GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL - GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL BREAKS EVEN FOR FIRST TIME EVER

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL BREAKS EVEN FOR FIRST TIME EVER

The Glastonbury Festival has failed to make a profit for the first time since its inception.

Organiser Michael Eavis said the event's breaking even was down to spiralling management costs, as well as fuel prices.

"Glastonbury costs £22 million now. It's a huge cost," he told BBC 6Music.

"The infrastructure, the fencing, the roads, the water and the loos, the marquees, the management, the security and the police, it goes on and on so we do have to sell out in order to make it work."

He added: "We still made about a million pounds for the charities we work for, so we actually achieved a million but we didn’t make any beyond that. There's no money to reinvest or anything.

"Having said that, it's the first year in 39 years that we didn’t make anything out of it, so it's not bad really, is it?"

Critics of the 2008 festival, including Oasis' Noel Gallagher, attacked the Somerset event's lineup, with rapper Jay-Z headlining.

However, Eavis' legendary fixture on the musical calendar cleaned up at the UK Festival awards last week, winning best major festival, outstanding contribution and most memorable moment - for Jay-Z's tongue-in-cheek rendition of Oasis' Wonderwall.

And Eavis predicted Glastonbury heading back into the black in 2009.

"I'm very confident, with the bands that we've got next time, that we will sell out," he said.

Some 100,000 tickets for Glastonbury 2009 have already been sold.