Astroworld Festival Tragedy Reaction
The Astroworld Festival is held every year in Houston, Texas, hosted by one of Hip-Hop’s brightest stars and highly acclaimed performer Travis Scott. Since 2019, Travis Scott’s festival has solidified the Houston native’s place at the top of Hip-Hop bringing together crowds of devoted fans to enjoy the rage and purchase Travis merch. Unfortunately, many attendees went home with mental and physical injuries as the rage sent three hundred people to be treated by on-site medics, twenty-three people to the hospital, and ultimately took the lives of nine people.
The Astroworld Festival was doomed from the time the gates “opened” as videos started to surface of fans breaking into NRG Park with absolutely no regard of who may be trampled in the process. From there the situation only got worse with reports of no bag checks, Travis Scott being warned before the show started that the crowd was too big, and people hurdling over barriers racing to merch tables. While there were also reports of a security guard being stabbed with a needle, they were eventually proven false, the security guard was still knocked out after being hit in the head as he tried to maintain order. Ultimately if there was a theme for this year’s Astroworld Festival it was chaos. Not the type of chaos that allowed Travis to leap to the top of Hip-Hop, but an uncontrollable chaos that led to one of the biggest music tragedies in decades.
Unfortunately, what this situation ultimately demonstrates is a total failure of the festival system. An emphasis on the thinking of “if it doesn’t make money it doesn’t make sense.” For example, the layout of the festival’s standing area. The concept of trying to squeeze 50 thousand people into a layout that can be best described as a box with no space for people to move around made the job of on-site medics tougher than it needed to be. The degree of difficulty for the medics was only heightened with multiple videos showing concertgoers climbing on medical carts trying to pass through to assist people in need. Surely, some space could’ve been cleared in the layout with the thought of allowing medics to seamlessly travel to locations if their presence was needed. Sacrificing the number of tickets that could be sold to ensure the safety of attendees seems like a balanced trade-off.
What makes this tragedy more disheartening is how preventable it ultimately was. As reported by NPR, in 2019, three people were injured at AstroFest after a group of people broke down the gates to enter NRG Park, similar to the event I mentioned from this year’s AstroFest. Additionally, as reported by Houston’s ABC affiliate, in response to the 2019 incident, Houston PD tweeted, “‘promoters did not plan sufficiently for the large crowds,’ but later deleted the tweet.” The promoters of both Astroworld Festivals in question: Live Nation. In fact, Live Nation has had an unfortunate track record of tragedy occurring at their events. According to Anastasia Tsioulcas of NPR, “Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Live Nation Worldwide have been connected to about 200 deaths and at least 750 injuries since 2006, the Houston Chronicle reported on Monday after searching past court records.”
This demonstrates total negligence in planning on the part of Live Nation. We hear it all the time about rappers not being allowed to perform at venues because of the risk of violence and ultimately the risk of lawsuits. However, it’s interesting that all these industry norms are tossed out the window when it comes to one of Hip-Hop’s marquee performers in Travis Scott, who is known for having some of the wildest crowds in music.
Venues look at the history of artist performances to decide how big the risk of a lawsuit is if the artist is allowed to perform. That’s the reason why certain street rappers aren’t allowed to tour, no venue would book them because of the perceived risk. So when looking at Travis Scott’s history, we understand there have been numerous incidents that have occurred at Travis shows, before mentioning how Travis also encourages chaos at his shows. At one show Travis, jumped into the crowd to crowd surf before someone in the crowd attempted to steal his shoe. How did Travis react? By spitting on the fan and encouraging his crowd to assault the fan. At another show in 2017, Travis Scott was arrested for citing a riot, ultimately forcing the rapper to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and shell out $6,000 to two people who were injured as a result.
Because of past incidents such as these, it is more negligent of Live Nation to cut corners when dealing with the safety of concertgoers. Live Nation should’ve understood the level of hype that comes with an artist like Travis Scott and taken every precaution to ensure fans go home with a positive experience they’ll remember for a lifetime, instead of a negative experience that may ultimately traumatize them forever. People go to concerts to have fun and unfortunately that is not the experience fans who were in attendance on Friday received.
Travis Scott has offered to pay for the funerals of the nine attendees who were deceased and partnered with Better Help to offer one free month of online therapy to people who were impacted by the events. Additionally, Travis Scott has given full refunds to everyone in attendance. However, it doesn’t appear this is the end as Travis Scott and Live Nation are now facing dozens of lawsuits including one from the family of a 9-year-old boy who is now in a coma because of the events that took place.
Hopefully, these unfortunate events will sound the alarm for everyone. Promoters need to do their due diligence in preparing for the possibility of an emergency. Artists need to do a better job of understanding their influence and the impact their words will have on a crowd of thousands of people who share in a fandom of the artist that can be described as cult-like. Lastly, fans need to be more considerate of others, understanding that the concert experience is something that is shared and doesn’t excuse the dismissal of basic humanity. On all three phases, this was a complete failure of the festival system, however, it could be a much-needed wake-up call that cements a precedent of safety over everything.
