In 2020 there were over 240,000 attenders for Cheltenham festival. The town has a population of about 100,000. Each day there were about 60,000 people at the track.
People say the festival is outside so it's lower risk. That's ignoring the fact that people take trains to get here and they take buses to get from the town centre to the race track. They also meet in cafés, pubs and betting shops, although this year that was far quieter than previous years.
It's not worth the risk. The organising committee has ruled out the event happening this year because of Covid and the risk of creating a super-spreader event.
A couple of friends of mine were planning on going to Bloc on the Saturday night. They didn't even get near the venue, and I was online immediately trying to piece together the story of what happened. Some reactions from people on Facebook: http://twitpic.com/a4pei0/full
Another nail in the coffin for British festivals. Sad.
> While I won't deny the sensationalist nature of the coverage (it is the British press after all), I do think it's still generally fair.
It's not, it's a consequence of the politization of the event. The conservative press is directly hostile because of the openly liberal stance the festival takes. The coverage in e.g. The Guardian [1] is substantially different.
I've been there this year, the event is incredible - it's very impressive to see how well everything works and how well people from very different backgrounds, with different tastes, different ages etc. just get along and have fun. The quality of the acts and organization is very very high.
While the garbage photos are true, there are more than 200K people there for 5 days, then they all leave at once! It has nothing to do with drugs, imagine a city emptying out all at once.
While events like these are likely good for the local economy (though I think that's in dispute), I can understand the frustration with the level of disruption. Locally they had the 'Newcastle Street Circuit' [0] and visiting my friends living nearby was a bit of a nightmare for a few weeks either side of the event
As another (still living here) Brit, I was reasonably cynical too. I had tickets for two events, and was expecting the type of fiasco you get when attending Glastonbury or other large events - massive queues, disorganisation, bad facilities etc.
I have to say I was wrong on every count. Every detail was thought of, the facilities were excellent and, as the article says, the "Games Makers" really were outstanding. Helpful, friendly, and enthusiastic. The soldiers filling in as security were equally so.
The project management of these games has been excellent. The only real let-down was the whole ticket buying experience.
> why do you have to wait in traffic to get to it?
Because someone's closed a bunch of roads :)
Seriously though: You can sell tickets at the starting and finishing lines, or by putting a loop in the course and sending the riders past the spectators 10 times.
But for the rest of the course, the riders will shoot past in a few seconds.
You can't sell a 'party atmosphere' or pad the entertainment out with dancers and marching bands and food trucks because the spectators are spread out over the entire course.
And even if you decided to charge for tickets despite that - the course isn't fenced off, so people without tickets can just walk in. And if you added fences and bouncers checking tickets, you'd need loads of them because the course is far too long to funnel everyone through a single entrance like a music festival does. And even if the fences and bouncers somehow made economic sense, you've gone from blocking a section of road for an hour as the race goes past to blocking it for a day or two as the fences get built.
"... those who met with the organisers of the Fyre Festival shared that the timeframe was far too short for such an ambitious event ... organisers were again advised to reschedule the event to avoid competing with the famous 60 and more-year-old George Town regatta ... this Regatta is the highlight of the George Town social calendar. All hotel rooms, transportation, taxis and majority of the rental houses are booked years in advance for this week. Clearly, this would pose a logistical nightmare and preclude any additional tourists or locals from attending such an event as Fyre Festival."
For people unable to get to the link: they cancelled due to concerns about the coronavirus and plan to continue next year. Seems like sound reasoning given the amount of attendees they want/expect from regions currently dealing with the outbreak.
> “Nah, it’s just weird, maybe… But I look forward to when me and the family can go to a King Willie parade and enjoy ourselves and the music, you know, like we do in Armagh on St Patrick’s Day. Is that crazy?”
Still largely can't do this, even in 2022, without the rather serious risk of severe injury or worse.
WTF? People just leave their shit on the ground leaving a festival?!
What you mean is "too many brits just don't care".
It's definetely NOT like this in the US. Yes, some thoughtless people do leave some shit behind, but nothing like 100K tents.
I've been to my share of festivals, what I mostly see left on the ground is small trash (equally unacceptable, but on a much smaller scale than this is reporting).
I really don't think 3 days is enough time to organize a large scale event like that--more people signed up than the population of the village. I agree that it wasn't handled correctly, but it's easy to criticize in hindsight. This is a new phenomenon and there was not much experience with things like this.
It seems that the authorities where too ambivalent. On the one hand they said please don't come there's no party, on the other hand they prepared a football field for people to go to (without music though). They should've stuck with the former and enforced it by not letting the trains stop in the village and putting up road blocks.
I had the same thought about Glastonbury, when they were talking about not running it a few years back, because it had got too unwieldy and a lot of the regular goers were complaining it had sold out and become too big.
As you suggest, if you could split the festival (and the crowds) in two and have one festival cover all the larger (Lady Gaga, Oasis, Rolling Stones...) or more mainstream/hyped acts along with the people who primarily aren't interested in the more obscure bands/experiences to be had away from the main stages, that would then leave the rest of the festival to the regulars who want to wonder around the green/healing fields and see all the lesser known (but often better/more interesting) bands.
I'm not sure how the logistics (or planning) would pan out given that i suspect the majority of money the festival forks out are for the bigger acts. But if they were to run these two festivals in consecutive weeks perhaps the economies of that would make it more viable.
Fortunately Glastonbury has managed to stay resolutely non-corporate, unlike most of the larger UK music festivals (V, Reading, Leeds etc.) and still manage to host a shedload of really good bands across the fame/size spectrum.
But maybe, in a similar fasion, if SXSW were to split and leave the corporate shilling to the mainstream crowd/event, maybe the other half of the festival could return to more how it was, discovering new music with people who care about new music and not having to queue for ages for the privilege?
> Cancelled are the Geneva Auto Show (600k+ guests), Basel Fasnacht (carnival), and many other popular events (concerts and sporting events) with more than 1000 people.
This ain't true based on few web checks, for now they decided to go on (although I believe they will cancel eventually as cases ramp up in following days). I wanted to go like every year since its in my backyard and it takes 20 min bus ride, but not under these conditions.
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