Previously it had been held at Temple Newsam in Leeds, before being replaced by Carling's Leeds Festival. In 1999 the Northern leg of the festival was moved to Weston Park in Staffordshire, and has remained there since. The northern leg of V97 was switched to Temple Newsam, Leeds to provide room for camping and three stages. So in August 1996 there was one day of artists in Victoria Park and two days at Hylands Park with camping. In the end Victoria Park was just too small for three stages and camping. Then came the idea of adding more bands to the bill, putting on a second stage and letting people camp for the weekend. Pulp's promoters got together and came up with the idea of putting the gig into Victoria Park Warrington and Hylands Park Chelmsford giving fans in both the North and South a chance to see the band. The idea for V came in 1996 when Pulp's front man Jarvis Cocker said that he would love to play two outdoor venues in two days. ITV returned to televising the V Festival upon its return in 2020, with coverage hosted by Joel Dommett and Maya Jama. It was then televised by MTV from 2014 to 2015, and the 2016 edition of the festival was televised by Channel 5. It was originally televised by Channel 4 from 1997 to 2013, predominantly on their sister channel 4Music, with the exception of the 2003 event with ITV in charge. The "V" represented the Virgin Group, with the event being sponsored by Virgin Media.
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However, on 5 August 2020, it was announced that the "V Festival" was to return to Hylands Park, without an audience (due to the COVID-19 pandemic), later that month. In 2018, a new festival called "Rize" was held in on the same weekend as the "V Festival" but only at Hylands Park. Richard Branson announced on 30 October 2017 that V Festival would be discontinued but that a new festival would replace it. In 2017, the final year of this format, the capacity of each site was 90,000. The sites were located at Hylands Park in Chelmsford and Weston Park in South Staffordshire.
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The event was held at two parks simultaneously which shared the same bill artists performed at one location on Saturday and then swapped on Sunday. V Festival, often referred to as V Fest or simply V, is an annual music festival held in the United Kingdom during the third weekend in August. For the North American or Australian spin-offs, see Virgin Festival or V Festival (Australia) respectively.