Tinderbox fallout continues

The new part publicly funded Tinderbox festival in Denmark has claimed three more victimes as Danish booking agency Beatbox Booking confirmed that it had been forced to fire three of its staff. Tinderbox will receive public funding  of £2.5 million over five years but it's placement in the calendar close to rival festival Roskilde has been described as "an act of war", while Norwegian festival Hove cancelled its 2015 edition with owner Festival Republic claiming that the addition of a new state-funded festival made it too difficult to compete in the Scandinavian market. Four festivals - Roskilde Festival, Smukfest, Nibe Festival and Jelling Musikfestival - all refused to work with Danish booking agencies, Beatbox and Scandinavian, due to their links with Tinderbox. As a result two staffers at Scandinavian who are involved with Tinderbox resigned from the company last month, while Beatbox Booking boss Peter Sorensen questioned why his company was being boycotted, when in fact it was now a totally separate entity to Beatbox Concerts which was involved with the new festival. In a letter to the four boycotting festivals, published by Gaffa, Sorensen wrote: "It was not a nice day in the office yesterday. In addition to firing three good and talented people, I have had to explain to my staff how everything what we have built over the past decade has now been smashed beyond recognition by four festivals' clumsy, disrespectful and deeply unpleasant attack on our integrity and credibility".