The news of Soulfest being cancelled was a shock to some, as R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop fans were getting ready to see Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, Black Star and other international acts perform in their hometowns. Many ticket-holders didn’t believe that the festival was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, but Soulfest promoter John Denison has spoken to Triple J, revealing how bad ticket sales were.

Denison said Soulfest needed to sell “37,000 tickets nationally” to break even, but “at Friday we had sold 48% of our break even target!” with the Melbourne leg having sold under 7,500 tickets.

“It was a simple case of cancelling now or going ahead with the festival and leaving a trail of millions dollars of unserviceable debt to local suppliers and leaving a raft of businesses in tatters,” Denison says. “We are sincerely apologetic about the inconvenience caused to customers – absolutely! But in the context of mitigating financial damage I believe we have done the right thing. The punters will receive a full refund and there will be no service providers out of pocket.”

This info will probably be taken with a grain of salt, as many fans have already vented on social media with their suspicions. Soulfest’s Asian leg was also forced to cancel their even and whether it returns any time in the near future remains to be seen. Read the whole report here.