What Will Happen To Concerts After The Astroworld Tragedy?

At least eight people died at Travis Scott's Astroworld Festival this past Friday.

A crowd, no doubt exuberant to be at a large show after a pandemic without them, surged forward crushing other concert-goers resulting in eight deaths and scores of injuries.

I am not going the minimize these people's deaths. If you told me we'd have to live without concerts to save lives, then I'm pretty sure I'd go along with that. I cannot even comment on how the families must feel or even the horror of having the best time ever and then finding yourself trapped and fighting for your life.

I will move forward into my area of expertise though and that is concerts. This isn't the first time this kind of thing happened. Eleven people were trampled in 1979 trying to get into a concert by The Who. A German techno festival resulted in 21 dead in a stampede.

So after the dead are laid to rest and the mourning begins, what will happen to concerts? Well, probably something that happened before and you may remember it. Do you remember when you used to buy pit tickets and hill or seating tickets? That plan allows a restricted amount of people in an area so that the entire stadium doesn't flood forward. So why hasn't that tradition continued? It has in many places where the promoter sees an opportunity to price the areas differently. Unfortunately, economics do play a part in this because whether a pit is being put on to make more money, or for safety, it requires a bunch of extra security to keep that area under control.

There is a high chance that we learn nothing from this tragedy, or that it will gradually be forgotten. On the other hand, none of these big events take place without insurance and insurance hates both payouts and loves rate increases. It's my bet that the insurance companies will insist on a higher amount of security, portioned-off areas, and other measures to keep the entire stadium from rushing one particular area.

Once again, this is horrible that history has repeated itself, but we understand that after the question, "how did this happen?" comes the question, "how do we keep it from happening again?" and I hope I've given you a little insight into that. Let's also take a moment and remember the dead because nearly every single person reading this has been caught in at least a minor concert crowd surge. This really could have happened to you.