Taxpayers forked out millions to host this world-class ‘festival of festivals’ in Sydney. Was it worth it?

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Destination NSW’s reported $12 million deal securing the rights to South by Southwest (SXSW) was lauded as an “unparalleled coup” for Sydney by cultural commentators, music industry heavyweights, and filmmaker Baz Luhrmann when it was first announced in 2022.

Whether SXSW Sydney delivered on the hype, however, was a matter debated long after curtains closed on the inaugural event. As it enters its third year, the film/music/gaming/innovation insert-buzzword-here still can’t quite shake questions of its flaccidity.

This year’s SXSW Sydney, with Teddy Swims and Paul Feig giving keynote addresses, is the festival’s third in Australia. Even though big names, including Nicole Kidman, have been attached to it, whether SXSW Sydney lives up to the hype is debatable.

Packed rooms and big names (Nicole Kidman, Chance the Rapper) were unsurprising, and a good sign for the first “festival of festivals” held outside of Austin, Texas, since SXSW’s 1987 launch.

But logistical problems (sessions missed due to locations being too far apart, a stuffy and tiny gaming showcase venue, clunky app and online schedule designs, baffling signage and badges), complicated and prohibitive ticket pricing, and general confusion over what SXSW Sydney is and who, exactly, its audience is, saw attendance drop from more than 97,000 unique visitors in 2023 to 92,000 in 2024. (Although in 2023, SXSW Sydney was co-located with esport tournament Intel Extreme Masters, which could account for that year’s increased attendance).

“There are so many elements to South by Southwest that it does get confusing if you don’t understand the history of the conference, or the different streams and the purposes,” says media consultant and self-confessed SXSW tragic Kriti Gupta.

The fact South by Southwest’s ticket to the Antipodes was paid for by taxpayers via the state government’s tourism agency is the first cloud that shrouds the event in mystery – early figures supplied by SXSW Sydney show 11 per cent of this year’s ticket holders are from overseas, and 21 per cent of domestic ticket holders are from outside of NSW.

Clearly, the event, which receives $100,000 in cash from the City of Sydney annually plus value-in-kind through venue hire fee waivers, is not for tourists. Although this year’s iteration has an extended SXSW Sydney Unlocked program of free events in Tumbalong Park and beyond, the main meal is overwhelmingly not for laypeople either.

Who is SXSW Sydney really serving?

If you’re a fan of Lose Control singer Teddy Swims or Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, then you may feel so inclined to attend their keynote addresses on Thursday and Wednesday, respectively. But it’ll cost you at least $695 (the price of the new Conference One Day pass, which was sold for $295 to early birds) to do so.

Ticketing for SXSW Sydney is tiered, and while there are more affordable options available – film rush tickets cost at least $25, tickets to the Innovation Expo, when it’s not free, are $40, and entertainment wristbands cost $140 – they don’t provide access to every event.

So brings us to the crux of why South by Southwest, at its heart a conference, is also known as “corporate Coachella”.

SXSW Sydney’s first event was in October 2023. Pictured here is Bow and Arrow performing at its Tumbalong Park launch.

“We’ve worked hard to make this year’s event more accessible: we’ve introduced new day-pass options, expanded our free program, and reduced the average ticket price, so that participation is within reach for more people and businesses than ever before,” says Simon Cahill, co-managing director of SXSW Sydney.

The people with power, however, are in the rooms that cost, if not $695, then $995 or $1495 (a platinum pass, which cost $1895 in 2023) to enter.

Spare a thought for who might want to attend Feig’s address (the who’s who of Australian film), listen to former Google X chief business officer Mo Gawdat’s take on artificial intelligence (tech’s best and brightest, of course), see Dungeons & Dragons actual play show Dimension 20 host Brennan Lee Mulligan in the flesh (game publishers who’ll spend the rest of the conference prospecting developers), or see supermodel Tyra Banks’ smize up close and personal (the who’s who of … everything?).

“It’s such a vibrant, creative space filled with the people we most want to reach... gamers, creators, and digital innovators,” says Sarah Barnbrook, founder of digital safety advocacy group Away from Keyboard (AFK). “Those are exactly the communities that [AFK] exists to support.”

There are solutions. One enthusiastic gamer I spoke with on Reddit volunteered two years in a row at the event, happily trading 18 hours of work for a Pro Pass ($995, also offered to speakers in return for their services). To them, connecting with industry professionals, be they indie developers or studios, is priceless.

Social Enterprise Australia’s partnership with SXSW Sydney, where a judging panel chooses a select amount of social enterprises, the people they support, and others who may traditionally be “shut out of the conversation” to receive an event pass for free, is another option.

Media consultant and mental health advocate Kriti Gupta is speaking on a panel at SXSW Sydney this year, and has attended both 2023 and 2024 events. She says the connections she formed at the conferences directly led to job projects.

“We believe all people should have the power to shape the future, but access to power is very uneven,” says Jess Moore, chief executive of Social Enterprise Australia. “These passes mean that people with diverse lived experience and who have audacious goals can not just be in the room, but help shape the conversation.”

Gupta is a prime example of this. She secured a free pass in 2023 with Social Enterprise Australia, and then hosted a youth mental health meet-up with non-profit ALLKND in 2024, and will be speaking on “The ‘Myth’ of New Media” panel on Thursday.

“I work full-time as a freelancer,” says Gupta. “[SXSW Sydney 2023] gave me a lot of job projects, to be honest … it gave me a lot of connections.”

Has Destination NSW’s $12 million gamble paid off?

Destination NSW refuses to confirm its level of investment in SXSW Sydney, with a spokesperson citing specific figures as “commercial-in-confidence”, and referring to previous claims from SXSW Sydney that the event, from 2023, has contributed $200 million to NSW’s economy. It’s understood Sydney holds the SXSW rights for five years, with revenue targets that, if met, would secure another five.

The sheer number of email blasts in the lead-up to SXSW Sydney suggests the acquisition was a boon for communications staffers and PR agencies. But the reality for many others is more ambiguous. For some, it is a boon.

“There’s no easy way to be a venue at the moment,” says publican Bhavani Baumann. “Every time you’ve got to pay for something now, the costs have only gone up, and there’s only so many ways we can pass it on [to customers].”

It’s the third year Baumann’s venue The Chippo Hotel has closed to the public for SXSW Sydney, with brands, such as American Apparel this year, hiring out the venue for their festival events. The base hiring fee, says Baumann, generally earns the pub their regular weekly takings, with catering fees on top a welcome bonus.

Baumann, however, also sees value in the deal that can’t be quantified easily – SXSW Sydney is a “massive marketing platform” for The Chippo Hotel.

Indie-pop and electronic artist BIRDEE 王煒 (centre) could not refuse the offer to perform at SXSW Sydney in 2024.

“Working with big brands, that really helps,” says Baumann. “It gets a lot of people knowing about our venue, they’re coming through to see acts they love, then they see a venue they don’t really know about.”

But not everyone is remunerated for their services. While “exposure doesn’t pay the rent” is an age-old adage among artists – and a contributing factor to the ire SXSW Sydney has faced from local festival organisers – with Australia’s music industry in dire straits, emerging artists have no choice other than beg for scraps.

When SXSW Sydney contacted alt-pop singer BIRDEE 王煒’s team asking her to perform at two venues in 2024, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse. She was not paid for her performances, and one venue’s crowd was “to be quite frank, a bit dead”, but BIRDEE 王煒 was “very grateful to perform there and to expose myself (to those people) that were there that night”. Billie Eilish, after all, was discovered at South by South West in Austin.

“There are not a lot of opportunities in Sydney in particular for artists to perform,” says BIRDEE 王煒, who got a collaboration offer from a songwriter and saw her social media following increase after SXSW Sydney. “When you’ve got something like that coming to you, you don’t say no. You don’t.”

Although an email offering discounted tickets was sent to past attendees less than a week from launch, SXSW Sydney is expecting more foot traffic this year thanks to its expanded program and restructured ticket offerings.

Any extra eyeballs will be welcomed by make-up and prosthetics artist Helen Tuck, who produced It Will Find You, a horror starring Territory’s Kylah Day premiering on Thursday.

Producer and make-up artist Helen Tuck’s Indigenous Australian creature horror flick It Will Find You is screening at SXSW Sydney on Thursday.

With Australia viewed as a “destination location” – somewhere to film movies on the cheap, pre-Trump tariffs – by Hollywood, and a lack of adequate local content quotas for free-to-air broadcasters and streaming services, Tuck sees SXSW Sydney as something that can only help the film industry, especially for independent filmmakers.

“If you make an indie film in Australia, it’s really, really difficult to get theatrical distribution on board for anything other than a smattering of independent cinemas … it’s not enough to get enough eyeballs on the film,” says Tuck.

It Will Find You’s Australian distributors paid for the short’s SXSW Sydney screening, with the goal that reviews from the festival, and the prestige of the South by Southwest brand, will help it land an international film festival, and an international distributor – for most independent Australian filmmakers, international sales is the only way they make their money back.

“A lot of it is just cross your fingers and hope … which is obviously not a good distribution strategy, but it all helps,” says Tuck. “Without the festivals, it’s really, really hard to get people to, just on a whim, go and see your film.”