The show was booked without seat reservations, giving early bird fans the chance to rush toward the stage.
The event, and the finger-pointing in response, seemed all too familiar to Paul Wertheimer, a concert security expert and longtime critic of the industry.
To critics like Wertheimer, Astroworld is yet another sign that concert promoters prioritize profits over safety.
Live Nation, the world’s largest concert company, put on some 40,000 shows of various sizes in 2019, the most recent year that it had a full slate of events.
To manage general-admission events, long barriers known as crowd breaks are usually deployed to divide large spaces into smaller zones that contain as few as 5,000 patrons, reducing the risk of overcrowding, Phillips said.
A chart-topping rapper and entrepreneur, he has developed a reputation for putting on chaotic, high-energy shows, even encouraging fans to sneak in.
At one point last Friday, Scott paused his set to take note of an ambulance in the crowd.
Carl Freed, promoter of the Hot 97 Summer Jam, an annual hip-hop festival at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, called Astroworld “a horrible tragedy,” and added, “But there’s been a great deal of thought put into the safety of patrons.
The history of trouble with overcrowding goes back to the very beginning of rock ‘n’ roll.
In one of the highest-profile disasters in recent years, 21 people died in 2010 when crowds of thousands were forced to pass through a narrow tunnel on the way to the Love Parade, a festival in Duisburg, Germany.
Brian D.
Viewing the footage of Astroworld, Wertheimer said that the deaths could have been prevented simply by reducing the density of the crowd.