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Introduction
On May 28, 2013, the organizers of the annual Peace & Love music festival, until then the largest such event in Sweden, with approximately 50,000 visitors in 2011 and 2012, declared bankruptcy and the cancelation of the forthcoming festival. The cancelation, only four weeks before it was supposed to take place, was a shock with many stakeholders affected, including 40 staff members, 6,000 volunteers, 150 contracted bands and artists, the local and external suppliers and entrepreneurs, the citizens of the city of Borlänge, and, not least, the 9,000 people who had bought tickets in advance. Many were disappointed; some showed their support and sympathy for the festival management. All wondered: how could this happen?
Getz and Page’s (2015) review of event tourism research stated that the question why events fail is largely unexplored. Although event failure is a widespread and common phenomenon, only a few studies since Getz’s (2002) “Why festivals fail” have specifically been dedicated to examining their causes and/or threat factors. One reason is that failures are difficult to document (Getz, 2002), while success stories are more commonly investigated (e.g. Einarsen and Mykletun, 2009).
Studying why events fail is important for several reasons. Lessons can be learned vis-à-vis partnership and management processes (Parent and Séguin, 2007), organization (Nordvall, 2015), and risk management (Kennelly et al., 2015).
Since its birth in 1999 (attracting 900 visitors), the festival had gone through a tremendous development; ten years later it was the largest music festival in Sweden, featuring artists such as Jay-Z, Bob Dylan, and Rihanna. Gathering a crowd of 50,000 people (65 percent of whom were defined as tourists based on length of travel, >100 km; Heldt and Klerby, 2011) in the center of Borlänge was remarkable, given the size of the town (41,000 citizens) and a location approximately 200 km from larger metropolitan areas. The festival had evolved into what researchers refer to as a hallmark event, as defined by the following characteristics: “[…] attracting tourists; creating and enhancing a positive image that is co-branded with the destination/community; and delivering multiple benefits to residents” (Getz et al., 2012, p. 52). The Peace & Love festival attracted considerable numbers of tourists, the images of the event and the city was inextricably linked, and the festival...