Loughborough Students’ Union summer ball 2025 has been axed due to low ticket sales. The Union released a statement on the 5th of June detailing that less than 400 tickets had been sold, much lower than the necessary 1600 to keep the event alive.
The Label understands that by the same date last year, the Union had already sold over 1000 tickets; questions have been raised concerning why this year has been such a failure. The summer ball was rebranded as ‘Summer Fest 2025’, which may have contributed to a confusion amongst students.
Many students were planning to buy tickets at the last minute, however, due to the large planning involved with an event of this size, the Union could not feasibly go ahead without guaranteed attendees. With such low engagement, the Union recognised the event was unlikely to break even financially. Dan, the director of social enterprise, stated, ‘Continuing with low numbers would have meant delivering something underwhelming, and that’s not what our students expect or deserve, nor does it align with our strategy of offering an unrivalled student experience.’ Ironically, this unrivalled experience has now become one of not having a summer ball at all.
Last year’s summer ball was themed ‘Mount Olympus’ and was considered a success by the Union, with their Instagram page labelling the evening as ‘unforgettable’. Perhaps the success of last year’s event was due to the event’s entertainment lineup. S1mba, a British singer and rapper who currently boasts 1.9M monthly listeners on Spotify, was the star performer. This year, however, the line-up consisted of tribute acts: Sweet & Sour, a Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo tribute, and Pitbull UK.
This year’s summer ball was set to begin earlier in the evening compared to previous years, with a start time of 6pm. Summer Fest 2025 was promoted as “The ultimate day-to-night party with unforgettable entertainment and full summer vibes”. However, this was not enough to encourage more ticket sales.
Within 30 minutes of the cancellation, the feedback form received more than 80 respondents. This shows that students hold strong opinions surrounding the summer ball and why it failed. So, the Union must now read these responses, head back to the drawing board, and hopefully come to a conclusion as to what must be done to prevent this failure from reoccurring next year.
