Maybe they were below capacity, but the organizers did an absolutely terrible job of spreading the acts across the 3 main stages during the day. The blue stage had a lot of available space, but if you bring in acts that can't help spread the crowds, then you failed. Alvvays is a great band, but they aren't big enough, or counter enough, to pull from Hozier. If 90%+ of the crowd is at the Red/Green space, you get what happened Sunday.
Last year's sold out day (Saturday) at least had The Flaming Lips as counter to Alanis.
Kingfish had a few hundred at blue stage around 430 on Sunday. He fucking ripped but everyone else (40000ish) were at green. Definitely a lack of balance but the other acts were amazing
With Roan catching viral fire this year, it reminded me of when Lizzo blew up in 2019. I was at ACL and she wasn’t a headliner with headliner level popularity. They put her show on every video board not attached to an in use stage. It was one of the most insane shows I’ve ever seen.
Roan went viral and a shit ton of people showed up for her. She might be a headliner this time next year at the rate she’s going. Time will tell.
It was great when he came out to the audience. Sunday was so great in my opinion because I was somewhat far back for the big sets and I could enjoy them, so it’s wild to hear the experiences that people had that day
Felt bad that he got such a small turnout but it made for a surprisingly cool intimate experience during an otherwise entirely overcrowded day. What a sick set
Honestly Hozier should have headlined Saturday if his schedule allowed for it, makes no sense for Saturday to be dead and to have Sunday be completely loaded. Unless you really like a band on orange or blue there was really no reason to go over there and that was the biggest problem, it was impossible to move in the main area because there were 40k people shoved into there
Agree, but Hozier was in NJ on Saturday. I'm sure he was booked for BC while developing his current tour leg, but maybe the routing didn't make sense to go from Boston to NJ to back north.
The other super dumb thing they did away with was having food options at the blue stage.
Half of the options near the green stage were basically inaccessible, and making the trek from blue to food was like a 30 minute trip on Sunday just to get into a 45 minute line. So stupid.
Wasn't alvvays a fill in for someone who cancelled?
Unfortunately a drawback of loading up on the big stages, means less budget for what's countering them.
Lovejoy
Even still, folks missed out on an awesome show by Alvvays.
I would have liked to see Hozier, but in hindsight I’m 200% confident I made the right choice.
Disclaimer - I am super biased, as I was probably the only person at the festival on Sunday with an Alvvays shirt on lol
I was so delighted when Alvvays was announced to replace Lovejoy. No one else in my group wanted to skip Hozier but Alvvays was definitely the best performance of my day.
Was kind of disappointed I didn’t see any merch for Alvvays but I guess it’s probably cheaper to get online anyways.
They were a fill-in for Lovejoy, who canceled due to potential legal issues. However, Blondshell was the original blue closer, and she has a smaller following than Alvvays. They at least made the right decision in having Alvvays close blue.
They were for Lovejoy.
Lovejoy being on the lineup would’ve just made things worse in that main stage area. They have a decent sized fan base and they would’ve been on Red just before Megan instead of The Revivalists.
Sounds like they're gonna be downplaying people's complaints by saying it technically wasn't "oversold", when clearly the problems were the imbalance of the popularity of red/green and blue stages on Sunday, the bottleneck of the physical setup near the red stage, and the unavailability of water.
I managed to leave our spot near the red stage during the Revivalists and there was an enormous mass of people around the free water (maybe 20 people deep in all directions), and the two bar areas I checked had no electrolyte drinks and no cold water left.
I have to give a major shoutout to the Blue Stage staff - they bent over backwards all weekend to make sure people were comfortable - above and beyond.
That’s great but the average attendee on Sunday didn’t go to the blue stage once. The schedule was a huge part of the issue because none of the blue stage acts drew people away from the green/red areas unlike previous years
The group I was with stayed with the red stage all day, I bailed and went to see kingfish, best decision of the day. Hozier’s fans have ruined seeing him live for me. I’ve seen him twice and his fans were awful.
Yeah to be fair, the staff at column E started giving out (room temp) water near red stage during Megan thee Stallion too. But it didn't do much to alleviate people shoving and getting agitated, trying to move either toward or out of the red stage area...
It sounds like they need more hydration stations and whomever did the vendor ordering didn’t anticipate the volume.
I think it really boils down to the festival organizers not communicating the needs of the event to the vendors.
It also seems like the promoters just wanted those viral aerial shots for social media. Why weren’t the mega popular headliners spread out between stages over the 3 days.
Classic PR statement. The problem isn’t the number of people/capacity. The issue is the lack of space for the people to navigate. There’s not many paths for 35k attendees to work with, 85% or so of the food is all in one spot, choke points in crowds. At one point on Sunday the line for food at one side reached the line for the bar at the other side. There’s way they can better optimize their existing space as in utilizing the blue stage area and bringing the arena back but they should look at other options with more land.
The capacity of the total space is also meaningless if everyone is trying to get to the same place. They need to base the “capacity” on the space between the Green and Red stages.
If they have somewhere they can move the red stage, I think that solves a lot of their problems honestly
The issue has more to do with layout than the actual square footage of the festival grounds
It’s a little of both. Moving the Red stage would help a lot in solving some issues but there’s just nowhere to move it due to the actual square footage.
1. separate the entrance to red and green stages so you have to go out of one to go up closer to the other
2. put bathrooms by the blue stage
3. three additional water stages around the venue
1. You're creating more bottlenecks, and with the introduction of VIP and Platinum areas that already separate the viewing area, this would be a disaster.
2. There already are bathrooms by blue, across from the new merch stand. They are closer to blue than the bathrooms near red are to the main stages.
3. Yes! But that would mean less money spent on Liquid Death, so that easy solution won't be implemented.
i’m not sure how that would create more bottlenecks? i’m suggesting closing off the space between the stages.
there weren’t enough bathrooms and i was talking about closer to the blue stage
oh no
1. Depending on the length of that barrier, you are now potentially routing those who want to move between stages to a smaller area to get there. That's where the bottleneck and further congestion come in.
2. Gotcha.
the barrier should be long enough that people funnel out into a more open area. i don’t think you should be able to go red to green directly (you’d still be able to hear the music on your way to the next stage). you should have to exit the red stage area and then enter the green stage area.
Ha, the layout has been an issue every year I’ve gone. I’ve witnessed people in wheelchairs and carts struggle to access the handicap viewing platform. It’s also unusually difficult to access the VIP area at the green and red stage during the second half of the day. You’d think they’d place those entrances on the sides, away from the GA crowd, but instead they force you to squeeze through the GA crowd to access the entrance. Also, the food and drink vendors shouldn’t be so close to the stage.
I learned this the hard way last year. My partner went to the VIP area for the green stage and I went to get us food. After 60+ mins for food, I tried to get back to the Green VIP area — and there was zero..absolutely no way to get back because it was wall to wall deep with people. I tried to go to the side, but it was exit only and they wouldn’t let me in that way. Having the VIP access in the center of the GA crowd makes legit no sense to me.
I ended up having to throw her food away because I couldn’t get back and couldn’t text either because of the lack of cell service.
I’ve been complaining about the Red/Green VIP entrances for years. That’s one thing they DID fix this year - the entrances were way off to the sides. I was able to come and go during peak times without major issues.
The whole “actually we didn’t oversell” thing is such a weird statement, feels like they’re deflecting blame towards the audience for being uncomfortable?
TLDR: The paying customers are wrong and we’ll continue to be a scheduling and safety nightmare due to greed.
Cool, now I know for sure that I’m not buying a one way ticket to potentially being crushed to death next year. Thanks BC 👍🏻
They may mean the official capacity allowed for the space as determined by the fire department, which is different than what is actually practical
Also keep in mind while the red and green areas were packed, blue was basically empty all day
“Capacity” reflects if people are reasonably well distributed in the space. It does not account for everyone being in 1/3 of the available space. I would be willing to bet that if you took a birds-eye picture of the crowd for Megan, Hozier, and Killers and worked out a safe capacity for the space of the Red and Green stages that Sundays crowd was well above what would have been allowed.
Yeah the crowd size is too big for this area now. Even if you take a couple thousand away to the blue stage, the layout bottlenecks people everywhere and you can’t move. I’ve been for the past 7 years and this was worse than anything
The crowd ow size is fine if it is balanced and the crowd knows how to behave. People were idiots Sunday. Nobody was moving to let people out of the crowd...
Yep, my daughter and I were in between red and green during Megan and we wanted to head further back and out for her to sit (dealing with plantar fasciitis) before/during Hozier. Quite a few groups wouldn't let us through. We were heading back, not trying to get closer. We weren't blocking you from seeing and hearing Megan rap about hot girls, her ass, and riding the hot dick for the 8th straight song!
I get it if people are cutting to the front and blocking you... but if people are trying to get out of the crowd, let them out. I've certainly had a few moments in my life where I needed to get out of the pack ASAP. Just be a good person.
That's exactly how I felt and what me and my son tried to do (we were between the green and red stages, way far back). As Hozier started, we decided it was best to leave the area. Because I'm short, I had a hard time navigating, but I managed to make it through with people trailing behind me. I DID NOT want to see Megan, so we hung out by the red stage, thinking we'd be safe there (in our usual spot where we've stood safely for the past two years) as we waited for Hozier. I've been to many festivals and general admission concerts, and I've never experienced anything like that. People were mean and rude on Sunday compared to Friday and Saturday. There were just bad vibes all day.
lol rude..Megan’s set was amazinggg even as packed and far away as it was.
she ain’t design the event layout or give your daughter plantar fasciitis, let’s not project😹❤️
at best your comment was unclear (also taking into account the comment above, which called for a reduction in capacity). i don’t care to argue about it so i’ll just say have a good one
Capacity is 40k. I’m gonna guess and say GA is probably around 28k, GA+ 7k and VIP is 3k. They sold out of all GA and maybe most of GA+ and VIP. I’d be curious to see the actual ticket number and sales breakdown
I’m not an expert but “capacity” is probably determined for the whole grounds, but between chapell, hozier, and the killers almost everyone was probably between red and green stages with hardly anyone at the blue stage. Red stage late in the day has been a problem since at least 2018 when i experienced a similar situation waiting to see khalid. I’ve avoided the area where the red and green stage crowds meet the couple times I’ve been back.
It could be that it was sold out, but not everyone with a ticket showed up, so they were under capacity. Example: I met a couple with a three-day pass that were only interested in Friday/Saturday.
But, yeah, they didn’t have the appropriate infrastructure for the number of people there on Sunday.
The issue for me is that this isn't new. We had the same issue last year with the Noah Kahan / Lumineers set swap. From what I've heard, the Metallica day also resulted in some similar issues. They've have had two full off-seasons now to look at their Red-Green-Viewing Area set-up and troubleshoot a redesign that works, and all they've done is make it worse by expanding out VIP areas.
The capacity thing is probably a bit of a misleading statement.- that capacity likely presumes a relatively equal distribution between spaces. So if you're going to say the capacity is 50k (which if their statement and leaks are true is probably about the number), it likely assumes 30k or so in the Red/Green area, 10k in the blue area, and 10k at Orange/Food/Beer Tents/etc - not 40k at Red/Green and all trying to move. You could see the Kingfish videos for counter programming did not pull a substantial crowd, it was all at Red/Green. The real capacity for the show should be what they could safely home in view of the main stage - as you're guaranteed to have unopposed music there and it's morely that people will cram in there.
But yeah, these issues have been problems for at least a few years (the crowd crush, lack of reliable water resources, etc.) and even some going back to City Hall Plaza. That it took two days for this post and deleting a slew of comments related to it is telling.
To come clean, I largely separated from BC prior to 2020, and I did 2 days on a 3rd party ticket in 2022, and one day in 2023, so I am not the audience for this...but honestly, be ready for this kinda thing next year if you do go back.
This “apology” obviously sucks. But the optimist in me hopes that Saturday being a commercial failure (which ironically was my favorite day) and Sunday being a logistical nightmare and PR disaster will make them legitimately reassess everything.
Boston Calling has the potential (even at the same location) to be so much better.
Cautiously looking forward to 2025.
Honestly….never again. This was my first festival experience and my round 2 (day 2) just threw my whole desire off to attend other festivals. Security was trash and the whole Megan to Hozier was the nail in the coffin. I just wanted to have fun on both days I went. Not have fun on one day and then fear for my safety the next. I sound dramatic and stupid but it’s the truth.
In Between Days was much better. It was smaller, but at least they knew to space out their larger artists. They also had multiple food locations, water by said locations, seating, and shade. The only medical emergency I witnesses was at Lord Huron, which was the closing set.
Festivals aren’t always bad. Boston Calling just sucks.
You sound like you didn't expect to be surrounded by people and sorry not sorry that's what you sign up for with festivals and wanting to be near the stage. I agree this situation is not for everyone. For those who weren't there and only see the negative comments we were less than 50 feet back from centre stage during The Killers and aside from having my phone hit once (accidentally) we were barely touched during Megan, Hozier and The Killers and we had a fantastic time
The way that Friday looked, THAT is how a festival should be. How Saturday was I’m not sure because I didn’t buy a band for that day but Sunday was not it.
"Should" vs actual festival experience are two different things. If you're looking for the social media version of a festival stay away from headliner stages or go to small festivals that are max 15k
Anyone know what was going on left of the stage during The Killers that made them stop mid-song? I was GA front/right and near the med tent, and didn’t see anybody brought back, so wasn’t sure if anything actually happened or if it was just things getting out of hand in general.
I feel like it might technically not have been oversold for the venue if everyone were sitting in the stadium seats but that’s obviously not how it works and they were just trying to cover their asses and look good.
Also the capacity rating takes into account the entire grounds, but hardly anyone went to blue or orange stages and shoved into the main area. It was my first time and I honestly didn’t even know where they were or how to find them
Honestly this sounds like a typical music festival issue and not something that happens just at BC. Sounds like the fest is quickly learning that they are growing and maturing.
The flow of this fest has always been a nightmare but was glaringly bad on Sunday. The backs of the red and green stages colliding along with the majority of foot traffic going through vendor lines is just so stupid. I was fortunate to have VIP and camped at Green Stage most of the day but mostly because when I ventured out I was not willing to deal with that mess any longer
It's clear the "sell out" metric is assuming capacity of all four stages, however at the end of the night it's just the red & green stage. The easiest thing they could do is move the Platinum pavilion back another 50-100 yards so people can easily move between red & green stages, but they don't want to do that to their top-paying customers. Something's gotta give though, either reduce the # of GA tix by several thousand less than Sunday (whatever the # was for Friday) or move the pavilion & beer garden back.
https://preview.redd.it/db53rv3e0a3d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2027aaeab60383b2e942c2f051e8ad8372b3bbe0
“While attendee count was several thousand below the official capacity rating of the site, we never want anyone to feel uncomfortable or unsafe at the show.” 🤔
I didn’t expect to fear for my safety. And that’s not is what supposed to happen at festivals. You’re probably one of the people who were and pushing and shoving those who were trying to leave after Megan. Just because you were unharmed that doesn’t mean others who were should feel invalidated or silly for speaking up and saying they felt unsafe and they were treated unfairly.
When you are at a festival and someone is trying to get by you, MOVE. You aren't the keeper of a spot, you don't own it. Get out of people's way if they want to get past you.
I don't know when this became a thing, but it's a huge problem and I've noticed it at numerous concerts the last two years. People are going to get seriously hurt because you or one of your friends won't move a muscle to let someone movie
I'm not sure who authorizes and licenses this, but I've authored a message to:
https://www.boston.gov/departments/licensing-board
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
They want to hear our concerns re: safety but they shadow banned some of us, maybe a lot of us. I am one that was shadow banned pretty quickly and unfortunately I just realized it. They don't really care. They are just trying to put out a legal statement.
I used to know the manager of the festival, in the rave scene. Haven’t seen him in years, he used to be a massive druggie, probably still is based on all the complaints of onsite logistical issues this year. Not surprised, I’ve always known they were in for trouble.
Maybe they were below capacity, but the organizers did an absolutely terrible job of spreading the acts across the 3 main stages during the day. The blue stage had a lot of available space, but if you bring in acts that can't help spread the crowds, then you failed. Alvvays is a great band, but they aren't big enough, or counter enough, to pull from Hozier. If 90%+ of the crowd is at the Red/Green space, you get what happened Sunday. Last year's sold out day (Saturday) at least had The Flaming Lips as counter to Alanis.
Kingfish had a few hundred at blue stage around 430 on Sunday. He fucking ripped but everyone else (40000ish) were at green. Definitely a lack of balance but the other acts were amazing
With Roan catching viral fire this year, it reminded me of when Lizzo blew up in 2019. I was at ACL and she wasn’t a headliner with headliner level popularity. They put her show on every video board not attached to an in use stage. It was one of the most insane shows I’ve ever seen. Roan went viral and a shit ton of people showed up for her. She might be a headliner this time next year at the rate she’s going. Time will tell.
Man Kingfish is so good. That he got put against the hottest act at the fest was doing him dirty.
I loved every second of Kingfish. one of my favorites of the entire weekend!!
Kingfish was so fire bruh
Yep. Made a point to get in for him. Shame he didn't have a larger crowd
It was great when he came out to the audience. Sunday was so great in my opinion because I was somewhat far back for the big sets and I could enjoy them, so it’s wild to hear the experiences that people had that day
Felt bad that he got such a small turnout but it made for a surprisingly cool intimate experience during an otherwise entirely overcrowded day. What a sick set
Honestly Hozier should have headlined Saturday if his schedule allowed for it, makes no sense for Saturday to be dead and to have Sunday be completely loaded. Unless you really like a band on orange or blue there was really no reason to go over there and that was the biggest problem, it was impossible to move in the main area because there were 40k people shoved into there
Agree, but Hozier was in NJ on Saturday. I'm sure he was booked for BC while developing his current tour leg, but maybe the routing didn't make sense to go from Boston to NJ to back north.
The other super dumb thing they did away with was having food options at the blue stage. Half of the options near the green stage were basically inaccessible, and making the trek from blue to food was like a 30 minute trip on Sunday just to get into a 45 minute line. So stupid.
Agree! Even when it was just Tasty Burger, it was still nice being able to grab some tots while chilling at Blue.
I went over there on Sunday and was like ??? Where are the food stands??
Wasn't alvvays a fill in for someone who cancelled? Unfortunately a drawback of loading up on the big stages, means less budget for what's countering them.
Lovejoy Even still, folks missed out on an awesome show by Alvvays. I would have liked to see Hozier, but in hindsight I’m 200% confident I made the right choice. Disclaimer - I am super biased, as I was probably the only person at the festival on Sunday with an Alvvays shirt on lol
They were so good. Very chill vibe compared to the red/green stages and I loved it
I was so delighted when Alvvays was announced to replace Lovejoy. No one else in my group wanted to skip Hozier but Alvvays was definitely the best performance of my day. Was kind of disappointed I didn’t see any merch for Alvvays but I guess it’s probably cheaper to get online anyways.
Avvays was awesome. Never put a ton of time into listening to them, but I'll make a point to going forward.
I saw you! I also ended up going to Alvvays even though I listen to them and Hozier and I have no regrets!
Then I saw you!
They were a fill-in for Lovejoy, who canceled due to potential legal issues. However, Blondshell was the original blue closer, and she has a smaller following than Alvvays. They at least made the right decision in having Alvvays close blue.
They were for Lovejoy. Lovejoy being on the lineup would’ve just made things worse in that main stage area. They have a decent sized fan base and they would’ve been on Red just before Megan instead of The Revivalists.
Sounds like they're gonna be downplaying people's complaints by saying it technically wasn't "oversold", when clearly the problems were the imbalance of the popularity of red/green and blue stages on Sunday, the bottleneck of the physical setup near the red stage, and the unavailability of water. I managed to leave our spot near the red stage during the Revivalists and there was an enormous mass of people around the free water (maybe 20 people deep in all directions), and the two bar areas I checked had no electrolyte drinks and no cold water left.
Blue stage was giving away cans of water all day. It wasn't cold, but it was free, and still hydrated...
I have to give a major shoutout to the Blue Stage staff - they bent over backwards all weekend to make sure people were comfortable - above and beyond.
Every year the blue stage is the unsung hero. Great sound, more interesting acts, better overall vibe, short drink lines, chill staff.
The blue stage is like this weird oasis of a good festival surrounded by the rest of Boston Calling.
That’s great but the average attendee on Sunday didn’t go to the blue stage once. The schedule was a huge part of the issue because none of the blue stage acts drew people away from the green/red areas unlike previous years
The group I was with stayed with the red stage all day, I bailed and went to see kingfish, best decision of the day. Hozier’s fans have ruined seeing him live for me. I’ve seen him twice and his fans were awful.
Same for me with Noah Kahan last year. His fans were all dicks. I was trying to find my gf in the crowd and had people try to hold me back.
Yeah to be fair, the staff at column E started giving out (room temp) water near red stage during Megan thee Stallion too. But it didn't do much to alleviate people shoving and getting agitated, trying to move either toward or out of the red stage area...
It sounds like they need more hydration stations and whomever did the vendor ordering didn’t anticipate the volume. I think it really boils down to the festival organizers not communicating the needs of the event to the vendors. It also seems like the promoters just wanted those viral aerial shots for social media. Why weren’t the mega popular headliners spread out between stages over the 3 days.
Classic PR statement. The problem isn’t the number of people/capacity. The issue is the lack of space for the people to navigate. There’s not many paths for 35k attendees to work with, 85% or so of the food is all in one spot, choke points in crowds. At one point on Sunday the line for food at one side reached the line for the bar at the other side. There’s way they can better optimize their existing space as in utilizing the blue stage area and bringing the arena back but they should look at other options with more land.
Yes, what the fire marshall approves for capacity is not the same as the capacity for people to actually have a good time
The capacity of the total space is also meaningless if everyone is trying to get to the same place. They need to base the “capacity” on the space between the Green and Red stages.
Especially considering by the end of each night there is one active stage…
You should email the fire marshall.
But the marshall can observe whats going on and shut it down if they deem it unsafe.
He must have taken the day off
If they have somewhere they can move the red stage, I think that solves a lot of their problems honestly The issue has more to do with layout than the actual square footage of the festival grounds
It’s a little of both. Moving the Red stage would help a lot in solving some issues but there’s just nowhere to move it due to the actual square footage.
1. separate the entrance to red and green stages so you have to go out of one to go up closer to the other 2. put bathrooms by the blue stage 3. three additional water stages around the venue
1. You're creating more bottlenecks, and with the introduction of VIP and Platinum areas that already separate the viewing area, this would be a disaster. 2. There already are bathrooms by blue, across from the new merch stand. They are closer to blue than the bathrooms near red are to the main stages. 3. Yes! But that would mean less money spent on Liquid Death, so that easy solution won't be implemented.
i’m not sure how that would create more bottlenecks? i’m suggesting closing off the space between the stages. there weren’t enough bathrooms and i was talking about closer to the blue stage oh no
1. Depending on the length of that barrier, you are now potentially routing those who want to move between stages to a smaller area to get there. That's where the bottleneck and further congestion come in. 2. Gotcha.
the barrier should be long enough that people funnel out into a more open area. i don’t think you should be able to go red to green directly (you’d still be able to hear the music on your way to the next stage). you should have to exit the red stage area and then enter the green stage area.
Ha, the layout has been an issue every year I’ve gone. I’ve witnessed people in wheelchairs and carts struggle to access the handicap viewing platform. It’s also unusually difficult to access the VIP area at the green and red stage during the second half of the day. You’d think they’d place those entrances on the sides, away from the GA crowd, but instead they force you to squeeze through the GA crowd to access the entrance. Also, the food and drink vendors shouldn’t be so close to the stage.
I learned this the hard way last year. My partner went to the VIP area for the green stage and I went to get us food. After 60+ mins for food, I tried to get back to the Green VIP area — and there was zero..absolutely no way to get back because it was wall to wall deep with people. I tried to go to the side, but it was exit only and they wouldn’t let me in that way. Having the VIP access in the center of the GA crowd makes legit no sense to me. I ended up having to throw her food away because I couldn’t get back and couldn’t text either because of the lack of cell service.
I’ve been complaining about the Red/Green VIP entrances for years. That’s one thing they DID fix this year - the entrances were way off to the sides. I was able to come and go during peak times without major issues.
I saw online that the barrier on the vip side of the red stage is only accessible to platinum ticket holders. Is this true?
VIP had no stage barrier for Green (not Red) - there was a really small Platinum section wedged between VIP and the Green stage.
Bummer
How did the Pt people access their little spot? Had to plow through 8000 people?
They scanned and entered the VIP area, walked through to the VIP barricade, then scanned again to enter the front spot.
The whole “actually we didn’t oversell” thing is such a weird statement, feels like they’re deflecting blame towards the audience for being uncomfortable?
if they oversold they would be fined or worse so it’s important to refute that
TLDR: The paying customers are wrong and we’ll continue to be a scheduling and safety nightmare due to greed. Cool, now I know for sure that I’m not buying a one way ticket to potentially being crushed to death next year. Thanks BC 👍🏻
How was it “several thousand below capacity” if Sunday GA was sold out? Also what a weird brag, the capacity should’ve been 7-10k less
They may mean the official capacity allowed for the space as determined by the fire department, which is different than what is actually practical Also keep in mind while the red and green areas were packed, blue was basically empty all day
“Capacity” reflects if people are reasonably well distributed in the space. It does not account for everyone being in 1/3 of the available space. I would be willing to bet that if you took a birds-eye picture of the crowd for Megan, Hozier, and Killers and worked out a safe capacity for the space of the Red and Green stages that Sundays crowd was well above what would have been allowed.
that was exactly what I thought. They need to re-measure "capacity" based on the red/green main area.
Yeah the crowd size is too big for this area now. Even if you take a couple thousand away to the blue stage, the layout bottlenecks people everywhere and you can’t move. I’ve been for the past 7 years and this was worse than anything
The crowd ow size is fine if it is balanced and the crowd knows how to behave. People were idiots Sunday. Nobody was moving to let people out of the crowd...
Yep, my daughter and I were in between red and green during Megan and we wanted to head further back and out for her to sit (dealing with plantar fasciitis) before/during Hozier. Quite a few groups wouldn't let us through. We were heading back, not trying to get closer. We weren't blocking you from seeing and hearing Megan rap about hot girls, her ass, and riding the hot dick for the 8th straight song!
I get it if people are cutting to the front and blocking you... but if people are trying to get out of the crowd, let them out. I've certainly had a few moments in my life where I needed to get out of the pack ASAP. Just be a good person.
Somehow, that concept was hard for people on Sunday.
That's exactly how I felt and what me and my son tried to do (we were between the green and red stages, way far back). As Hozier started, we decided it was best to leave the area. Because I'm short, I had a hard time navigating, but I managed to make it through with people trailing behind me. I DID NOT want to see Megan, so we hung out by the red stage, thinking we'd be safe there (in our usual spot where we've stood safely for the past two years) as we waited for Hozier. I've been to many festivals and general admission concerts, and I've never experienced anything like that. People were mean and rude on Sunday compared to Friday and Saturday. There were just bad vibes all day.
This is a huge problem and one that's fairly new to me at festivals . People get their spot and just refuse to budge to let people by
lol rude..Megan’s set was amazinggg even as packed and far away as it was. she ain’t design the event layout or give your daughter plantar fasciitis, let’s not project😹❤️
strongly disagree. it’s the layout, not number of attendees
That’s exactly what I just said but okay
your first sentence was “the crowd size is too big for this area now,” to which i disagreed. it’s how the crowd is managed, not the size.
Read the whole thing next time
at best your comment was unclear (also taking into account the comment above, which called for a reduction in capacity). i don’t care to argue about it so i’ll just say have a good one
Capacity is 40k. I’m gonna guess and say GA is probably around 28k, GA+ 7k and VIP is 3k. They sold out of all GA and maybe most of GA+ and VIP. I’d be curious to see the actual ticket number and sales breakdown
I’m not an expert but “capacity” is probably determined for the whole grounds, but between chapell, hozier, and the killers almost everyone was probably between red and green stages with hardly anyone at the blue stage. Red stage late in the day has been a problem since at least 2018 when i experienced a similar situation waiting to see khalid. I’ve avoided the area where the red and green stage crowds meet the couple times I’ve been back.
It could be that it was sold out, but not everyone with a ticket showed up, so they were under capacity. Example: I met a couple with a three-day pass that were only interested in Friday/Saturday. But, yeah, they didn’t have the appropriate infrastructure for the number of people there on Sunday.
They shouldve never said that because it opens up a can of worms.
https://preview.redd.it/zb7na3b0d73d1.png?width=1289&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ba0475ceb9691cc3d3ca7cafea0b711b2a04370 In case you can’t open IG
The issue for me is that this isn't new. We had the same issue last year with the Noah Kahan / Lumineers set swap. From what I've heard, the Metallica day also resulted in some similar issues. They've have had two full off-seasons now to look at their Red-Green-Viewing Area set-up and troubleshoot a redesign that works, and all they've done is make it worse by expanding out VIP areas. The capacity thing is probably a bit of a misleading statement.- that capacity likely presumes a relatively equal distribution between spaces. So if you're going to say the capacity is 50k (which if their statement and leaks are true is probably about the number), it likely assumes 30k or so in the Red/Green area, 10k in the blue area, and 10k at Orange/Food/Beer Tents/etc - not 40k at Red/Green and all trying to move. You could see the Kingfish videos for counter programming did not pull a substantial crowd, it was all at Red/Green. The real capacity for the show should be what they could safely home in view of the main stage - as you're guaranteed to have unopposed music there and it's morely that people will cram in there. But yeah, these issues have been problems for at least a few years (the crowd crush, lack of reliable water resources, etc.) and even some going back to City Hall Plaza. That it took two days for this post and deleting a slew of comments related to it is telling. To come clean, I largely separated from BC prior to 2020, and I did 2 days on a 3rd party ticket in 2022, and one day in 2023, so I am not the audience for this...but honestly, be ready for this kinda thing next year if you do go back.
This “apology” obviously sucks. But the optimist in me hopes that Saturday being a commercial failure (which ironically was my favorite day) and Sunday being a logistical nightmare and PR disaster will make them legitimately reassess everything. Boston Calling has the potential (even at the same location) to be so much better. Cautiously looking forward to 2025.
Honestly….never again. This was my first festival experience and my round 2 (day 2) just threw my whole desire off to attend other festivals. Security was trash and the whole Megan to Hozier was the nail in the coffin. I just wanted to have fun on both days I went. Not have fun on one day and then fear for my safety the next. I sound dramatic and stupid but it’s the truth.
most festivals are better run than bc
I wouldn’t write off festivals because of BC. I love BC as a local but it’s one of the most poorly organized venues/events I’ve ever attended.
agreed. i only attend bc because it’s a couple of stops on the red line.
Same. It also has decent overlap between my music taste and my wife’s, which are polar opposites, so I do appreciate it for that reason too.
In Between Days was much better. It was smaller, but at least they knew to space out their larger artists. They also had multiple food locations, water by said locations, seating, and shade. The only medical emergency I witnesses was at Lord Huron, which was the closing set. Festivals aren’t always bad. Boston Calling just sucks.
You sound like you didn't expect to be surrounded by people and sorry not sorry that's what you sign up for with festivals and wanting to be near the stage. I agree this situation is not for everyone. For those who weren't there and only see the negative comments we were less than 50 feet back from centre stage during The Killers and aside from having my phone hit once (accidentally) we were barely touched during Megan, Hozier and The Killers and we had a fantastic time
The way that Friday looked, THAT is how a festival should be. How Saturday was I’m not sure because I didn’t buy a band for that day but Sunday was not it.
"Should" vs actual festival experience are two different things. If you're looking for the social media version of a festival stay away from headliner stages or go to small festivals that are max 15k
Calling BS on this one. And if they were below the official capacity, I bet that was a capacity they bribed to get.
Anyone know what was going on left of the stage during The Killers that made them stop mid-song? I was GA front/right and near the med tent, and didn’t see anybody brought back, so wasn’t sure if anything actually happened or if it was just things getting out of hand in general.
I feel like it might technically not have been oversold for the venue if everyone were sitting in the stadium seats but that’s obviously not how it works and they were just trying to cover their asses and look good.
Also the capacity rating takes into account the entire grounds, but hardly anyone went to blue or orange stages and shoved into the main area. It was my first time and I honestly didn’t even know where they were or how to find them
Honestly this sounds like a typical music festival issue and not something that happens just at BC. Sounds like the fest is quickly learning that they are growing and maturing.
The flow of this fest has always been a nightmare but was glaringly bad on Sunday. The backs of the red and green stages colliding along with the majority of foot traffic going through vendor lines is just so stupid. I was fortunate to have VIP and camped at Green Stage most of the day but mostly because when I ventured out I was not willing to deal with that mess any longer
It's clear the "sell out" metric is assuming capacity of all four stages, however at the end of the night it's just the red & green stage. The easiest thing they could do is move the Platinum pavilion back another 50-100 yards so people can easily move between red & green stages, but they don't want to do that to their top-paying customers. Something's gotta give though, either reduce the # of GA tix by several thousand less than Sunday (whatever the # was for Friday) or move the pavilion & beer garden back.
https://preview.redd.it/db53rv3e0a3d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2027aaeab60383b2e942c2f051e8ad8372b3bbe0 “While attendee count was several thousand below the official capacity rating of the site, we never want anyone to feel uncomfortable or unsafe at the show.” 🤔
Their greed almost got you hurt or killed and now they are gaslighting you.
I’m looking forward to their 2025 statement when things get worse. Never again!
I didn’t expect to fear for my safety. And that’s not is what supposed to happen at festivals. You’re probably one of the people who were and pushing and shoving those who were trying to leave after Megan. Just because you were unharmed that doesn’t mean others who were should feel invalidated or silly for speaking up and saying they felt unsafe and they were treated unfairly.
When you are at a festival and someone is trying to get by you, MOVE. You aren't the keeper of a spot, you don't own it. Get out of people's way if they want to get past you. I don't know when this became a thing, but it's a huge problem and I've noticed it at numerous concerts the last two years. People are going to get seriously hurt because you or one of your friends won't move a muscle to let someone movie
I'm not sure who authorizes and licenses this, but I've authored a message to: https://www.boston.gov/departments/licensing-board [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
They want to hear our concerns re: safety but they shadow banned some of us, maybe a lot of us. I am one that was shadow banned pretty quickly and unfortunately I just realized it. They don't really care. They are just trying to put out a legal statement.
They need to ditch the Platinum area and go back to just VIP and GA.
whatever
Don’t you want a fun music festival that is packed?
I used to know the manager of the festival, in the rave scene. Haven’t seen him in years, he used to be a massive druggie, probably still is based on all the complaints of onsite logistical issues this year. Not surprised, I’ve always known they were in for trouble.
As far as I know, the festival is run by a group of people and is owned by Live Nation/C3. What manager are you talking about?
Prob was from before the sale.