Australia's Harvest Festival is in danger of being scrapped after low ticket sales. The annual touring festival, which commenced only in 2011, is deemed "too risky" for all concerned if continued, according to promoter AJ Maddah.

The music festival has already released its line-up for 2013, with Massive Attack, Franz Ferdinand, and Goldfrapp headlining in November. However, it looks like the festival will be cancelled. Maddah is already pessimistic about the festival's future.

"At this point it looks like it will disassociate into several tours," the promoter told Fairfax in an exclusive interview.

"I'm devastated. We got Massive Attack and we'd dragged Elizabeth Fraser out... And we had a good second line-up announcement [to come]."

Maddah added that an abbreviated Harvest was the only option left if they want to keep the festival on, but he personally wanted to replace it with a series of national headline tours by the main artists.

Harvest would have been held on November 10 in Melbourne's Werribee Park, November 16 in Sydney's The Domain, and on November 17 in Brisbane's City Botanic Gardens.

But the low ticket sales for the Brisbane and the Sydney shows (18 per cent of 17,500 tickets sold in Brisbane and 30-40 per cent of 20,000 sold in Sydney) had left him facing a loss of up to $5.5 million.

The Melbourne date showed more promising result, with 70 to 80 per cent of 15,000 tickets sold.

If the festival was turned into separate shows for the headline acts, Maddah said he would still incur personal losses "into seven figures," but not as much as $5.5 million. He is more concerned with other parties suffering financial losses as well.

"I'm happy to assume risk when that risk is to me, but here comes a point where the risk is to suppliers and bands and everyone involved," Maddah continued to Fairfax. "[To continue it] we'd have to take shortcuts or make drastic changes to the event, where it's not up to the expectations of people involved and those who have bought tickets.

"Ethically I can only take risks at my expense... I don't want to add to the statistics of festivals f****** people over. I don't want anyone else to get hurt over this."

Should the festival face cancellation, ticket holders will be refunded.

The festival also lost money both in 2011 and 2012.

Harvest Festival isn't the only Australian music event that has been cancelled. Pyramid Rock Festival, which would have been held on New Year's Eve at Pyramid Rock in Phillips Island, Victoria, was also scrapped, as recently announced.

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