Emily Eavis has denied that Glastonbury could go bankrupt after the recent announcement that the festival has been cancelled for a second year in a row.
Last Thursday (January 21), organisers Michael and Emily Eavis announced that Glastonbury 2021 has been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The festival will take an enforced fallow year for the second summer in the row after the 2020 edition of the Somerset event was also called off last March due to COVID-19 concerns.
Speaking in a new interview, Eavis denied reports that the festival was cancelled over insurance issues, citing multiple deciding factors.
“Everything from restrictions on public transport capacities to availability of the medical staff we need to work at the event, to the simple fact that mass gatherings are currently still legally prohibited and it’s not at all clear when that will be reversed,” she told The Guardian.
Eavis then dismissed suggestions that Glastonbury could go bankrupt after a second fallow year.
“We would have been in trouble if we’d hedged our bets and pushed on regardless to March and then had to cancel,” she said. “We’d have spent a lot of money by then, money which we wouldn’t get back.”
In 2020 the festival lost £5million after cancelling in March with much of the planning and work already under way.
Before the recent news of this year’s cancellation, Emily Eavis had assured fans on numerous occasions that Glastonbury 2021 may well have been able to go ahead, and was forced to deny claims made by Mel B earlier this month that this year’s event had been pulled.
It came after Michael Eavis said recently that he hoped that Glastonbury Festival would be able to return this summer providing that the “majority” of the UK’s population is vaccinated against coronavirus by June.