The German media channel Spiegel reported that only €44m was requested from the fund by mid-December 2021. Of that amount, €40m had been requested from the €1.9bn ‘profitability aid’, dedicated to compensating financial losses for live events held under capacity in order to meet Covid-19 restriction.
The remaining €4m has been requested from the €600m ‘failure protection’ pool, used to cover up to 90% of losses incurred by the cancellation of events and shows called off due to the pandemic. Despite the modest amount of applications, the report states that the fund has been met with “great response” from organisers.
Gesine Lötzsch commented: “I have the impression that the funding programmes are so complicated that as little money as possible reaches the people who urgently need help.”
According to Spiegel, the number of events registered for aid is noticeably higher than the number of actual applications. 23,400 events have so far been registered for economic aid, which corresponds to an estimated €795m.
Around half of the registrations are from concerts and festivals, and another 40% to performances of the performing arts. To date, around 2,000 events have been registered for failure protection, which would mean a maximum funding volume of around €859m. Almost three-quarters of these registrations are concerts and festivals.
Source: Der Spiegel
