LCF In The Park, the summer comedy event due to take place at Abbey Park on 14 June, has been cancelled after organisers said poor ticket sales left them unable to go ahead. Lou Sanders and Tom Rosenthal had been due to appear at the Leicester show, which was run as an off-shoot of Leicester Comedy Festival.

The cancellation matters now because customers have been contacted about refunds and the festival was meant to be one of Leicester’s summer comedy draws this month. Big Difference, which organises both events, said costs would be refunded within 10 working days, although booking fees would not be returned.

The decision lands just weeks after Big Difference said cashflow problems were behind hundreds of performers still being owed money for their Leicester Comedy Festival appearances. That earlier disclosure has made the new cancellation feel less like a single weak-ticket night and more like a warning sign about how stretched the organisation has become.

Michael Harris-Wakelam said the group remained committed to paying comedians, but that it was still waiting on money itself and speaking to banks about bridging loans to speed up payments. He said organisers were prioritising artists now, even if that came at the expense of some other planned activities, a blunt admission that makes the funding gap impossible to ignore.

LCF In The Park was one of the summer extensions of Leicester Comedy Festival and had been expected to give Abbey Park another packed day of live comedy. Instead, the focus has shifted to whether Big Difference can pay down what it owes and whether it can bring a summer event back to Leicester next year, as it hopes to do.

For Lou Sanders, the cancellation means a billed appearance disappears before the audience ever arrives. For Big Difference, the next test is whether refunds go out on time and whether the bridging finance it is seeking comes through fast enough to settle the money still owed to artists and venues.