{"id":729725,"date":"2026-06-11T13:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/729725\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T13:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T13:40:12","slug":"byron-bay-bluesfest-liquidators-report-reveals-creditors-owed-7-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/729725\/","title":{"rendered":"Byron Bay Bluesfest liquidator\u2019s report reveals creditors owed $7 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creditors owed more than $7 million after the sudden cancellation of Byron Bay’s Bluesfest in March are unlikely to recoup all of the money they are owed, a new financial report has revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The company running the festival went into liquidation in March, three weeks before the Easter event was due to begin.<\/p>\n

Worrells, the liquidator appointed to handle all financial matters for Bluesfest, today delivered its report on the company’s finances to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.<\/p>\n

It found the company, operating under Bluesfest Enterprises and Bluesfest Byron Bay, owed more than $7 million to over 900 creditors.<\/p>\n

The report also detailed that the companies had only $300,664 in the bank to pay their debts.<\/p>\n

\"man<\/p>\n

Linda Sutton and her partner Chris Gadd produced merchandise for Bluesfest. (Supplied: Linda Sutton)<\/p>\n

The owners of Uniform Print Lab, a Tweed Heads business listed as a creditor, said based on updates from the liquidator ahead of the report’s release, they did not expect to get their money back.<\/p>\n

Linda Sutton said her business was out of pocket more than $90,000 when the festival was cancelled before it was paid for merchandise, including 6,000 T-shirts bearing the Bluesfest logo.<\/p>\n

“We’ve counted on the fact that we will be getting next to nothing. That’s why we’ve had to get loans and let a staff member go, because we don’t anticipate that there will be any recouping of our losses,” Ms Sutton said.<\/p>\n

“It’s put us in a horrible situation where we can’t really pay ourselves much.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to survive it, but at what cost to us personally?”<\/p>\n

‘Difficult decision’<\/p>\n

In a March statement, Bluesfest said it was “an incredibly difficult decision”, but the event was no longer viable.<\/p>\n

“Rising production, logistics, insurance and touring costs, combined with a challenging environment for major live events, mean it is no longer possible to deliver the festival to the standard our audiences, artists and partners expect,” it said.<\/p>\n

The music festival, which began in 1990, had hosted some of the world’s biggest stars, including Bob Dylan, Midnight Oil and R.E.M.<\/p>\n

This year’s event was scheduled to run from April 2 to 5, with Split Enz and Earth, Wind & Fire booked as the headline acts.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Peter Noble has not spoken publicly about the liquidation. (Supplied: Bluesfest)<\/p>\n

Byron Bay Bluesfest director, Peter Noble, who was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2016 for services to the music industry, has previously declined to comment on the festival’s demise or the liquidation.<\/p>\n

More than 100,000 people passed through the gates at last year’s festival, but some were left angry at Mr Noble after he backflipped on his announcement<\/a> that 2025 would be the festival’s final year.<\/p>\n

The event was also hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic<\/a>, with the 2020 and 2021 events called off<\/a> at short notice by the New South Wales government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Creditors owed more than $7 million after the sudden cancellation of Byron Bay’s Bluesfest in March are unlikely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5799,64,63,159008,2019,353292,168874,134,64308,353293],"class_list":["post-729725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-asic","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bluesfest","tag-byron-bay","tag-byron-bay-bluesfest","tag-creditors","tag-entertainment","tag-liquidation","tag-why-is-bluesfest-cancelled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}