tickets will go on sale next week. Dates are, as we already reported, July 14 - 20, the main event in Split is scheduled for July 15-17.
All photos Ultra Europe Festival official Facebook and official website.
