Major festivals means Catalonia edges Madrid in live music attendance last year

A total of 4.2 million spectators enjoyed paid live music events in Catalonia in 2022, taking in an unprecedented €86.5 million in box office receipts, according to data from the SGAE 2023 Yearbook consulted by the ACN.  

Catalonia narrowly edges out the Madrid region in terms of the amount of people who went to shows by just 42,684 and beat out on the Spanish capital’s turnover of €75.1 million.  

Major festivals tips the balance towards Catalonia, with a total of 688,764 spectators, 62,000 more than in Madrid. In recent years, this difference has been narrowing.  

On the other hand, Madrid saw far more ordinary concerts than Catalonia throughout the year, accounting for 25% of all gigs held throughout Spain. 

Catalonia hosted 13,642 shows in 2022, a thousand more than in 2019, showing that the live music industry has more than recovered from the pandemic lows. However, it is still far from reaching Madrid’s figures with almost 25,000 concerts, also exceeding its 2019 record.  

In recent years, Madrid has been growing in the number of festivals, as well as increasing the capacity of those that already existed, such is the case of MadCool, and the gap in audience numbers of large festivals had been narrowing. In 2023, Primavera Sound hosted a festival in the Spanish capital for the first time, but they have already announced they will not repeat it for 2024.  

Despite Madrid's gains, Catalan festicals, such as Primavera Sound, Sónar, Cruïlla, and Barcelona Beach Festival, among others, still lead the way in terms of attendance stats.  

In 2022, when Primavera Sound hosted a double-weekend special in Barcelona, 688,764 people attended festivals in Catalonia, while Madrid’s numbers were 626,358. 

This difference of 62,406 spectators is small compared to 2017, for instance, when the gap with Madrid was 241,000 spectators. Catalonia counted 827,000 attendees at major festivals that year, while Madrid only had 585,000.  

In Spain as a whole, however, the Valencian region welcomes most festival attendees. Of the 5.5 million people who attended major festivals throughout Spain in 2022, around in one five – 1.03 million – did so in Valencia. 

Festival organizers celebrate post-pandemic results

Festival organizers consulted by the Catalan News Agency celebrate the positive results of last year and say the live music industry has recovered well from the pandemic hiatus.  

"2022 was a great year for everyone because everyone wanted to return to concerts in person,” Sónar CEO Ventura Barba said. “The pandemic has been a great validation of this model as a form of leisure, and this has not happened in all cultural industries." 

The Associated Music Festivals group, which operates across Spain, rejects the idea of a post-pandemic "bubble" for festivals, instead pointing to the record intake of turnover in the sales of tickets for live music events. Across Spain in 2022, box offices reaped €449 million from gigs. "This leads us to conclude that there is plenty of demand," association representative Belén Álvarez said. 

Álvarez recognizes the need for festivals to become more "sustainable" and says that her association are looking to "mark the road map."