Each summer time, a small military of volunteers, residents and music professionals welcomes dozens of world-class artists to Quebec Metropolis, Canada, for Pageant d’été de Quebec (a.ok.a. FEQ), one of many largest and most various music festivals in North America. Whereas residents of Quebec’s French-speaking capital metropolis are identified for his or her congenial hospitality and embrace of the handfuls of acts that can carry out on Plaines de Abraham, residents will admit, when requested by outsiders, that there’s one act enjoying this 12 months’s pageant that they respect greater than all of the others.
And that act is the California thrash steel band Slayer.
“Yeah, Quebec is a giant heavy steel city,” says Samantha McKinley, communications director for the long-running 11-night music pageant. Whereas the annual occasion has remained comparatively unknown in stay music circles for years, its spectacular attendance figures and love for heavy steel acts like Slayer and Metallica are beginning to be observed by top-tier acts, reserving brokers and an growing variety of orbiter festivals that ebook their occasions primarily based on Pageant d’été’s headliners. (“Pageant d’été” is French for “Summer season Pageant.”)
The pageant’s energy comes from its capacity to often draw audiences of 90,000 or extra per night time for artists like Rod Stewart, Avril Lavigne and Benson Boone, a determine that places it within the prime echelon of North American festivals. Coachella maxes out at about 125,000 folks per day and runs for six days complete (over two three-day weekends), equaling about 750,000 followers complete. Realistically, nevertheless, 750,000 particular person folks don’t descend on Indio, Calif.; fairly, the identical 125,000 followers attend the pageant over three days, every weekend, placing the quantity nearer to 250,000.
However in contrast to Coachella, the place the identical followers attend every day of the pageant, Quebec’s FEQ has a tradition of wristband sharing, explains govt director Nick Racine, who additionally serves as CEO and president for pageant organizer BLEUFEU. He estimates that every one 140,000 tickets for the pageant are purchased in a single day, with some blocks of tickets promoting out in seconds.
The overwhelming majority of these tickets — about 125,000 — are offered as GA tickets that retail for $165 CAD ($121 USD), whereas the remainder are costlier VIP tickets bundled with meals & beverage. GA tickets embrace entry to 11 nights of music, together with the pageant’s principal stage that includes Shania Twain, Slayer, Hozier, Kygo, Def Leppard, Boone, Stewart, Lavigne and extra. The primary stage, known as the Bell Stage, sits on a portion of the Plains of Abraham, a historic space inside Battlefields Park the place British forces defeated the French in 1759. The Bell Stage is only one of a number of levels scattered all through the town for FEQ; the Quebec Lottery and SiriusXM Canada host the pageant’s different two paid levels, accessible solely to ticketholders, whereas a number of free levels dot the perimeter of Quebec’s historic district.
Followers are inspired to share wristbands with pals and mortgage them out to relations so as to preserve the Bell Stage full every night time and create large audiences and memorable moments for the artists that play. The purpose is to maintain the wristbands locally and off secondary market websites like StubHub, the place speculators typically drive up the worth of tickets and frustrate followers. Lately, pageant organizers have begun monitoring secondary market websites and even canceling orders if they think ticket scalping. Wristband sharing is a type of compromise that retains the tickets locally and pushes the quantity of people that attend the pageant to someplace between 300,000 to 400,000 particular person folks every year.
That giant of an viewers, coupled with the tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} the pageant makes from ticket gross sales and the income it generates from sponsorships and authorities grants, makes FEQ a music trade powerhouse, explains Louis Bellavance, programming director for the pageant since 2011. Bellavance tells Billboard that quite a few main East Coast and Canadian festivals — from Milwaukee Summerfest to Ottawa Bluesfest — look to ebook acts that play Quebec, hoping to select up dates for artists coming and going from the pageant. Typically the pageant will submit joint bids with different main occasions to ebook acts — FEQ’s radius clause solely covers the province of Quebec — whereas different instances it’ll make unique bids for artists by itself to create shortage for the massive headliners it brings to Quebec Metropolis.
That features The Rolling Stones in 2015 — a reserving that led to a $2 million loss for the 12 months for FEQ, however helped solidify its dominant place within the pageant house. With regards to viewers measurement, ticket gross sales and financial energy, FEQ simply lands inside the prime 10 in the case of the most important and most financially profitable festivals in North America.
However organizers say its energy goes past economics and comes from what followers say is FEQ’s long-term unofficial headliner: Quebec Metropolis itself. With its cobblestone streets and picturesque boulevards, architectural magnificence, expansive public park system and bustling culinary scene, the town is a well-liked vacation spot in its personal proper.
“The place else are you able to watch Rod Stewart play on a traditional battlefield or see a brand new band carry out simply meters away from the steps of Parliament?” says Racine. “We’re an city pageant, and the eating places and the inns right here do a big a part of their annual enterprise through the pageant. It really works as a result of followers love coming to Quebec, they love our presentation and so they love the artists we deliver every year.”