Brixton Crush

[Suprefan]

42 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

"They met as much demand as possible with 3 gigs at a fairly large venue." They initially booked one night then added 2 more due to demand, they clearly underestimated it, I'm pretty sure, with hindsight they wished they had moved up to a bigger venue, even if it meant moving the date.

"How is that fair to the fan when that happens?", it's a fact of gigging life, it's happened to me on occasion, yes it's nice to see acts in a small venue but if demand is there it makes financial sense to move the gig, it also happens to make sense from a security point of view as we have seen, I don't know Brixton, but if it is the case that they have had issues in the past, that is even more reason to move the gig.

You understand the promoter likely had those dates open to add shows? Are you ever shocked when somebody adds more dates to a tour due to demand? So what was Taylor Swift supposed to do for example? Just do a residency  for a month on the Pyramid Field cause 100,000 can just watch her without issue? Is that how you meet demand? You can tell when a promoter had to squeeze an extra date out of an artist. The Weeknd just had that happen. The first 2 London  Stadium gigs were sold out and the third at Wembley is in August, 2 months later than the others. That wasnt in their plans for sure. But hey "thats gig life i guess". Ffs Peter Kay easily had those 3 years  worth of dates all planned out and kept rolling them out when the time came. Was Peter supposed to just perform at Wembley 1000 times according to your amazing logic?

[gizmoman]

9 minutes ago, Suprefan said:

You understand the promoter likely had those dates open to add shows? Are you ever shocked when somebody adds more dates to a tour due to demand? So what was Taylor Swift supposed to do for example? Just do a residency  for a month on the Pyramid Field cause 100,000 can just watch her without issue? Is that how you meet demand? You can tell when a promoter had to squeeze an extra date out of an artist. The Weeknd just had that happen. The first 2 London  Stadium gigs were sold out and the third at Wembley is in August, 2 months later than the others. That wasnt in their plans for sure. But hey "thats gig life i guess". Ffs Peter Kay easily had those 3 years  worth of dates all planned out and kept rolling them out when the time came. Was Peter supposed to just perform at Wembley 1000 times according to your amazing logic?

"You understand the promoter likely had those dates open to add shows?" In which case he wasn't caught by surprise but chose to book his act into a smaller venue for the gigs when he could have booked a larger one. You then go on to make points regarding arena and stadium gigs, which have much better access with multiple entry points which spread out any crowds, this is my point, a popular act has less risk of crowd problems at a larger venue as they are better managed. Anyway I'm sure there will be a detailed report at this at some point so we will see if they thought this was an issue.

[roughbloke]

Reading a lot about what’s happened and ultimately it’s very tragic and sad.

I think there will be a lot of speculation until the official verdict is given. I do feel that it is incredibly hard to blame the venue for this unfortunate tragedy.

There have been countless shows at that venue, long runs by artists (LCD doing 6 dates, Fred again doing 3 the week before), the XX doing 8 etc) and each of these were fine. 
 

The venue had managed 2 previous dates from the artist and they went through fine. I really don’t know what they could have done if 3000 people arrived unannounced and tried to get in. If they had found their way in: then there would have been a horrendous situation in the auditorium. 
 

I hope that the venue is allowed to reopen after a review. I’ve never felt unsafe or been part of any crush there. 

 

[roughbloke]

22 hours ago, stuie said:

That depends what was going on inside the pub and what measures the pub had put in place to cope with the situation they’d created. 

Surely if you ran 2 quiz nights at the pub without issue, your thoughts towards the 3rd and final night wouldn’t be ‘better prepare for 3000 people over capacity coming in’

[Newjem]

2 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

"You understand the promoter likely had those dates open to add shows?" In which case he wasn't caught by surprise but chose to book his act into a smaller venue for the gigs when he could have booked a larger one. You then go on to make points regarding arena and stadium gigs, which have much better access with multiple entry points which spread out any crowds, this is my point, a popular act has less risk of crowd problems at a larger venue as they are better managed. Anyway I'm sure there will be a detailed report at this at some point so we will see if they thought this was an issue.

Artists can do whatever venues they want. If the number of tickets sold does not exceed the capacity of the venue, then it shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't entitle people to force their way inside the venue just because they fail to get tickets or are still queuing outside when the act is about to start. Hundreds or even thousands of sold out shows took place at Brixton Academy without a problem, some of them were way more popular acts than Asake. So don't tell us that slow security or lack of entry points are the reason why 2 people died...

[stuie]

39 minutes ago, roughbloke said:

Surely if you ran 2 quiz nights at the pub without issue, your thoughts towards the 3rd and final night wouldn’t be ‘better prepare for 3000 people over capacity coming in’

In that case, I think an investigation would be needed to establish the facts. 

[gizmoman]

3 hours ago, Newjem said:

Artists can do whatever venues they want. If the number of tickets sold does not exceed the capacity of the venue, then it shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't entitle people to force their way inside the venue just because they fail to get tickets or are still queuing outside when the act is about to start. Hundreds or even thousands of sold out shows took place at Brixton Academy without a problem, some of them were way more popular acts than Asake. So don't tell us that slow security or lack of entry points are the reason why 2 people died...

I think you misunderstand my point, I haven't put forward any particular reason for the deaths, there could be a number of factors at play, an investigation will be done and lessons learned, just because an artist is free to play a venue (and I agree with you on that point) doesn't mean it is wise to do so, as an example, if Oasis decided to reform to play a one off date would it be wise to play Brixton academy? I would say no, unless they had a massive security team to deal with the inevitable crowds that would be attracted, this is my point, the reaction to the gig was underestimated and more people were on the scene than there should have been, the investigation will no doubt find out why.

"Hundreds or even thousands of sold out shows took place at Brixton Academy without a problem" true, just as thousands of football matches have passed without incident, but those at Ibrox, Bradford and Hillsborough resulted in hundreds of deaths, we have to look at and learn from the ones that go wrong and try to prevent similar tragedies in the future, whoever is to blame.

[DeanoL]

I'm not sure the Oasis example tracks though. I don't think 1000s of people would turn up without a ticket. Because I think people who go to gigs regularly know that your chances of sneaking into a modern gig like that are tiny.

I do wonder if its a cultural thing so far as the fanbase of this act didn't know that.

And that's why it caught the venue by surprise as this literally never happens anymore. Until now.

[august1]

I used to work at an arena and for massive acts there could be roaming gangs outside looking to get in, Kings of Leon at their height of their fame there was 100's.

They had planned to rush the fire door and had someone on the inside to bump it open.

Every door had to have 2 people guarding it and management would basically put a paper wristband on the 2 joining door handles which would break if opened and easily come off in an emergency to show each door hadnt been breached.

[gfa]

18 hours ago, gizmoman said:

One lesson to be learned from this is surely that venues should be booking acts that are a relevant size, the fact this act could play 3 nights suggests they should really have been playing a bigger venue, an arena maybe. This has relevance to Glastonbury in the way big acts are sometimes booked into inappropriate sized venues, this is a guaranteed way of creating potential crowd problems. Promoters are usually pretty good in gauging demand and booking the right sized venue, looks like they slipped up here.

If it was a 500 capacity venue i think this argument stands up a bit more. Brixton is 5k, they should be ready for anything really.

As others have said, acts do small shows all the time think that Arcade Fire show at Koko for example - huge band in a small venue, no issues.

[briddj]

One thing I will say about Brixton Academy, and this is really unrelated to what happened this month.

The stalls standing area has without doubt been more crowded for some gigs post-COVID since the almost universal switch to mobile tickets. Not so easy to check tickets that way.

I went to one gig there at the end of last year and the check on tickets at the doors to the stalls ... well they might as well not have bothered. I accidentally showed my COVID pass (rather than my ticket), which I noticed after I got through the doors into the stalls. I've never known the stalls area as packed as it was that night.

I also know that people with upstairs tickets have been getting screengrabs of stalls tickets once inside, so they can just show on their phone that to get access downstairs. Not sure how widespread that is, but I know it's happened.

The first one you can solve by security actually doing the proper checks (in fairness when I was there earlier this month they DID have someone properly checking), the second is really down to the behaviour of people if you are sticking to mobile tickets.

[gfa]

38 minutes ago, briddj said:

One thing I will say about Brixton Academy, and this is really unrelated to what happened this month.

The stalls standing area has without doubt been more crowded for some gigs post-COVID since the almost universal switch to mobile tickets. Not so easy to check tickets that way.

I went to one gig there at the end of last year and the check on tickets at the doors to the stalls ... well they might as well not have bothered. I accidentally showed my COVID pass (rather than my ticket), which I noticed after I got through the doors into the stalls. I've never known the stalls area as packed as it was that night.

I also know that people with upstairs tickets have been getting screengrabs of stalls tickets once inside, so they can just show on their phone that to get access downstairs. Not sure how widespread that is, but I know it's happened.

The first one you can solve by security actually doing the proper checks (in fairness when I was there earlier this month they DID have someone properly checking), the second is really down to the behaviour of people if you are sticking to mobile tickets.

Good point made about people sneaking into the downstairs, so many people do it and its so easy to do as well. Mobile tickets are fine but they just need to do it properly

Not sure how they could enforce the downstairs with the current policy of allowing people to re-enter, i think they should just make it no re-entry to the downstairs section - once your in, your in.

[MEGABOWL]

23 hours ago, Suprefan said:

If the discussion is now about who had tickets and didnt outside then you need to look up the videos from inside that were taken when the gig started. I saw the one where Asake said it was over and it looked pretty much full to me. As mentioned if they check the scanning history and see how many were in then you can do the math on potentially how many were outside. But yeah, people died and apparently thats fine with some of you.

 

And now other venues around the city can take steps to not have this happen since its not a busy time of the year currently and have a minute before its back to normal In a couple weeks.

Where did anybody say this? 

[MEGABOWL]

3 hours ago, gfa said:

Good point made about people sneaking into the downstairs, so many people do it and its so easy to do as well. Mobile tickets are fine but they just need to do it properly

Not sure how they could enforce the downstairs with the current policy of allowing people to re-enter, i think they should just make it no re-entry to the downstairs section - once your in, your in.

The Hydro in Glasgow have a staff member put a wristband on when you enter with a Standing ticket. Probably not foolproof but at least effective to some degree, cheap and easy.

Edited December 24, 2022 by MEGABOWL

[TheGoodWillOut]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64085170

[briddj]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/23/when-tickets-see-asake-cancelled-didnt-realise-how-lucky/

[gfa]

1 hour ago, briddj said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/23/when-tickets-see-asake-cancelled-didnt-realise-how-lucky/

... and here we had people blaming solely the crowd

"Ayo remembers a group of around four people arriving at some point and watched as they jumped over the barriers, called out for a particular security guard and exchanged pleasantries, before being let in. The sight encouraged everyone else to stay in the hope they too would be let in."

[Dales]

Just saw on the news that the academy will be closed for a further 3 months. That's a lot of gigs to reschedule. I think a few of the early January ones got moved to the Hammersmith Apollo. Hoping Suede and Viagra Boys don't get moved there as its a pain for me to get to.

Hopefully, the council and who ever is investigating will was use the time wisely and make some recommendations for the future to ensure it does not happen again.

[tigger123]

12 minutes ago, Dales said:

Just saw on the news that the academy will be closed for a further 3 months. That's a lot of gigs to reschedule. I think a few of the early January ones got moved to the Hammersmith Apollo. Hoping Suede and Viagra Boys don't get moved there as its a pain for me to get to.

Hopefully, the council and who ever is investigating will was use the time wisely and make some recommendations for the future to ensure it does not happen again.

Can’t say I’m surprised to be honest, a shame as I have tickets for a gig there that will now be moved/cancelled.

Sadly given what’s happened to venues in London over the last few years, I’m expecting it to never reopen which would be an awful shame as have had some of the best nights of my life in that place. Really hoping I’m wrong but councils don’t seem to give a shit these days, they’d much rather some new unaffordable flats 

[Neil]

On 12/23/2022 at 9:15 AM, Jose Pose said:

There is book called black box thinking which a few people on here might benefit from reading.

if they made  the whole plane out of the same stuff as the black box, no onwould die in plane crashes. 😛 

[a6l6e6x]

Damn was thinking of going to dimension tomorrow 

[zahidf]

Ah thats a pissser. That's quite a few gigs for me effected: father John misty, king gizzard and big thief

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Leyrulion]

3 hours ago, Dales said:

Just saw on the news that the academy will be closed for a further 3 months. That's a lot of gigs to reschedule. I think a few of the early January ones got moved to the Hammersmith Apollo. Hoping Suede and Viagra Boys don't get moved there as its a pain for me to get to.

Hopefully, the council and who ever is investigating will was use the time wisely and make some recommendations for the future to ensure it does not happen again.

 

2 hours ago, tigger123 said:

Can’t say I’m surprised to be honest, a shame as I have tickets for a gig there that will now be moved/cancelled.

Sadly given what’s happened to venues in London over the last few years, I’m expecting it to never reopen which would be an awful shame as have had some of the best nights of my life in that place. Really hoping I’m wrong but councils don’t seem to give a shit these days, they’d much rather some new unaffordable flats 

The statement from the police is actually positive. 

The force said it would "allow time to work with the venue to facilitate a safe reopening"

So they're conceding that it can reopen, just in a safe way that they work with the venue on. 

[Dales]

1 hour ago, Leyrulion said:

The statement from the police is actually positive. 

The force said it would "allow time to work with the venue to facilitate a safe reopening"

So they're conceding that it can reopen, just in a safe way that they work with the venue on. 

That would be good news and hopefully they can come up with some sort of improvements that make it safer.

[Ayrshire Chris]

I’m not familiar with the layout and location of this venue but I’ve been to events where a police/steward line check that only those with valid tickets are allowed within at least 100 metres of the venue. That usually  dissuades ticketless fans from attempting to get near the main doors. Is that possible here?