“MetalDays is a thing of the past”: Open air festival in Slovenia announces its end

When the Wacken Open Air in Northern Germany faced extreme rain last year, the open air festival MetalDays 2023, which was taking place at the same time in Slovenia, fared no better: Heavy rainfall led to “severe floods on the local roads, many landslides and other threatening things.” In the end, a state of emergency was declared and the rest of the festival had to be cancelled. Despite several band confirmations and the like, the organisers of MetalDays did not go ahead with the 2024 edition as planned, but announced a break instead, with the aim to “shift our focus to MetalDays 2025”, which was scheduled to take place from 27 July 2025 to 2 August 2025. Now, the end of MetalDays has been announced:

“[…] We have reached the end of the road. This decision has not been made lightly. Unfortunately, we have found ourselves impacted by the financial losses caused by Covid-19 and the flooding in 2023, as well as the cost-of-living crisis and significant operational cost increases associated with running a festival like MetalDays. We offered our company and brand to all major players (Live Nation, Festival Republic, Superstruct Entertainment) and even approached many major festivals to take us over to fulfill all our obligations that remained unfulfilled due to these reasons. Regrettably, despite our best efforts, this did not happen, and it is just not economically feasible to continue.” – MetalDays

On the festival’s website, the organisers explain the reasons for the end of MetalDays in a long and detailed statement and also admit mistakes on their part:

“Despite having sold over 10,000 tickets for MetalDays 2020, we had no savings. MetalDays is an independent festival with a very delicate cash flow. […] The first MetalDays edition, with only 6,200 visitors, resulted in a €1.2 million loss. In the following years, the festival grew and became profitable, allowing us to recover from the losses of the first edition. We have reinvested the profits from MetalDays into our other festivals: Winter Days of Metal, Headbanger’s Holiday, Bluesland, Overjam Reggae (2017-2019), and Punk Rock Holiday (2013-2016). Consequently, we had no savings when Covid-19 struck. This was not very prudent from a business perspective but was done with enthusiasm. It’s something we would approach differently now. […] By the end of 2021, we were already in a pretty bad position financially. This was the moment when we thought we might not survive as a company. We considered filing for bankruptcy […]. By 2022, all production costs had risen (in some cases by 300%), but we were sold out with ticket prices too low that were calculated before March 2020. […] Despite being sold out […], we didn’t break even in 2022. […] COVID-19, subsequent lockdowns, and an economic downturn made it impossible to organize the festival without raising ticket prices for the 2023 edition. Unfortunately, this didn’t sit well with many visitors. This […] resulted in sales similar to our first edition. […] The 2023 festival would not have incurred such a loss if it weren’t for the flooding. […] Flooding not only produced additional expenses, it also influenced visitors not to buy tickets for the upcoming year. They were happy to come back home alive. We understand not many wished to buy tickets for next year immediately after such a traumatic experience. With being flooded in a natural catastrophe that is historic for Slovenia, our excitement with the new location at Lake Velenje was short-lived.” – MetalDays

The organisers go on to say:

“We made mistakes that, even though they occurred during unprecedented times, should not have been made by promoters with our level of expertise. We had to know better. We had to think like businessmen when COVID-19 started and we should have declared bankruptcy back then. Being proud, being friendly, and relying on luck has no place in business. Many individuals and companies would have not been harmed if this decision had been made at the right time. We wish to apologize to each one of them. We are sorry for refunds not returned, unpaid bands, and unsettled production expenses more than you can imagine. We now know what we could and should have done differently. However, the global pandemic and historic flood created challenges that were too big for us to manage effectively at the time. […] This is the last public statement we will make regarding MetalDays […]. This is the final goodbye to MetalDays. For us, MetalDays is a thing of the past, a beautiful memory. When we return, it will be with something new, exciting, and capable of setting a new trend. And most importantly, funds must be available before the first ticket is sold.” – MetalDays

The lawsuits against the cashless payment company Amaia Esa d.o.o., the rival festival Tolminator and the lack of financial support from the Slovenian government are also addressed in the statement, as additional factors that contributed to the end of MetalDays. MetalDays’ website with the statement is the only remaining official representation of MetalDays on the world wide web. All profiles on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have already been deleted.