Festival attendance likely to drop over the next 20 years

I saw this graphic on a Burning Man camp organizer’s Facebook post and it surprised me none.

Tickets to this event have been selling out, desperately sought and coveted when got.

But not this year. Why?

Well, you COULD say the excess of Burning Man tickets this year is because the event was all muddy and such last year, people got burned out with how difficult it was to pack-down, et cetera. OR … you could look to generational shifts.

See, while the world yammers on about Gen Z, Gen Alpha and whatever other non-generations marketers and the media have loved to create, the ACTUAL generation that is a true generational archetype and has a fairly knowable generational personality was born starting in 2006 (and going until about 2027), which makes them 18 at the top end.

And while this post isn’t a tome on that generation, or others, it is a little, “Hey, Folks!” reminder that each generation experiences each phase of life differently, and the generation that is just starting to come of age (not named yet as a generation) is an extremely RISK-AVERSE generation that has been, in general, quite thankful and appreciative of the HYPER-protection they received.

FWIW, Millennials (b. 1982-2005) are a generation that is rather less risk-embracing than the ultra risk-taking generation above them (GenXers, b. 1961-1981), but the generation after Millennials (those born 2006- ~2027) are an extremely risk-averse generation.

What is Burning Man if not an adventure in the extreme?

And what are festivals, even music festivals, but places of risk with little adult protections.

If I were to wager, I’d say you can expect ticket sales from festivals to go down, down, down over the next 20 years to the point of maybe almost becoming, eventually, hold-overs from generations prior. Then, come around 2050-2055, expect the next Great Awakening era and a Boomer-like generation to get all into their spiritual revivals, conversions, experimentations with whatever mind-altering drugs of the day hold sway and some epic-to-them Woodstock-like event that cements the generation’s identity as a wholly new, radical, rejecting-of-their-parents generation.