Festival Ownership. Differences between Public, Nonprofit and Private Festivals in Sweden

Abstract

Tourism is a mixed industry in the sense that public, nonprofit and private organizations compete and collaborate. This is a study of festival management implications related to various types of ownership in a sample of music festivals. Three business models are identified: Public, Nonprofit and Private festivals. These three business models are described and compared in terms of governance, structure and content using empirical data from the 14 largest live‐music festivals in Sweden. Results show clear and interesting differences between the three business models of festivals related to e.g. decision styles, volunteer involvement and service quality. These results have theoretical as well as practical implications. Differences based on ownership structure of festivals in the tourism industry are also interesting in comparison to other mixed industries such as the health care and the education sector. Most of the differences found are similar to differences found in other mixed industries. Further studies of other sectors in the tourism industry are therefore strongly recommended to establish the fact that tourism is a mixed industry that can learn a great deal from research results from other mixed industries.

Key Words:

• Mixed industry
• festivals
• ownership
• nonprofit
• Sweden
• business model