The Audience line up for Glastonbury 2024

It’s easy to assume that you’d understand the Glastonbury audience.

After all it’s the UK’s biggest music festival, coverage dominates social media, TV and news feeds increasingly at this time of year.

You’ll either have been to the event yourself, be going, or know someone who’s been.

So you know the audience - right? 

That holds up to some extent. But while milestones like Glastonbury represent moments of relatability, they neglect the unique experiences that shape who the audience are as individuals at any moment in time. 

And this is why looking beyond simple demographic consumer data is so crucial to really knowing your audience.

By digging deeper, we can explore who consumers really are, and where differences in their views, habits, lifestyles, and preferences can be found. 

So when it comes to Glastonbury, we analysed the audience that used the website during the ticket payment window from 1st April to 7th April 2024. 

The audience analysis was conducted using weblog and interest-based data points from the Skyrise audience design platform.

With unique access to mobile network data, the platform was able to analyse the locations of users and infer who they are.

Let’s dig into some of that detail.

Glastonbury organisers have tried a number of tactics in recent years to reduce the age of attendees. While the festival has never collected or published an average age, reports suggest it increased from 26 to 45 years old over a 25 year period between 1997 and 2022. 

Our analysis suggests it is millennials who are going this year. 25-34 year olds were the most active during the payment window, so could we be about to see the Dua Lipa effect the age of this year's audience? 

Our analysis used geo-temporal data, and indicates areas with a high concentration of post-graduate professionals. Residential hipster hotspots including Chorlton in Manchester, and Heaton in Newcastle upon Tyne index way above average.

There is going to be an invasion of revellers from North East England.

Despite the 322 mile journey from Newcastle, it appears that North East England has one of the highest concentrations of people attending this year’s festival.  

Our insight indicates approximately 5,000 people from NE postcodes will be making the annual musical pilgrimage. That is almost the same as people in Bristol, the nearest city to the Festival.

As you would expect, student hotspots dominate with Heaton and Jesmond indexing high. North Shields, Corbridge and Hebburn also feature a high number of festival goers. While some of these could be students in the region who live nearer the event during summer, the analysis is clear. There is a Geordie party on its way to Pilton.

Glastonbury is a tentpole cultural phenomenon, with tickets selling out in hours. 

The analysis reveals that attendance skews slightly towards men (52% male to 48% female) and encompasses a diverse range of age-groups, with the 25-34 year old bracket the most represented.

Josh Nurney, Account Director, Strategy and Planning at Skyrise said

“The insight about the Glastonbury audience was really surprising. Data proved the more obvious assumptions, such as the age group and that they are music fans. That almost goes without saying. 

I wasn’t expecting to see the North East index so heavily. That was a revelation, and shows why bespoke audience design is much better than pre-assumed segmentation. 

I’m travelling down to Glastonbury myself this year. It’s my first time attending, and having run the audience analysis, I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of Geordie party-goers”.