Back in early 2017, we published our first ever Festival Merchandise Overview blog post, highlighting the various Festival merch sales trends we had seen over the course of the 2016 Festival Season. We received a tremendous amount of positive feedback from industry folks who found the information enlightening since many of our Festival partners did not have a clear understanding of how healthy (or unhealthy) their merchandise sales were with respect to their peers. For many, it was an eye-opening experience to learn that when one invests in and properly executes, merch can be quite the lucrative revenue stream for their larger business.

In 2017, things got fairly busy around here at atVenu that by the time we had a minute to catch our breath, we quickly realized that we never had the chance to share our top 2017 Festival merch trends.

We don’t want to leave our partners hanging and we promise not to make the same mistake twice. So, back by popular demand and without further ado, here is a look back at some of the key merch trends we saw over the course of the 2018 Festival Season.

Before we dive in, we’d like to call special attention to our Hip-Hop/Rap Festival partners who broke all types of records in 2018. Historically a sluggish genre with regards to merch sales, Festivals like Camp Flog Gnaw, Astroworld, and Rolling Loud came out of the gates swinging in 2018.

Through a combination of innovative, on-trend designs and clever exclusivity strategies, these Festivals put up the kind of gross sales, average transaction sizes and dollars ($) per head numbers typically only seen at the Coachellas, Desert Trips and Bottlerocks of the industry.

In fact, one Hip-Hop Festival averaged $130 per transaction. That’s nearly 3x that of their closest non-Hip-Hop Festival competitor despite selling to a predominantly younger and less affluent demographic.

Let’s dive in.

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atVenu by the Numbers: 2018

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With respect to Festivals, 2018 was a landmark year for atVenu. We powered the merch for over 100 different Festivals in 2018 alone.

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2018 High-Level Festival Trends

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Curious as to where your Festival merch business stacks up against the industry at large? Below are a few averages across our roster of 117 Festival partners – regardless of size and genre.  (Min of 5,000 tickets sold)

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Now that 2018 has come and gone, we’re ready to ring in 2019 with new festivals and record-breaking merch sales. Who knows which genre will dominate the year to come, but rest assured that atVenu will be along for the ride and we’ll be sure to keep you posted every step of the way.

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