Yesterday I went to a festival with 13K other people.

The venue is reminiscent of the setup responsible for the Love Parade fail. However, it had the critical difference that all the fencing was temporary and crowd-burstable. Also, as people shifted from stage to stage, SCDF and security were (re)moving fencing to help manage the crowd.

The event appears to be solidly profitable. There were 5000 early tickets sold at 100 SGD, probably 1000 tickets further discounted to community members, with the rest sold at 150 SGD, for a total ticket take of ~1.5M SGD.

With 13K buyers, the take from concessions is perhaps worth another 10 SGD per, for an additional 130K SGD. The 3 or 4 big name bands probably rake in the majority, with the smaller bands not getting much other than exposure. Venue/production cost is perhaps 1M SGD, though not sure how much the stage / gear costs amortize.