In an interview with music website Fasterlouder.com.au, Big Day Out promoter Ken West has revealed that the New Zealand leg of the festival “should have never happened” - pin-pointing it down to cost and the strength of the Aussie dollar.

“If you translate the $165 ticket all inclusive, which is what we are doing, to NZ which is only 80% to the dollar plus GST, that is like $220. And so nobody in New Zealand wants to pay $220, they only want to pay about $130. So thus therein lies my problem. And that needs a solution before we can say we will go back there.”

“So maybe we need to [take that back to NZ] and say, ‘Ok you are only going to get half” or something, and that is the way it should be. Then we can start looking at a budget that might make sense. Trying to produce pretty much the same show for $120 instead of $165 is a hard job. As much as they a nice bunch of people over there, it is a very hard job, so we have to get around that problem.”