Coachella in legal row with tiny Welsh festival over its name
Steps band member Ian H Watkins expressed astonishment after his modest Welsh event, Cowchella in Cowbridge, was compelled to alter its name due to pressure from the behemoth California based music festival Coachella.
The local festival's social media presence vanished and its Eventbrite ticket page lost its original moniker following a dispute that Watkins told the PA news agency originated from Coachella Ltd, the company behind the huge American music festival. By Sunday the event had re-emerged under the new banner of Moo-La-La Festival which will be hosted by Watkins alongside actress Claire Sweeney and BBC Radio 2 presenter Owain Wyn Evans.
In a new update the original Cowchella festival announced its "fab new name" assuring that tickets already purchased would be honoured for the debut gathering set for August.
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Watkins said he was initially shocked when he received notice of the warning from Coachella, believing their social media accounts had been hacked before encountering an "official complaint from Coachella".
Watkins was philosophical about it, seeing the complaint as a flattering acknowledgment of Cowchella's potential. He said: "I'm taking it as a massive compliment that they feel like our little festival is a little bit of a threat to their ginormous, juggernaut of a machine."
But he said he couldn't believe they received the complaint in the first place. "It's a little bit mindblowing...what we're doing is very, very different to what they do.
"We don't have Beyoncé performing. We have a Steps tribute act... and also, they don't have myself, Claire Sweeney and Owain Wyn Evans, hosting, which in my book, is much better than Beyoncé."
He expressed his delight that the event has become a "talking point" and that people "love that Coachella has put Cowbridge on the map" while also admitting that "luckily, it wasn't like, the week before because that would be the disaster".
Watkins conceded that the thousands of pounds spent on "marketing costs, posters and banners" will be "a financial impact that we have to absorb".
"We've spent a lot of money on marketing and flyers and posters and banners that are all visible around the town. So yes, those will have to go in the bin... but let's just do that, rather than have any more people knocking on our door."
Many festivals adopt similar names including the Welsh event GlastonBarry, which is a play on Glastonbury in Somerset, and hasn't faced the same issues.
The Cowbridge festival, which Watkins said would feature "the number one tribute acts in the country", will continue as planned on Saturday, August 2 at Bear Field.
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