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V Festival is dead, new party to be launched on its grave

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 31 October 2017

Hooray! Our least favourite live music event, V Festival, is no more. Well, sort of. After 22 years, Virgin has decided to stop sponsoring the twin-site crap funnel. Live Nation’s Festival Republic has said that the event will lumber on under a different name. I would buy a ticket to a new party billed as a place where you could dance on the grave of V, FYI.

Announcing the decision to stop putting his company’s name to the annual pit of misery, Richard Branson says that it is important “to keep innovating and changing things up”, so Virgin will now look for “new ways we can disrupt the [music] industry”. Maybe he could launch a streaming service where every track you listen to is somehow tweaked to give you a nagging sense that you’ve made a terrible mistake.

“V Festival has always been a special weekend for everyone at Virgin”, writes Branson, which seems incredibly unlikely. “Being part of V Festival has been an honour and there are some amazing moments that will stay with me forever – including introducing Paul Weller and welcoming V2 Records’ first signing The Stereophonics to a massive audience”.

See, even he can’t think of anything that good about it.

Launched in 1996, taking place in Victoria Park in Warrington and Hylands Park in Chelmsford, the first event was headlined by Paul Weller and Pulp – the twin site idea having been developed from an idea by Jarvis Cocker. So it’s basically his fault.

For its second year, the Northern site moved to Temple Newsam outside Leeds, before settling in Weston Park in Staffordshire, which isn’t even all that Northern. What will now be the final edition of V Festival as we know it took place in August, headlined by Jay-Z and Pink.

Goodbye V Festival. I’m not sure if it came across in this article, but we weren’t really fans.