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Pet Shop Boys and The Prodigy helped the Isle of Wight music festival<\/a> increase its profits last year, generating a \u00a32.6m dividend for its parent company, a division of the events industry\u2019s biggest player, Live Nation.<\/p>\n In a year when many smaller music festivals lost money or were cancelled<\/a> amid wet weather and soaring costs, the summer showpiece on the island, a ferry ride across the Solent from England\u2019s southern coast, managed to prosper.<\/p>\n Despite a 4.5% decline in attendance to just under 144,000, the 2024 festival made a profit of \u00a33.4m. That was an increase from \u00a32.8m the year before, when Pulp and The Chemical Brothers headlined the Friday and Saturday night lineups.<\/p>\n The 2026 headliners will be The Cure, Lewis Capaldi and Calvin Harris, organisers announced on Monday.<\/p>\n The festival began in 1968 and achieved worldwide fame \u2013 and notoriety<\/a> \u2013 two years later when an estimated 600,000 people descended on an island whose permanent population numbered just 100,000.<\/p>\n The 1970 lineup featured the Who, Miles Davis, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull and Sly and the Family Stone, as well as a set by Jimi Hendrix just weeks before his death, in which he played a heavily distorted version of God Save the Queen.<\/p>\n One of the attenders that year was John Giddings, who has run the festival since 2002. Since 2017 the festival has been part of a sprawling corporate network of UK live music events all ultimately owned by the vast and sometimes controversial US events and ticketing business Live Nation.<\/p>\n Accounts filed at Companies House show that Isle of Wight Festival Ltd paid a \u00a32.6m dividend, up from \u00a31.9m in 2023, to its immediate parent, UK Festival Holdings Ltd, a holding company that also runs festivals such as Reading.<\/p>\n That company is too small to publish detailed accounts. The firm immediately above it in the ownership chain, LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd, is a conduit for dividends from Live Nation\u2019s UK events. LN-Gaiety Holdings has reported nearly \u00a334m in dividend income over the past two years for which accounts are available.<\/p>\n In 2023 it paid out nearly \u00a349m in dividends to LNGH Ireland Ltd, a holding company in Ireland, where corporation tax rates are lower than in the UK.<\/p>\n Los Angeles-based Live Nation, which also owns Ticketmaster, bought the Isle of Wight festival<\/a> in 2017 during a period of expansion. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) cleared the deal, saying the event was not a rival to the company\u2019s portfolio of about 20 UK festivals including Reading, Leeds and Download.<\/p>\n Live Nation is facing a lawsuit in the US<\/a> for allegedly allowing ticket touts to make millions of dollars at fans\u2019 expense. It is also the subject of legal action from the US department of justice<\/a> over an alleged dominance of the live events industry that \u201csuffocates\u201d competition at the expense of fans.<\/p>\n