No W:O:A this year

A few weeks ago the Wacken Open Air festival was cancelled. If you compare Germany and Austria, Germany is a few weeks behind the “infection rate schedule”.

I wasn’t surprised when I read that all major events are cancelled until the end of August. In Austria, everything is cancelled until the end of June.

I wasn’t surprised either when a few days later a message from the organization of the open-air festival landed inside my inbox. The first time in more than 30 years (last year was the 30th anniversary) they had to cancel the event.

Not only puts this a huge damper on my mind, as I was already looking forward to it since we drove home from the last year’s event.

I am also thinking about how such a large amount of planning effort can go to hell within weeks. Band and live acts were booked, over 78000 tickets (the max amount they sell) were sold.

Sure, many people will trade in their ticket for next year, but still, there will be a bunch of people returning the ticket and requesting a refund.

That costs a bunch of money. First, you have to return it to the customers and second, you need to have somebody hired to do the job. Third, there are the costs for the payment providers that somebody needs to pay (hint: not the customer).

I hope that the festival next year will be that much bigger than it was planned this year, but looking at money, it might be small.