Electric Picnic to cost €25m to €30m to stage
Gordon Deegan
Laois County Council has given the green light for the largest ever Electric Picnic festival to take place.
Today, the Council granted the licence to EP Republic Ltd to stage the festival where 80,000 are to attend each day to see the likes of Hozier, Chappell Roan and Becky Hill perform.
Last month, Becky Hill was named as the final headliner and joined Sam Fender, Fatboy Slim, and Kings of Leon on the roster.
The 80,000 for the 2025 EP - which is expected to cost between €25 million to €30 million to stage - is a 5,000 increase on the 75,000 tickets that were sold for the 2024 event.
Entertainment for weekend ticket holders will commence on Friday at 2pm and finish at 4am on Monday, September 4th.
The Council has granted the licence for the multistage live music and arts event at Stradbally Hall, Stradbally Estate, subject to 51 conditions.
The Council had received a number of submissions calling on the EP promoters to support local businesses.
In one of six submissions made to the Council on EP Republic Ltd’s application, David Walsh Kemmis of Ballykilcavan Brewing Company said: “With a view to supporting small local businesses, I would like to see the Council enforce a planning condition that the festival organisers must provide access to the festival for food and drink suppliers based in Laois, even if their product is in competition with a sponsor of the festival
However, in its 29 page planner’s report into the licence application, the Council stated that submissions received relate to a number of issues relating to the event supporting locally produced produce and particularly the nearby Ballykilcavan Brewing Company.
The report stated that “this matter is outside of the remit of the Local Authority and therefore cannot be dealt with in the Event Licence. The decision to allow or not the Ballykilcavan Brewing Company or any corporate entity to trade at the event is a commercial decision for the Promoter.”
Ceo of Electric Picnic, Melvin Benn said last month that the cost of staging this year’s Electric Picnic will be between €25m to €30m.
In an interview, Mr Benn said Electric Picnic provides an enormous economic boost to the local economy.
He said that every year, EP has “an awful lot of local businesses and local traders that sell at the festival”.
Mr Benn gave the example of Laois Taste which is a collection of local producers which sell their produce at the Electric Picnic
He said that “we work very closely with local traders and I choose the ones that I work with. It is not up to the local authority to say who we work with. We have the freedom to choose who we work with and we exercise that freedom”.
Tickets for the 2025 EP event went on sale on August 21st last and sold out within hours without any act confirmed at the time.
This year’s event returns to the traditional last weekend of August where it will run from Thursday, August 28th to Sunday, August 31st.
The first Electric Picnic was staged on Saturday, September 4th 2004 when around 10,000 people attended.
