John Minty: Splore Owner on the 2026 Festival being the final instalment

Splore's announced it'll come to an end next year after hopes of a Government lifeline fell through. 

Next year's instalment of the annual boutique music and arts festival at Auckland's Tapapakanga Regional Park will be the last due to low ticket sales in recent years. 

Long-time owner John Minty says they weren't considered for the Government's $70 million Major Events Fund. 

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan that while ending the festival is potentially premature, the writing is on the wall. 

Minty says he could hang on for another year and hope things will get better, but from a financial point of view, he can’t take that risk again. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have an end of an era for the iconic
Splore Festival. The owners have announced this morning that next
that this year's festival actually will be the last, citing
lower than hoped ticket sales. Now John Minty explores festival
on and is with us morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
John, kyahada, nice to be talking to you this morning.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yeah, it's lovely to have a chat to you mate.
Thank you. Although although on a sad subject, I mean
this must have been a tough call.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, it has been. I've been involved in Spore for
twenty years. Since Spoor has been running twenty seven years,
so long it's running festival New Zealand. It is a
beautiful event. Everyone that comes and totally enjoys it, and
I always had this vision that it would last forever,
long after me. But yeah, just the last couple of years,
the market seems to have changed. We're not selling sufficient

(00:43):
tickets to make it financially viable and the writing seemed
to be on the wall. Tickets have been quite slow
this year, so I just thought, well, you know, if
we can't sustain it, let's just wrap it up next
year and have one big party of celebration.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
John, Are you doing? Are you being premature and making
this call because this has been the toughest recession that
the country's been in decades and decades, and surely when
we come out the other side and we've got money
in our pockets again, we'll get into it.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking like that either, and we've
been waiting all this year, I think, like all of us,
for those green shoots and for people to be spending more. Yes,
potentially premature. I mean I could sort of hang on
for another year and just hope things get better for
next year. But I've got to the point where I've
been involved in spore for twenty years and I just

(01:33):
feel that personally, from a financial point of view, I
just can't really take that risk again hoping that things
will improve next year. They may or they may not,
So I don't particularly want to take that risk.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
What do you think? I mean, you're not obviously the
only person who's found festivals very, very difficult to run
in the last few years because of the increased costs
and the lack of cash and stuff. What do you
reckon the future of festivals are?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I do worry about it. I mean, specially because it's
a three day camping festival, which is quite rare now
and the benefit of three day camping festival it creates
a community. People are committed for that whole three days
that camping, makeing new friends, people get married at four
because they meet future partners. It's for so it's maybe
the camping side. It's quite difficult for people. I mean,

(02:20):
the younger generation are not so much into going into
tense et cetera. So maybe it's more than a six
hour concert in a park, which is more attractive as
a trend. And I think a lot of it is
to do with I guess the attractions of certain headliners.
There's certain acts which attract a crowd, so it's an
easy decision for people to say to go and see

(02:42):
a particular artist. For those artists are increasingly charging two, three,
four times as much as they used to, so that
scenario is quite difficult too. So it is quite a challenge.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, John, listen, thanks for talking to us through it
and beast of like and hopefully the thing does go
very well for its last one. It's John Minty, a
Splow festival owner.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
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