Festival That Asked For Free Performance Suffered Loss of About $50K

Last Updated on 2018-12-11 , 10:08 pm

You know what they say: what goes around, comes around.

The World’s largest inflatable obstacle course for adults held from 7 – 9 December at Sentosa has suffered a loss of over $50K (and rightfully so, in our opinion).

Read on and you’ll understand.

About the event

Also known as “The Beast”, this 252-metre long, large-scale event was a first in Asia after touring through cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam, L.A, and Melbourne. It is basically an event of pure bouncing child-like fun for adults who grew up jumping on bouncy castles.

A festival of food, music, and fitness was also held in conjunction with the three-day event. While access to the inflatables will cost S$37 or S$47, the festival is free for all to attend — workshops and performances included.

Who can say no to this, right? But wait, there’s more… 

No way, GTFO

We should all be familiar with the rage artistes feel over getting under-valued for their time and effort. From people asking photographers and makeup artistes to do shoots and sessions for free just to boost their portfolios, to the previous incident of Artbox event organisers offering artistes to play for free, we’d think companies would be smarter about this by now.

But nope

The Beast’s event organiser, GTFO SG, reportedly reached out to musicians before the event in a bid to get them to perform for them during the event.

It is unclear exactly how many musicians they have reached out to in total, but bassist of local band Astronauts, Benjamin Mah, called GTFO out on a Facebook post and boy, did he nail many of the points.

Full post can be found here.

In his post, Benjamin included screenshots of the email from GTFO and stated that not only was the organiser lazy in simply asking them to “just Google” them instead of sending them a press kit, they did not offer anything much for their time aside from EDMs and shoutouts, and VIP tickets not for Astronauts, but for their followers instead.

You know, basically pay via exposure.

Then comes the apology

Felix Sim of GTFO subsequently issued an apology in an email to Popspoken, stating that they are always in support for local artistes and that it was never in their intention to undervalue or insult them.

“Our corporate events team has engaged many musicians, artists and performers in the past (and continues to engage them for our upcoming corporate events) and we have always treated them with respect and fairness. We’re not sure how other festival organisers operate, but our intent was never to insult musicians who are pursuing their passion and we admit that our outreach email (which I approved) could have been drafted in a more sensitive manner.”

Benjamin has also updated his post pointing out that there was no need for any more outrage.

When karma comes around and bite you in the a**

GTFO has reportedly suffered a loss of $50K after the event ended due to poor turnout and while this might not be directly linked to the whole artistes-for-free incident, it is certainly what we’d categorise as “karma is a b*tch”.

Vendors claim that they had paid several thousand dollars in rent alone, and they made less than $300 over the three-day festival that ended yesterday.

When a request for withdrawal from the event was raised due to the recent erratic weather, GTFO allegedly threatened the vendor with a small claims suit.

Overall, vendors agreed that marketing was not done well, and the organisers had over-promised the expected turnout.

Mr Felix Sim pointed out that their “biggest mistake” was that they picked the wrong venue and despite circumstances, GTFO still did the best they could. Although it is unlikely that they will be offering full refunds, Mr Sim did state that they are open to suggestions from vendors.

Moral of the story: the event was a flop, don’t insult artistes with your “exposure” compensation, and always plan for the best, prepare for the worst.