Festivals lift Mean Fiddler towards profit

Justin Timberlake's sell-out tour and the Glastonbury Festival helped to narrow losses at Mean Fiddler, the tour and live music venue promoter, last year.

The company yesterday reported a pre-tax loss of £2.9m for the year to the end of December, compared with a loss of £8.3m in the previous year. Sales rose 13 per cent to £44m.

This year's festival season has also got off to a good start, with tickets for the 2004 Glastonbury and Reading festivals already sold out, much to the frustration of people who spent the night queuing on the internet for tickets. The Glastonbury website had 2.5 million hits in the hours after tickets went on sale.

The tickets sold for £115 each but are now changing hands on eBay for as much as £500. Mean Fiddler's stake in the Glastonbury festival has risen to 32 per cent from 24 per cent and it is looking at starting up similar festivals in Europe.

"Glastonbury is just an exceptional event and is now a national brand," Vince Power, the group's chairman, said yesterday. "But across the board, public demand for live music is showing strong growth year-on-year across all age groups."

More than 500,000 tickets were sold for Justin Timberlake's 2003 and 2004 tours for an average price of £25. Mean Fiddler also promotes tours for Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Norah Jones and Kelly Rowland.

The group also revealed yesterday that it had a new major shareholder. Denis Desmond, the Irish live music and festival promoter, has taken a 24 per cent stake in the business through his MCD Productions. Mean Fiddler yesterday said it would work with Mr Desmond to increase "bargaining power with artists and suppliers".

"We are basically competitors, but now are working with each other, rather than fighting against each other," Mr Power said, adding that there were no current plans for Mr Desmond to take over the company.

The company expects music downloads to drive further growth this year. It has signed deals with a number of major record labels to allow customers to download tracks from its website for as little as £1.

The group also said its live music venues were performing well since the start of the year. It owns the London Astoria and the Mean Fiddler, and last year bought the Bordeline venue in the West End.