Hold onto your butts, but I got some shocking news for you: attorneys associated with the Blue Ridge Rock Festival didn’t tell the whole truth when they denied that any ticket preorders for this year’s supposed Blue Ridge Rock Festival had taken place. In fact, they couldn’t even tell you where exactly the money from those sales ended up. So that’s comforting if you were dumb enough to buy tickets to an event as horrifically mismanaged as last year’s debacle was.
The news comes from a follow-up report by local CBS affiliate WDBJ 7, where attorney Jonathan Wilkofsky confirmed that some people had already bought tickets for this year’s festival. And while we don’t know who’d even show up to play the damn thing after last year, Wilkofsky said tickets had been purchased but when it comes to the money from those sales, the Blue Ridge “doesn’t have it.”
“That money has not been lost; it’s being held, which Blue Ridge doesn’t have it. I don’t know if it’s the credit card company or the ticketing, but it’s being held by somebody [that’s] not Blue Ridge. The hope is we’ll be putting on a show and that money will be providing for tickets, but it’s not like Blue Ridge is having the money [or] spending the money.”
So….yeah. Apparently if you spent that money, no one knows where it is? That’s gotta feel good.
That statement and admission is a far cry from the claim by the festival’s executive producer Cara Fischer, who said back in March that any concerns that presales for an unannounced festival were happening were unfounded.
“Tickets for 2024 are not currently on sale and have not been for several months while we work to provide a resolution to 2023 fans.”
That little bit about “resolution to 2023 fans” is particularly important, as organizers are also trying to square how they’re going to pay a huge amount of money to the folks that requested refunds for last year’s cancelled festival. Yet according to this latest report, it’s sounding like they might be able to get away without having to pay anything thanks to their claim that it was weather — and not their poor planning and management — that caused the cancellation.
You may recall that last year’s festival came apart at the seams about half way through. At the time, organizers nixed the last two days of the festival and blamed it on extreme weather conditions. And while there certainly was bad weather in the area, bands and attendees quickly took to social media to shine a light on what was really going down .
In one instance, it was reported that stage hands were planning on striking en masse because of poor working conditions. Reports indicated that workers laid out their demands from ownership, warning that they’d need things to improve or they would walk off the job.
As for the concertgoers, they shared horror stories of experiencing gastrointestinal issues that were so severe that the Virginia Department of Health opened an investigation into the matter. Due to a lack of appropriate staff levels and transportation to and from the festival grounds, attendees were also left stranded out in the open while storms ran through. Fans regularly shared images of garbage strewn all over the place and just general poor conditions all around.
In the wake of those issues, many fans have still yet to receive their refunds. Yet because organizers claimed it was the bad weather that caused the cancellation, it’s possible refunds may not even happen at all. Wilkofsky said investigators with the festival’s insurance carrier have been going through roughly 24 hours of testimony and a decision’s expected in the next 30 days.
“There were just a lot of moving parts to the events and the cancelation of the weather and the ticketing, and there’s just a million moving parts to it. [The cancelation] absolutely seems to apply under these circumstances, but they [the insurance carriers] are entitled to look at every aspect of the concert to see if that’s true.
“There’s been a lot of rumors out there that somebody’s run away with the money and we’re stiffing the fans and that’s absolutely untrue. There’s been no payment. There’s been no denial of the claim, we’re in the process of the investigation.”
So there you have it. If you went last year you may not get that money back and if you prepurchased tickets to this year’s supposed festival, no one knows where your money is. Nice.
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