THE FLYING DUTCH FESTIVAL CANCELS OVER AVICII DOUBT

The Flying Dutch festival’s Swedish Journey event has been cancelled amidst uncertainty over whether Avicii would show up to perform, despite the fact that Steve Angello, Alesso, John Dahlbäck, Icona Pop and more were on the bill.

The festival was set to take place on Saturday 30th July at The Hague, Nijmegen, but Alda Events, who run the festival, issued a statement on their website last night (Thursday), announcing that it would not be going ahead.

In it, organiser John Ewbank said, “These past weeks we experienced uncertainty because Avicii was cancelling a lot of shows all over the world. Our request to Avicii and his management to provide a guarantee of his attendance at our event went to no avail. They can’t vouch for his presence. This uncertainty is unacceptable. We can’t do that to our audience.”

Allan Hardenberg of Alda Events added, “We regret this very much, also because these would be his final shows in our country. We understand that the fans will be disappointed, especially because everyone realises how unique this event would have been.”

The fact that so many other major artists are on the bill has led many media outlets to speculate that the Avicii uncertainty has been used to mask poor ticket sales. Alda Events has confirmed that refunds will be issued.

Avicii, real name Tim Bergling, announced that he will retire from music after his 2016 tour. But that has already been blighted with issues, including the cancellation of his 2016 Las Vegas residency due to “personal reasons”.

Rob McCallum is DJ Mag’s digital news writer. Follow him on Twitter here.