For better and verse

We're in the middle of an unprecedented concert boom. It’s jamming up traffic, letting creeps in, causing food to run out. It’s even testing the toilets. Can AI, longer checklists and home-grown hacks fix the problem before disaster strikes?

- Bhanuj Kappal

I'ts a balmy March night in Mumbai. Lollapalooza 2025 has ended on a high note. Louis Tomlinson, Glass Animals and Hanumankind played to 60,000-odd attendees. Green Day closed the show. But as the crowd exits, they find that the dream has ended and the nightmare has just begun.

Nush Lewis, musician and music educator, tries, like everyone else, to exit the Mahalaxmi Race Course. The exits are so badly managed that it takes her 20 minutes just to get out of the venue. It’s 10.30pm. She and her friends try to book a cab, but despite the 100% surge price, none are to be found. It's a full 45 minutes before a taxi finally accepts their booking, only it can't get to the pickup point. Traffic has snaked up to a kilometre in both directions. Lewis and her group weave through the jam, walk half the length of the road and jump the divider to meet their ride. Is this what Green Day was singing about when they sang “hope you had the time of your life”?

At least they made it home safe. Two years ago, at AR Rahman's Adityaram Palace City concert in Chennai, the organiser ACTC Events sold 45,000 tickets for a gig that could accommodate only 20,000. Many ticket-holders were turned away because the venue was full. Inside, attendees described a “stampede-like situation”. Several women reported being sexually assaulted in the crowd. The Tambaram City Police eventually booked a case against the organisers, charging them with “criminal breach of trust” and for knowingly flouting the rules to cause chaos and danger to life.