Christchurch music festival Electric Avenue breaks visitor spend record held since 1974 Commonwealth Games

Australasia’s biggest music festival is believed to have produced the largest visitor spend of any Christchurch event since the 1974 Commonwealth Games.

The sold-out Electric Avenue festival resulted in a visitor spend of almost $10.5 million, according to a new economic impact report, almost double the $6.3m spent in the city by festival goers in 2024.

Electric Avenue celebrated its 10th anniversary in February, drawing about 75,000 attendees to Hagley Park.

This year’s festival, headlined by drum and bass legends Chase and Status and electronic dance band The Prodigy, was the first year it was held over two days.

The city was at 98% occupancy from Thursday through to Saturday.

Festival Director Callam Mitchell said it was phenomenal to be compared to an international event such as the Commonwealth Games.

“Inflation may have contributed to that comparison, but, you know, we’ll take it nonetheless.”

He said they wanted the festival to move to a two-day event for a few years.

“So to pull it off and have 40,000 people through the gates each of the two days is incredible.

“And just to see the way the city embraced it, the whole city came alive.”

Mitchell said, essentially, 60% of their audience came from outside the city.

“We’ve got a big role to play now and just keep building on the success that we’ve carved out over the last 10 years.

“It’s a lot of pressure, but pressure that we welcome nonetheless, and it’s a big responsibility to deliver an event on the scale of knowing what it means for the city.”

ChristchurchNZ head of major events Karena Finnie said this year’s festival certainly resulted in the biggest visitor spend this decade.

“We could potentially go as far [as] to say that it was the biggest since the 1974 Commonwealth Games, but willing to be corrected on that; we’ll wait and see.”

She said it eclipsed other recent events, such as the 2019 Phil Collins concert ($5.8m), 2023 Sail GP ($4m) and Riccarton race week ($3m).

Electric Avenue’s 2025 event drew 22,848 visitors to Christchurch, with people staying an average of 2.75 nights.

“We can confidently say that the majority of these visitors stayed in paid accommodation, and we believe that hotel occupancy was close to 100% that weekend,” Finnie said.

“So, on average, each visitor spent close to $459 during their weekend stay here in the city. That’s excluding ticketing costs and everything like that.”

Mitchell said there were always little improvements to make for next year, to ensure the event becomes bigger and better.

“We’re working pretty hard to have a line-up together for September, and all going well, we’ll be able to announce some dates in a couple of weeks.”

Jaime Cunningham is a Christchurch-based reporter with a focus on education, social issues and general news. She joined Newstalk ZB in 2023 after working as a sports reporter at the Christchurch Star.