$100K Loss for Pleasantville Music Festival Despite Strong Turnout

By Abby Luby

This year’s Pleasantville Music Festival had the weather on its side, which is always a wild card when it comes to the daylong outdoor event. After an initial spell of overcast skies, the sun came out for the better part of the eight-hour festival at Parkway Field, where music lovers of all ages enjoyed 15 acts on three stages featuring local bands and big-name acts such as Dawes, which closed out the evening.

Although festival attendees were energized, the festival’s revenue fell short of expenses, leaving it $103,997 in the red. This was the fourth year in a row the festival realized a loss, which was the largest in the festival’s 19-year history. At last week’s village board work session, board members’ hourlong discussion considered reasons for the loss.

“We’ve always operated with the recognition that there would be some up years and some down years, with the up years counterbalancing the down years,” Pleasantville Mayor Peter Scherer said. “Over the course of a period of time, we’d be even.”

Scherer noted that the festival, known as the village’s signature “New York’s Backyard Jam” since it started in 2006, was never meant to be a money maker. To mitigate some of the increased costs this year, the village raised ticket prices. The total ticket revenue was $125,428, up from $121,700 for last year’s festival. This year, ticket prices at the gate were $85 for adults and $60 for students and seniors. Children under 12 attended for free.

“Although this year we had a good weather day, we did not see as much of a bump [in ticket sales] as we had hoped, and the ticket sales at the gate were disappointing. We sold fewer tickets this year than we did last year,” Scherer told the board.

The village created a Music Festival Analysis, which showed total losses were $86,566 in 2024, $57,638 in 2023, and $39,987 in 2022. Because of COVID-19, the festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021. The last positive net income for the 2019 festival was $40,348.

Possible reasons why the festival was consistently losing money included the Sleepy Hollow Music Festival held in June, just a few weeks before the village festival on July 12.

“The effect of the Sleepy Hollow festival on us is not yet clear,” Scherer said. “Some people are not going to two festivals in a four- to five-week period.”

Scherer cited the former Clearwater Music Revival, which changed to the Hudson River Music Festival, also held in June, and might have impacted the draw of the village’s festival.

“They do have a different band lineup and promoters with broad connections,” Scherer noted.

Commenting at last week’s village work session was former Pleasantville Mayor Bernie Gordon, who recalled the original reason for starting the festival in 2006 was to promote Hudson Valley artists.

“What I’ve noticed over the years is that the festival doesn’t attract talent that is directed toward seniors like me,” Gordon said. “The town is looking for popular music now rather than other types and directing the focus to people who can afford the tickets the least, like college students and young people. There’s got to be more of a mix of local talent and songs from different generations. I knew nobody at this year’s festival.”

Gordon remembered how, in the early days of the festival, there was a dedicated village staff who made the festival happen.

“The staff took pride that they were doing something important, that this was their festival and they could show the county what they could do. I hope it remains to this day,” Gordon recalled.

Scherer emphasized that the village staff, especially Village Clerk Alyssa Hochstein, had worked tirelessly for the festival.

“The last six weeks before the festival, the work is life-consuming for village administrators,” Scherer remarked. “I want to give a shoutout to Alyssa, who spent 90 percent of her time devoted to the festival. Alyssa and Village Administrator Eric Morrissey worked tirelessly in such a tremendous and demanding undertaking. I’m not aware of any village anywhere of our size undertaking a thing of this scale. And I’m proud of punching above our weight class.”

Also commenting at the work session was Pleasantville resident and former village board member Jonathan Cunningham.

“The great strength of the festival is not on the main stage — the great strength of the music is in the tents that aren’t very expensive. We’ve got too much institutional knowledge to let it [the festival] go that easy. I would focus on the key strength of that festival, which is the chill tent and the party stage. There’s still a lot to work with here,” Cunningham said.

Scherer said future conversations on how to make next year’s 20th Pleasantville Music Festival less costly will take place.

“The question is, is there a way to run the festival as we have known it and buffer this risk?” asked Scherer. “Or if it should be something different that is less risk and less expensive? Is there a way to change the festival but keep its general profile? It’s a conversation we will have in detail with festival Executive Director Doug Panero and his various department heads.”

Abby Luby

Abby is a seasoned journalist who has been covering news and feature stories in the region for decades. Since The Examiner’s launch in 2007, she has reported extensively on a broad range of community issues. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/