NME Festival Guide
2009

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Reading Festival bosses ask to increase event's capacity

Reading Borough Council due to vote on new plans today (Jul 24)

July 24, 2009 | 5 Comments

Reading Borough Council are to due to decided whether the Reading Festival will be allowed to sell an extra 6,500 tickets over the next two years.

A vote will be taken today (July 24) after festival boss Melvin Benn asked to increase the event's capacity, reports BBC Berkshire.

Although there have been some opposition from local residents regarding noise levels, the organisers Festival Republic hope that the 2010 event will see a capacity rise from 78,500 ticket holders to 82,000. A further 3,000 more tickets would then be sold for 2011.

Benn is also asking to increase the number of early arrivals allowed on site from 7,500 to 20,000.

This will allow festival goers to arrive from the Wednesday before the event rather than on the traditional gates opening on Thursdays.

Reading/Leeds Festival tickets:

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Comments (5)

Add a comment

xraybaby

Jul 24, 2009

This is down to pure greed. The event is always well crowded enough as it is.

honcho

Jul 24, 2009

agreed! i spent the best part of an afternoon stoned in a people jam. worst experience of my life. major whitey.

RuiRuiRuiRui

Jul 24, 2009

Yes, xraybaby - a business trying to increase their profits. Ridiculous, isn't it? WHATEVER NEXT?

a l a n c

Jul 27, 2009

Surely they'll just expand the site. And yeah, whilst Reading is a very compact festival within the arena (compared to, say, V Festival or Glastonbury), I've never found the compactness of the festival to be a problem, and have never got "stuck" in crowds. You just need to know how to handle a crowd. *shrugs*