How much The 1975 'got paid' for Glastonbury as they spend 'four times the amount of fee' on set
The 1975 are lighting up the Pyramid Stage tonight (27 June) for their first ever headline performance at Glastonbury.
It's a bucket list moment for the pop rock band, who hail from Manchester, as frontman Matty Healy previously said the honour would be one of the highlights of his career.
"If I ever am headlining Glastonbury, then everyone’s going to have to be on guard for a year, so that I don’t completely lose my mind," the singer-songwriter, 36, said previously.
Given that statement, fans are expecting big things from The 1975 as they take to the stage on Friday night - and according to reports, the chart toppers have spent a fortune to ensure they impress.
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Festivalgoers will see the group - which is made up of Healy, Adam Hann, Ross MacDonald and George Daniel - perform with a 'specially designed set' to celebrate bagging a headline slot at Worthy Farm.
That's according to The Telegraph, anyway, who reported that there is also a rumour circulating which suggests The 1975 have splashed 'four times their actual fee' on the production of the landmark gig.
Which begs the question - how much are the BRIT Award-winning band getting paid for rocking people's socks off on the Pyramid Stage?
Although the exact details of the financial agreement between Glastonbury and The 1975 hasn't been disclosed, we can hazard a decent guess at how much the gig is going to earn them.
Glasto relies heavily on the generosity of artists rather than enticing them to perform with big bucks, as the youngest daughter of the festival's founder and organiser Michael Evis previously explained.
Emily Eavis, who grew up on the vast site in Somerset, said in a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 6: "We're not in the same bracket as everyone else when it comes to paying artists massive fees.
"We're really grateful for the bands that we get, because they're basically doing it for the love of it.
"It's probably less than 10 per cent of what they'd get from playing any of the other major British festivals, [so] Glastonbury relies completely on goodwill."
Even the organisers of rival festivals agree, as Bestival boss Rob Da Bank previously described Glastonbury as 'the one show that artists will play for free or for a reduced price.'
A large portion of the profits made by Glastonbury go to charitable causes, with the aim being to donate at least £2million to organisations such as Greenpeace, WaterAid and Oxfam each year.
Sir Rod Stewart, who headlined the Pyramid Stage in 2002, has given music lovers an idea of what kind of money artists receive for signing up to a Glasto set.
He is set to return to the festival on Sunday (29 June) for the Legend's slot and he told the Radio Times that the gig is going to leave him out of pocket.
As he's currently living in Las Vegas amid his residency at Caesars Palace, the music icon explained that he's had to cart his equipment and his crew back to the UK on his dime.
"It's going to cost me £300,000 to do it and they only pay you about 120,000 quid," Stewart said. "So it's going to cost me," before he added that the financial burden 'doesn't matter' to him due to the honour of playing Glasto.
Glastonbury tends to keep the amount that musicians are paid tightly under wraps, however, its founder Michael Evis previously revealed how much he'd stumped up to secure two huge headliners.
"I paid £200,000 for Paul McCartney and for Coldplay, and although it sounds a lot, they could have charged me far more," Eavis said previously, as per the BBC.
So, it's safe to assume that The 1975 are being paid at least that amount for tonight's show - which means they might have spent upwards of £800,000 to ensure it's a headline performance to remember.
Brits who didn't get their hand on a ticket to be there in the flesh can tune into BBC One or BBC iPlayer to catch the band's highly anticipated performance from 10.30pm tonight.
Topics: Celebrity, Festivals, Glastonbury, Matty Healy, Music, UK News, Money
Olivia Burke