SXSW Lays Off One-Third Of Staff

South by Southwest laid-off 50 -60 employees Monday, almost one third of its full-time staff, as the canceled conference faced losses in the tens of millions of dollars

“Due to the City of Austin’s unprecedented and unexpected cancellation of the SXSW 2020 events in March, SXSW has been rigorously reviewing our operations, and we are in the unimaginable position of reducing our workforce. Today we said goodbye to approximately one-third of our full-time staff. Those of us in the business of live events know the level of trust required to execute an event of SXSW’s scale, and we are deeply sad to let people go this soon. We are planning for the future and this was a necessary, but heartbreaking, step,” SXSW said in a statement.

On Sunday SXSW co-founder and CEO Roland Swenson, said that the festival had lost “tens of millions of dollars” due to the cancellation.

“We are planning to carry on and do another event in 2021, but how we’re going to do that I’m not entirely sure,” told the Wall Street Journal.