The Great Escape festival, which showcases hundreds of up and coming musicians each year in Brighton, no longer has Barclays as a sponsor, following criticism of the bank’s ties with Israeli companies.
The activist group Bands Boycott Barclays wrote on social media: “Boycotts work! After hundreds of artists and music industry professionals took collective action in solidarity with Palestine this year, Barclays are no longer in any way affiliated with The Great Escape festival.”
Representatives for the festival did not give a statement to the Guardian but directed attention to the sponsors page of the festival, which no longer carries Barclays’ logo.
The festival had faced opposition from dozens of acts ahead of its May event this year, including some who weren’t playing the festival but signed an open letter opposing the sponsorship, such as Massive Attack and Idles. Gigs were cancelled and events such as a discussion between Jarvis Cocker and Brian Eno were removed from the lineup.
Barclays has been criticised for providing financial services to defence companies supplying Israel.
The bank has defended its interests, saying in a June statement: “We have been asked why we invest in nine defence companies supplying Israel, but this mistakes what we do. We trade in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand and that may result in us holding shares. Whilst we provide financial services to these companies, we are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in that sense in relation to these companies.”
Barclays, via its Barclaycard brand, had been a sponsor of a number of other UK music festivals run by Live Nation under its Festival Republic brand, including Reading & Leeds, Download, Isle of Wight and Latitude. Numerous bands pulled out of Download festival this year over the Barclays ties, with British metalcore band Ithaca telling the Guardian: “Once we were made aware of Barclays’ involvement in Download we knew we could no longer participate … this moment of solidarity is an opportunity for festival organisers to reflect carefully on who they take money from and see that the younger generation of bands will no longer be silent.”
The boycott led to Barclays suspending sponsorship of all 2024 Live Nation festivals. The bank said in a statement: “The protesters’ agenda is to have Barclays debank defence companies which is a sector we remain committed to as an essential part of keeping this country and our allies safe … The only thing that this small group of activists will achieve is to weaken essential support for cultural events enjoyed by millions.” The bank said it had supported the UK music and arts sector with £112m over the past 20 years.
Websites for Festival Republic’s other 2025 events also do not list Barclays as a partner.
Pepsi, which some people have boycotted over its parent company’s ties to Israel, remains a partner of the festivals. The Pepsi brand itself is not a target of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but BDS has called for a boycott of Pepsi-owned Sodastream, claiming the company is “actively complicit in Israel’s policy of displacing the indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens of present-day Israel”. Sodastream moved its factory out of the West Bank in 2015.