The promoters of Red Stripe Reggae Sumfest, Summerfest Productions, although outdoing themselves mainly in the areas of production and the preparation of the facilities, claim that they will almost certainly lose money on the festival dubbed ‘the greatest reggae show on earth’.

“It was not a big success in terms of economic returns,” Robert Russell of Summerfest confirmed for the Observer last week.

Russell was reluctant to discuss specific figures, as up to this weekend the final numbers were still being tallied from ticket returns still coming in from various vendors across the island. Still, he expects that this year’s festival – particularly the final three nights – will pull in 25 per cent less profit than it did last year, even as last weekend Montego Bay was almost filled to capacity with festival-goers who booked all the rooms and dropped large amounts of cash for local transportation and food.

That’s because the festival’s profits are made solely on gate receipts, while others who benefit from the hosting of the festival in Montego Bay are more immune to factors that could easily send Summerfest into the red.

“The biggest thing we have to do for next year is to ensure that we have adequate levels of sponsorship,” explained Russell. “For argument’s sake, if the rain had fallen and the show got cancelled, Summerfest Productions would have been left holding the bag. When things work well, all the sponsors, all the people benefit from the show because they get the exposure. The country gets all these people coming in to fill the hotel rooms and the airline seats, to spend money in the town and all that, but if per chance you have rain on a Thursday night, which is our biggest night, and the attendance fell dramatically, the only people left out of pocket would be the promoters because whereas everybody else benefits from the festival in other ways, the promoters only have gate receipts.”

This year, Sumfest’s Dancehall Night, traditionally the biggest night, pulled close to 17, 000 people, while International Nights 1 and 2 on Friday and Saturday nights pulled about 6,000 and 8,000 people respectively, significantly less than the numbers last year. The dwindling numbers could be explained, said Russell, by the rains that doused the island during the festival, the lack of available rooms in the resort town, and the decreased spending power of patrons.

The rain left the Catherine Hall Entertainment Complex a soggy, muddy field, and although no rain fell during any of the three major shows, the threat could have turned off many apprehensive patrons, some of whom would have been travelling via road to get to St James. But while the rain factor may have been over or even understated, the lack of available rooms is a serious problem that the festival, which has grown immensely since its first staging over a decade ago, has always had to contend with.

Weeks before the festival, cursory checks revealed that hotels in Montego Bay were fully booked, and it was difficult to get rooms in hotels as far away as Negril and to a lesser extent, Ocho Rios.

“We reach the saturation point pretty quickly in Montego Bay, and even with the new road to Negril, which helped a little, we still are severely short of rooms,” Russell indicated, pointing out that there were approximately 6,500 available hotel rooms in the North Coast resort zone. A significant increase in room numbers he believes, would transform the future of the festival in a real and tangible way.

“If we had say 15,000 rooms between Negril, Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, we could be assured of a core audience at the show,” he explained.

That core audience, along with increased sponsorship, could allow the festival to remain basically as it is now – a week-long event that features three main shows with top international acts performing. But next year, he said, there may be major changes to the festival if the promoters can’t find that extra security of sponsorship.

“We might very well go to two nights. One of the things we have to be cognisant of, is the spending power of the society at large. Particularly with a week-long festival, it’s not easy, especially when things are tight, people are just not able to manage it,” said Russell, who plans to propose several risk-minimising and cost-cutting measures to keep Sumfest alive. Nevertheless, he is optimistic that next year the cutbacks won’t affect the quality of production or the show itself.

“We’re looking forward to the developments we hear about in Trelawny, that should increase the numbers of rooms available, but we’re also looking at possibly having one show in Kingston because Kingston has the critical mass of people that you really need to support a show like this,” he said.

Russell told the Observer that one of the biggest challenges Sumfest faced this year was the venue.

“The venue gave us the biggest challenge this year, because if you remember we were given notice to quit the venue last year, and at the end of last year’s show we had to dismantle everything at the site. This year we had to go back and build all the stalls from scratch and really work hard to recreate the venue,” he said.

The week-long festival gave thousands of satisfied music-lovers brilliant performances by some of their favourite artistes, the three major shows at the Catherine Hall Entertainment Complex were largely incident-free, the stage, sound, lighting, parking and security were all on point. Sanitary facilities were reasonable and easily accessible, there was no ticket fraud, and the trickle-down effect for small vendors, hoteliers and other tourism interests in the second city certainly should have left many smiles on many faces.