Music festival reports $6.3m loss

The 2012 Big Love Chengdu Music Festival lost more than 40 million yuan ($6.3 million), and the festival's organizing committee has written IOUs to everyone whom it owes money, according to organizer Chen Xu.

Held in Chengdu, Sichuan province, from June 21 to 24 during Dragon Boat Festival, the music festival drew top-notch performers from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and aimed to become the No 1 festival in China.

However, on Monday morning a post at Sina Weibo disclosed that the festival organizing committee owed some 100 employees their wages. Because the organizer did not settle accounts in hotels or pay for air tickets, many performers could not leave Chengdu, musician Liu Wei said in the post.

Responding to Internet reports that he had fled with money earned from the festival, Chen told Sina, a major Internet portal, that the festival lost money because of poor ticket sales.

The festival's organizing committee owes its employees about 2 million yuan in wages.