August 1, 2007 16:25

Old Trafford promoters respond to complaints at Arctic Monkeys gigs

SJM react to problems over bar and toilet queues

Photo Gallery: Arctic Monkeys

The promoters behind Arctic Monkeys’ Old Trafford gigs (July 28-29) have responded to criticism from fans about the event’s organisation.

While many fans wrote to NME.COM to praise the Sheffield band’s performance, a few complained about long queues for the toilets and bars.

Local paperManchester Evening News ran an article yesterday (July 31) detailing some of the problems.

However promoters SJM, who organised the event, have given NME.COM at statement explaining that they tried to deal with the problems after the first gig on July 28.

It reads: “SJM Concerts would like to respond to fans who were unhappy with the facilities at the venue. The main complaints stem from the bar provision on the Saturday concert. The bar operators brought in by the venue are the largest operators in the country who provide bar operations at festivals such as V, T In The Park, Wireless, Isle Of Wight etc and have also covered all the previous concerts at Lancashire Cricket Ground,” they explained.

“This year in keeping with the [live] industry’s Green Initiative they introduced a cup recycling scheme which took up 20 per-cent of the bar frontage on all these bars. This, however, meant the remaining bar frontage could not cope with the demand for beer at the concert on Saturday. The queues that developed for the bars meant that people could not access certain toilet blocks. Stewards were consequently redeployed to these areas from their normal positions of duty.”

SJM explained that they then reacted to these issues in time for the second night (July 29).

“In response to this, overnight the cup recycling scheme was abandoned and converted to bars; therefore each of the three main bars increased in capacity by 20%,” they explained.

“Additionally two completely new bars were installed overnight into two new areas and a queuing barrier system was put in place at all bars. In support of this 50 additional toilets were brought in and access to the toilet blocks was improved. 106,000 people came to the concerts over the weekend and whilst we would like to think the gigs were an enormous success we recognise the time taken by a number of fans to bring to our attention their dissatisfaction of the facilities on the Saturday.”

The added: “Both Lancashire Cricket Ground and SJM Concerts would like to apologise to fans who did not feel the concert was as enjoyable as it could have been.”