End of an era, as the Great British Beer Festival bows out, for possibly the last time

Wednesday's announcement that the Campaign for Real Ale has been forced to cancel Britain’s biggest beer festival, will probably come as no surprise to those of us who have been watching the situation recently. The event has been culled as part of a cost cutting exercise needed to address budget shortfalls in  CAMRA's finances. Consequently, next year’s Great British Beer Festival will be cancelled, along with its counterpart the National Winter Ales Festival.

The decision comes after this year's festival failed to attract sufficient visitors to cover the rising cost of accommodating the hundreds of volunteers who run the event, hiring the venue, and purchasing the beer. These expenses, along with those associated with running the Campaign itself, are responsible for this drastic decision. I say drastic, because the Great British Beer Festival is not only viewed as CAMRA’s flagship event, but also as an occasion that is eagerly looked forward to by the brewing industry as a whole.

The bad news was broken by CAMRA chairman, Ash Corbett Collins, and is seen as a response from an organisation embattled by rising costs and saddled with stagnant membership numbers. I’m rather surprised at the former, as in common with similar organisations, the campaign has switched to a largely digital platform, thereby saving costs on both printing and postage. So far as membership is concerned, CAMRA claims to have 145,000 paid up members, but given the advancing age of many of these, the situation is unlikely to get any better.  

CAMRA of course, is one of the most successful consumer organisations in the world, and in its fifty plus year history has been instrumental in saving the UK’s unique cask-conditioned ales from extinction. Allied with this, the campaign also helped the country’s independent brewing sector to survive and indeed thrive. CAMRA’s influence extends far beyond these shores and has inspired countries across the globe to embrace their own, small brewery sectors, and encourage their growth.

This is policy is particularly recognisable in the United States, a country once dominated by a handful of global giants, churning out insipid national brands, but now home to a thriving and multi-faceted, home-grown brewing industry. Allied with this, has been a renewed interest in once, largely forgotten styles of beer, and an explosion of interest in all things beer related. CAMRA describes itself as a not-for-profit organisation and as many will know it was founded in 1971 by group of four journalists whilst on a drinking holiday in the Republic of Ireland.

I don't intend going over CAMRA’s
history or indeed detailing my involvement with it, but I was a member for the best part of 45 years, and despite having let my membership lapse, I still have a soft spot for the campaign and fond memories, of the four and a half decades when I was actually involved with the organisation. This meant attending branch socials, surveying pubs for inclusion in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide, as well as the odd local publication. I also helped out at local beer festivals, enjoyed brewery visits or trips to towns with a good variety of characterful pubs, and I even edited a couple of local branch magazines – a task that also involved drafting much of the copy!

There is a major difference though between the campaign group I joined back in the mid 1970’s and CAMRA today, and that is the change in demographics. In its infancy, the campaign was very much a young person’s organisation, whereas today, the opposite is true, and there are insufficient new and younger members coming up through the ranks, to take the place of us old stagers. Young people today aren't “joiners” in the sense many of us were when we were in our 20’s and 30s, and over the last few decades CAMRA has struggled to attract people to replace those who are no longer fit and able, or are even, still alive. The chairman’s concerns regarding a stagnant membership are little more than putting on a brave face, as without new blood, the campaign is ultimately doomed.

Going back to the Great British Beer Festival, the forced two-year hiatus caused by COVID, followed by the non-availability in 2024 of Olympia in West London, the event’s spiritual home, almost certainly took the wind out of GBBF’s sails, so the move this year, to Birmingham’s NEC, ought to have been the catalyst for a new and revived national festival. It was a bold move on the part of the organisers but unfortunately does not seem to have worked. There were numerous reports of not enough punters attending the event, alongside a complete lack of any evening trade. This related to the so-called “suits”, business people coming along to the festival after finishing work or perhaps having taken the afternoon off to attend the event.

As someone who has attended numerous GBBF’s in the past, there was always a palpable increase in numbers after 5pm, but apparently this failed to happen in Birmingham. There is also the venue itself, and anyone who's been to the NEC will no doubt confirm that it’s a rather soulless place, that’s little more than just a collection of tin sheds, that can be joined together or separated, as required. Compare that to somewhere with character, like London’s Olympia, or even Alexandra Palace, in the early days, and you will appreciate what I am talking about.

Now, after the event, comes the soul-searching, and reflection, but with a staggering £320k loss, it is difficult to see the way back for the campaign. Certainly, the GBBF in its two forms (winter and summer) will not now take place, and likely will never happen again. This, in itself is a real loss as the Great British Beer Festival represented a key moment in the calendar of the UK’s beer and brewing sector. The event allowed tens of thousands of beer lovers to sample around 900 different brews, not just from the UK but from all over the world. It also hosted the Champion Beer of Britain awards.

After informing the membership of the reasons behind the loss, and laying out an initial strategy for recovery, national chairman Ash Corbett-Collins sent the following message to CAMRA members. 

"While I hoped I would never need to send this message, my number one priority is seeing our Campaign survive and thrive. Our 50 plus year history must be protected, and I am determined to see CAMRA continue for the next 50 years.”

“Doing nothing is not an option. If we do not act now, the stark reality is we will not exist in the future." 

Footnote: Fellow blogger, and veteran GBBF staff member Tandleman, has more to say about what might have happened to make this year’s event such a financial train-wreck. He rightly points out that CAMRA, acted in good faith in relocating its flagship festival to Birmingham, and couldn’t have foreseen just how calamitous the move would be. Having been involved with similar large events in Manchester, he describes the thoughts that would have been going through the organiser’s heads, as they slowly realised the door numbers weren’t stacking up. An awful situation to be in, especially when on paper, at least, you appear to be doing everything right.