Promoter behind Astroworld failed to plan for crowd surges

Travis Scott’s Astroworld festival reportedly didn’t have an operations plan that specified what to do in the event of a crowd surge.

A “mass-casualty” crowd surge took place last Friday at the event in Houston’s NRG Park, leaving eight dead and hundreds more injured.

The 56-page operations plan for the event provided to the city’s police and fire departments by promoter ScoreMore Shows, and seen by LA Mag, reportedly didn’t outline how staff should handle a crowd surge beyond notifying security and senior staff members.

“In any situation where large groups of people are gathering there is the potential for a civil disturbance/riot that can present a grave risk to the safety and security of employees and guests,” the plan said.

“The key in properly dealing with this type of scenario is proper management of the crowd from the minute the doors open. Crowd management techniques will be employed to identify potentially dangerous crowd behaviour in its early stages in an effort to prevent a civil disturbance/riot.”

The plan did however specify exactly what to do in other incidents, such as “active shooter, bomb or terrorist threats”.

Details of the plan have emerged as the amount of lawsuits filed against Scott, ScoreMore, promoter Live Nation and other parties involved continue to grow. As of Tuesday afternoon, Complex reports that at least 35 lawsuits have been filed relating to the incident.

In the days following the tragedy, Live Nation’s share price tumbled by more than 5% after they experienced a huge surge at the end of Q3 – in part due to the return of music festivals.