Overcrowding, cancelled sets, sky-high ticket prices: was this the worst festival season ever?

Freya had been waiting for two hours to see Disclosure. 

‘We knew it would be busy because it was the smallest tent for such a big act, so we limited trips to the toilet or getting drinks,’ she says. ‘During the second song they had to stop. People were chanting for everyone to take a step back – everyone was confused and Disclosure were getting frustrated. Then there was a crowd surge outside the tent.’ 

Freya was one of hundreds of people who tried to watch Disclosure perform at Boiler Room Festival in London at the end of August. But after only six minutes, their live set was cut short.

The dance music megaliths were added to the lineup of the north London event only three days before the festival took place. At the time, the event was almost sold out, but, inexplicably, the duo was placed on one of the festival’s smallest stages. ‘People on the barricade were getting squished,’ another punter tells Time Out. Inside the tent was fine, but outside, a crowd was surging. Thankfully nobody was injured, but who’s to say next time we’ll be so lucky? 

After only six minutes, their live set was cut short

This isn’t the first crowd fiasco that took place during festival season 2024. There were similar scenes at Glastonbury: a show by Bicep on one of the biggest electronic stages, IICON, had to end early. Meanwhile, Confidence Man DJs paused their show on the Greenpeace stage for 20 minutes while they asked everyone at the back to leave, presumably due to safety issues. A Groove Armada DJ set at the Stonebridge Bar was also called off ahead of time because of crowd concerns, and Scottish dance producer Barry Can’t Swim shut down the Park Stage. Then, in August, a set by UK Garage DJ Sammy Virji was shut down at Boardmasters festival in Cornwall after a ‘terrifying’ crowd surge left people with ‘what seemed like broken legs’. So, what the hell happened at UK music festivals this summer? 

There are various factors that can lead to a crowd going haywire. ‘A crowd is like a volatile chemical reaction,’ says Chris Kemp, a crowd management consultant. Kemp explains that ‘people are more difficult to manage’ post-Covid due to them being less used to being in crowded environments – plus, there’s a whole new generation of festival-goers who don’t know how to behave in these spaces. In short, crowd etiquette has gone to the dogs.

Meanwhile, more social media use means anything that goes wrong at a festival is now widely documented: amplifying issues more than ever before. At the same time, attendees are forking out huge sums for events (Glasto saw its highest-ever ticket price of £355, while the average day festival now costs around £80), meaning audience expectations are higher than ever. 

But this year has also highlighted one major culprit: poor festival programming. In June, Disclosure headlined Glastonbury’s Other Stage with an approximate capacity of 70,000 people. Which begs the question, why would Boiler Room Festival put such a massive act on such a small stage? Intimate sets are all well and good, but at festivals where an unrealistic number of punters are going to try and squeeze into a tiny tent, it makes less sense.

Meanwhile, at Glastonbury, the mass appeal of nostalgic pop acts like the Sugababes and Avril Lavigne, as well as electronic acts like Bicep, was severely underestimated – leading to dangerous mass crowd migrations that left people at best disgruntled, and at worst scared.

All of these programming issues have cultivated a camp-out culture at events, with fans having to hang around at one small stage for hours just to be in with a chance of getting to see their favourite act. Too often, festival goers are left to choose between waiting all day to see that one bucket list artist or a string of other performances. ‘We hadn’t seen any of the other acts, we were ready to call it a day at that point,’ Freya recalls about Boiler Room Festival. With ticket prices as high as they are, music fans are left feeling short changed. 

Skyrocketing production costs and higher artist fees have left festival organisers trying to find the balance between safety and profits, which Kemp explains is a very small margin. But things can’t go on as they are. Resident Advisor called Glastonbury 2024 the ‘tipping point’ for the festival, while DJ and producer Salute wrote in an X post after the Boiler Room incident: ‘We’re a couple of massively oversold music events away from a deadly crowd crush happening.’ 

A crowd is like a volatile chemical reaction

Speaking about the events, Boiler Room in a statement: ‘Boiler Room London had a surprise set lined up with Disclosure on a stage hosted by their friends, Club Heartbroken. It became clear five minutes into their set that a big proportion of the festival goers wanted to get into the tent to see them, so as a safety precaution, the set was halted.

‘Since the event, we’ve been reviewing our systems internally and putting more measures in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again.’

Meanwhile, Glastonbury said: ‘Glastonbury has a robust, dynamic crowd management plan in place to protect the safety of its crowds, working closely with all the relevant authorities, with measures put in place both in anticipation of and in response to crowd movements. Our plans include close monitoring and the ability to pause and stop artists’ sets where appropriate.’

Luckily, nobody was injured at the Disclosure set – and it’s not to say festival season 2024 was a total downer. But, as summer winds down and we start to think about what tickets to cop next, let’s hope we can look to 2025 with the knowledge things will get better.

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