Salmon Festival: Grand Falls-Windsor severs ties with promoter

The Town of Grand Falls-Windsor has cut short a three-year contract with theconcert promoter that has brought major acts to Salmon Festival for the past several years, but with controversy and most recently hefty losses.

• Salmon Festival a financial flop, town reveals

Mayor Al Hawkins told CBC News that the town and SRO Entertainment settled "fairly easily" after council decided it wants Salmon Festival to head in the different direction.

"No hard feelings, we are just going our separate ways," Hawkins said.

It's going to be a challenge but we're optimistic.- Al Hawkins, Grand Falls-Windsor mayor

"It will give the town of Grand Falls-Windsor some other options, as well. Of course SRO will have their options as well because under the existing contract obviously they could not do any additional work in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. "

Hawkins said the town will not face any penalties for severing ties.

However, the push is on the town to find a new concert promoter that would invest its own money into the festival.

'Two hits in two years'

This summer's festival headlined by pop group Maroon 5 ran a deficit of $476,899.

• Smaller crowds but no problems at 2014 Salmon Festival

Hawkins saidit is important that the town has a profitable concert next summer.

"It's going to be a challenge but we're optimistic," Hawkins said, "We're in a position where we can't take two big hits two years in a row."

Hawkins will not go into the specific reasons why the town decided to severe its connection with SRO Entertainment.

He insists that it had nothing to do with the level of entertainment that the promoter brought.

"When you deal with any promoterthere will be differences somewhere down the line but overall when it came to the level of entertainmentwe had no issuesor problem with that."