By Andrew Fletcher (originally posted on his blog on July 17, 2015) This is in response to Moogfest’s dam­age con­trol spin-zone press release pub­lished today. I rec­om­mend you read it before con­tin­u­ing on.

---

Dear Moogfest, Thanks for the $14 mil­lion in eco­nomic activity. But, maybe Asheville would be even more thank­ful if Moog would have planned for the future and cre­ated an Asheville-appropriate event that could have been suc­cess­ful year after year. That could have brought in a lot more than $14 mil­lion over the years. Maybe Moog could have brought in some profit to be shared with their new employee own­ers too. That would have been pro-Asheville for sure. Now before I con­tinue, remem­ber that this is what Moog pitched as the rai­son de vivre of the festival:

“Beyond a tra­di­tional music fes­ti­val, Moogfest aims to be an engine for dri­ving eco­nomic devel­op­ment in West­ern North Car­olina … the long-term goal say Moogfest orga­niz­ers, ‘is to inspire big think­ing start-ups, entre­pre­neurs, and inno­va­tors to con­sider Asheville as a com­mu­nity to relo­cate their for­ward think­ing busi­nesses, just as Bob Moog did in 1978′…” “Moog Music Pres­i­dent Mike Adams took the risk on financ­ing this spec­u­la­tive ven­ture because of the poten­tial pay­off for the community’s future – help­ing to attract new busi­nesses and cre­ate jobs in West­ern North Carolina.”

(News­flash: Durham is evi­dently now in West­ern North Carolina) I wouldn’t have any prob­lem with this if Moog hadn’t pitched the whole event as a slam dunk for our com­mu­nity and a sure­fire sign of their com­mit­ment to the growth of Asheville. Talk of grow­ing a “Sil­i­con Moun­tain,” throw­ing a great party (it was fun) and bring­ing national media atten­tion to our city falls flat. It’s more like Sil­i­con Mole­hill, and my busk­ing friends and I enter­tain thou­sands every week and have brought plenty of tourists and national media atten­tion here. Moog is not the only peo­ple work­ing for Asheville. But they did a great job of los­ing $1.5 mil­lion while doing it. And now we have one less music fes­ti­val here, not one more. And how impressed should we be with that $14 mil­lion fig­ure? $30 mil­lion sounds a lot bet­ter, doesn’t it? That’s what was promised by Moog when they ini­tially chased that pub­lic invest­ment. No doubt this was on the minds of the Bun­combe County Cul­ture Recre­ation Author­ity when they rejected the plea for $250,000 for the 2015 fes­ti­val that was even­tu­ally scrapped. It prob­a­bly didn’t help that the grant appli­ca­tion was late and incom­plete. Whoops. For com­par­i­son, Bele Chere was esti­mated to cre­ate $8–10 mil­lion of eco­nomic impact and on a much smaller bud­get. Not as cool or fun, but on the same order of mag­ni­tude if you look at it per day of the festival. The vaunted “cool fac­tor” that Moogfest claimed would bring tech star­tups to the region loses a lot of cool when the big accom­plish­ment of the fes­ti­val is show­ing every­one what a “cool” place to lose money Asheville is. Cool doesn’t impress busi­ness­men. Profit does. Clyde Smith wrote a great piece about the hol­low­ness of that “Sil­i­con Moun­tain erupt­ing from a music fes­ti­val” bull-dinky over at Hype­bot. Check it out. Moog spent money like a col­lege stu­dent with a credit card. They booked dozens and dozens of niche artists with some blast-from-the-past head­lin­ers like Kraftwerk (3D!) with largely over­lap­ping draw. Some of these bands had to be flown in and put up at great cost, money spent that likely did not impact ticket sales. A bet­ter approach would have been to cre­ate a more hor­i­zon­tal pro­mo­tion scheme. The fire sale on tick­ets in the last two months before the fes­ti­val were a clear indi­ca­tion that their ver­ti­cal pro­mo­tion scheme had failed. Every­one that was going to buy a ticket bought it imme­di­ately, but the appeal out­side the nar­row, core audi­ence didn’t spread. You could call this wild spec­u­la­tion of mine Mon­day morn­ing quar­ter­back­ing. Or you could call it Pro­mo­tion 101. Kraftwerk performing in Asheville at Moogfest 2014. Photo from the Moogfest Facebook page Oh, and that bit about the 7,700% return on the pub­lic money invested? That’s not how “returns” work and the inde­pen­dent study men­tioned in the press release doesn’t actu­ally say how much money was actu­ally returned to local munic­i­pal  cof­fers. Lit­tle of that state and local tax actu­ally returns to the City of Asheville or Bun­combe County gov­ern­ments. Most goes to the State of North Car­olina who return a small por­tion of it to the com­mu­nity it orig­i­nated from and the Tourism Devel­op­ment Author­ity receives all money col­lected from the hotel tax. Else­where, I’ve seen that there was a direct ROIof 200% to the city, but I can’t find a pri­mary for that figure. Caveat lec­tor. But munic­i­pal grants don’t aim to turn a profit — they are designed to aug­ment the com­mu­nity and expand the tax base over many years. By that mea­sure, those grants were a fail­ure because Moogfest is leaving. The truth is, Moog couldn’t fig­ure out how to get $3 mil­lion of rev­enue out of 6,090 ticket buy­ers. Because that’s ridicu­lous! Tick­ets would have had to have cost $492 each to break even. A smaller, cheaper, yet more hor­i­zon­tal, more diverse lineup (I’m not talk­ing ban­jos + beards, more like adding some electropop-hipster bait like Beach House) could pos­si­bly have brought more ticket buy­ers and appealed to cor­po­rate spon­sors as per­haps, more real­is­tic. (Yet there are no audi­to­ri­ums that can fit 3,000+ for the head­line acts in Asheville, an admit­tedly major stum­bling block for any large fes­ti­val that wants to locate here.) Costs were sim­ply way too high, and the cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship wasn’t there. Were com­pa­nies that skep­ti­cal to spon­sor an event in Asheville? Or were they just that skep­ti­cal to spon­sor the doomed event that Moog pitched them? And of course, Moogfest’s newest suitor, Durham, thinks that they’ll “fit right in.” Just admit it, Moog: you’re not com­mit­ted to Asheville. You’re com­mit­ted to Moog. And that’s fine. Just don’t tell us you love this com­mu­nity when you don’t. In the words of the old song, “Be sure it’s true when you say ‘I Love You.’ It’s a sin to tell a lie.” The only ques­tion remains: was Moogfest inept, hyp­o­crit­i­cal or merely oppor­tunis­tic? Or just naively before it’s time? Let’s ask Durham this time next year. Love, Asheville P.S. For any­one who wants to drive to Durham next year for Moogfest, there are [or at least were] 300 tick­ets avail­able for Asheville locals at the Moog store for $99 a piece.