CINCINNATI — Sad news for Cincinnati music fans: Bunbury Music Festival will not take place in 2022.


What You Need To Know

  • The Bunbury Music Festival also didn't take place in 2020 or 2021

  • Organizers cited reasons such as the pandemic, supply chain issues and a staffing shortage

  • The three-day music festival usually takes place in June along the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati

Event organizers made the announcement Tuesday on social media. They attributed the decision to factors related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The post lists supply chain issues, the ability to book guests and public safety as some of the issues.

Those factors resulted in them being "unable to bring you the festival you deserve."

"Due to a variety of circumstances and complications resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic these last two years, it has been very difficult to get a small music festival off the ground; from booking talent, to supply-chain issues, and obtaining adequate staffing in order to ensure the safety of those in attendance.

"As a result, we are regretfully canceling Bunbury for 2022,” the Tweet said.

Bunbury Music Festival is a three-day music festival that takes place in June along the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati. There are two stages and other entertainment areas set up throughout Sawyer Point and Yeatman’s Cove. It was also canceled in 2020 and 2021.

Scott Stienecker is CEO of PromoWest Productions and regional vice president of AEG Presents, which puts on Bunbury. 

He said they didn't think they'd have any issues getting vendors or stage crew, even security. The decision ultimately came down to the ability to book bands and performing artists festival-goers want to pay to see.

"The main concern is these festivals are driven by their three headliners. We’ve always had strong headliners, but we weren’t so sure we could make that happen this year,” he added.

Past artists to perform at Bunbury include Post Malone, Jack White, MUSE, Florence and the Machine and Snoop Dogg. Twenty One Pilots, Marshmello and the Avett Brothers were set to headline last year before the event was delayed.

Promoters usually book the headlining acts for Bunbury in August or September for the following year’s festival. But booking agents are “gun shy” recently, Stienecker said. Show confirmations had just started to come in when the new Omicron variant brought with it a "new level of uncertainty."

“We weren't landing the headliners that we wanted for this festival, so we opted to pass on this year,” he said. “We didn’t want to get into booking (they usually announce the lineup in January) without finding something so with us opening the brand-new Ovation building across the river, we decided to turn our focus to that”

Stienecker is referring to the PromoWest Pavilion at Ovation across the river in Newport, Ky., which opened earlier this year. The success of that venue may serve as a litmus test for the future of Bunbury.

“A lot of those acts, those 45 acts that we get for Bunbury, we will be bringing to the new facility. So by not doing a Bunbury in 2022, it’s going to give us an opportunity to see how many of those bands we can bring to the Ovation. A lot of that information will tell us if it’s viable to do a festival again in this market.” he said.

In their post, organizers did not speculate about the future of the festival. But they are "hopeful that we’ll be able to get Bunbury up and dancing again."