Dominion Festival was set to take place between May 5 and 7 at the Ushaw Historic House, Chapels and Gardens in Durham, and would be headlined by Blind Guardian, Orange Goblin, and Skindred. The festival has sadly been canceled due to less than 5% of tickets being sold with less than a month to go, with organizers issuing a statement apologizing to everyone.
Organizers state they're accepting losses in excess of £100,000 and that all ticket holders will be refunded.
"After intensive meetings and discussions, we have had to make the heart-breaking decision to cancel Dominion Festival.
"This is a project into which we have put vast amounts of personal money and over a year of our team's time, but the reality is that with less than 5% of tickets sold, the losses to run the event would exceed a quarter of a million pounds, and we can't go ahead with the festival without risking our employees' job security, or putting at risk people's ticket money or band's fees. We didn't go into the festival scene to even consider the idea of putting anyone's money at risk except ours, but we simply can't afford to run the festival with such low sales.
"The only ethical decision that could possibly be made now is to accept defeat, gut wrenching though this is. We tried everything and committed all we had, but pushing this any further forward would risk us joining the pile of promoters who have failed to refund customers after using ticket money to fund a failed show, or not paid bands or suppliers for the show – neither of which is something that we could entertain, for even a second.
"We're sure, with hindsight, everyone will know where we went wrong, and we'll no doubt think of them all ourselves in many of the sleepless nights to come. Even so, we're forced into the decision of accepting losses that are already in excess of £100,000 to ensure that no-one loses except us. If we pushed it any further, we couldn't make that same guarantee.
"All ticket holders will receive an email within 24 hours confirming that all ticket holders are being refunded automatically to their payment method, and all bands and suppliers have also been contacted to ensure no-one is out of pocket.
"Please, when contacting our team about any queries, bare in mind that our employees didn't make this decision and tried absolutely everything in their power to make this happen.
"We're genuinely sorry, and gutted, that we couldn't make this happen and to have to bring you this news, but we gave it a real go as we really wanted this to happen and build a rock and metal festival that this region deserves. We were fully prepared that for the first few years, the event would lose money, but we couldn't have predicted sales at such a low level as to make the event impossible to stage, financially and logistically, and we thank everyone who has supported us in our endeavours to try and make this happen."
