Boomtown 2024 has come and gone, and while, despite a few hiccups, it was a roaring success, one thing was noticeably absent from this years festivities: Boomtown programmes.
The beloved Boomtown programmes, complete with stage times, maps, and artist info, were once again nowhere to be found. Instead, they were replaced by an app that was supposed to offer all that and more.
Unfortunately, many festival-goers discovered that once they arrived at the Matterley Bowl for Boomtown Fair, their phones became little more than fancy cameras due to the lack of signal. While some people did manage to get decent service, this reporter can confirm that neither Tesco Mobile nor 3 mobile internet worked for anything functional all weekend.
Many attendees missed the physical Boomtown programmes. One reminisced, “Reading through those books in your tent in the mornings added to that special feeling of being there. Great for making plans as it’s all there, not on your boring phone screen! Plus all the funny shit to read through.” Another festival-goer, frustrated with the app, said, “I hand wrote every single artist and stage in a book because my phone dies all the time! Took me 3 days, lol. Worth it, but yes, bring back programmes, ffs.”
These complaints weren’t isolated. Others echoed the sentiment, with one fan saying, “I’d happily pay good money for a Boomtown programme,” and another adding, “Surely they must know the internet access will be terrible during the festival.”
Now, why they didn’t print and sell physical Boomtown programmes is a big question. This is normally a non-insignificant revenue stream for most festivals. While, yes, it will cost a few quid to get the programmes designed and printed, thousands of people will pay £10 for a simple booklet, or even stretch to £20 plus for something fancier.
Customers even offered clever ideas to reduce waste. One suggested, “At Shambala, you can order them in advance, so there’s no risk of overprinting. They’re the perfect souvenir—unless you wrote it all down yourself, there’s no other way to look back and see who was playing!”
Given these items’ relatively low cost of production, in the case of Boomtown programmes, this means tens of thousands of pounds of profit potentially left on the table. That kind of cash could fund a lot—more actors, a new art installation, or even travel fees for dozens of small bands.
The environmental impact of printing Boomtown programmes seems minimal compared to the rest of the festival. Thousands of copies of the Daily Rag and a whole economy’s worth of Boomtown Dollars are printed, while performers and customers fly in from around the world. A few thousand paper programmes, especially if sustainably sourced, hardly seem like a dealbreaker.
Let’s not forget that Boomtown inspires a deep fandom, and many attendees would love to keep their Boomtown programmes as mementos. I still have my 2017 Boomtown programme tucked away somewhere.
While Boomtown does offer plenty of collectible items, often available for free through gameplay, not selling Boomtown programmes feels like a massive missed opportunity—the vast majority of the work was already done for the app. Why not give fans the option to buy a physical version?
Not everyone had issues with the app, though. One festival-goer shared, “Wow, surprised to see so many people struggling with the app… I thought it was great! It worked very well for me, it never needed an internet connection to show the timetable, it stayed cached on my phone. My only feedback would be to have the food vendor information on it and to cache the wallet page so at least you knew how much money you had last time it refreshed.”
Here’s hoping the calls for a return to Boomtown programmes are heard, and that next year, the app won’t be the only way to find out set times at the Matterley Bowl.
If you’d like, you can check out our full review of the 2024 Boomtown Story here. We found it to be an incredible, exhilarating, and enthralling narrative, with incredible performances and stagecraft—but also found the ARG to be frustrating, dissapointing, and, at points, simply broken. To find out more click here.
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