ORGANISERS of the Bay Festival have confirmed that they are looking at ways of "restructuring" the festival to give it a viable future.

Last night there was speculation that the festival in June was cancelled.

Local people took to Facebook, Twitter and local forums to discuss the festival with some claiming they had been told to "hold off" purchasing tickets.

Today organisers confirmed that fewer tickets have been sold for this festival than this time last year.

Organiser Jonathan Irving said: "We will be working through the weekend to consider ways of simplification to get the cost base down and will make an announcement early next week of any restructuring.

"We are obviously disappointed and surprised at the current level of poor sales despite the completely diverse line-up with some major headline artists on offer compared to other years. 

"This is also after spending some £100,000 promoting the event extensively. However as the festival is costing £1.5 million to stage we obviously need people to support it by purchasing tickets now.

"Otherwise, as this will be our third attempt and after incurring substantial losses on the other two, there will be clearly no sufficient demand for a festival such as this and thus there will be no viable and sustainable future for it.

"It's the old maxim – use it or lose it."

Organisers yesterday were granted music and dance licences for the event and said all they need now is for people to support the event through purchasing tickets. 

According to Bay Festival organisers this review will have no effect on the Sir Elton John concert on Thursday, June 16.

Organisers say it is "totally unrelated to the Isle of Man Bay Festival anyway and is staged by an entirely different company".

What do you think of this news? Why do you think ticket sales have been low? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below: