Base Logic Productions organised the electronic music event at London Pleasure Gardens, which was
Base Logic then went into administration, with debts that were yesterday revealed to total £1,937,616. These include £1.5 million in ticket refunds to visitors, £20,600 to AJ Bigtop Hire, £20,000 to caterer Event Fest and £28,235 to Purepower Electrics.
In a detailed statement released yesterday, Base Logic Productions said crowd problems at Bloc Weekend were partially a result of the incomplete site at London Pleasure Gardens, .
The Base Logic statement said: "It is no secret that there were serious delays associated with the building of the London Pleasure Gardens site, leading to non-completion of groundwork, venues and general infrastructure.
"There is no doubt that these delays severely compromised our efforts to deliver a successful production. In the run up to Bloc, much of the site remained unfinished, inaccessible or closed.
"Despite our frequent requests for an up-to-date build schedule, it was confirmed just two weeks before the festival that The Hub, a 2,800 capacity high-spec venue that we had contracted to host one of our main stages, was not going to be ready for us to use. Furthermore, the large area in the south east of the site where it was to be built remained shut so that construction works could be completed in time for the Olympic period."
It continued: "Missing infrastructure and venues meant that much of the festival ended up focused in the north east corner of the otherwise massive 60,000sqm site. Most people chose to congregate there causing unanticipated overcrowding which ultimately led to our safety concerns."
London Pleasure Gardens did not respond to Event's requests for comment at the time of going to press.
The Base Logic statement also confirmed the festival's and some guests used fake tickets to enter the festival.
It said: "It is accepted by all concerned that we did not oversell the event. However, we did experience problems with the management of the admission control systems. The area that was set aside for queuing before tickets were checked became overcrowded at around 21:00. This began to put potentially dangerous pressure on the searching lanes leading into the festival.
"At 21:27, following a breach of these lanes, ticket scanning was suspended to ease the pressure. Comprehensive ticket scanning was not properly resumed after this time. Knowledge of the suspension of scanning combined with ticket touting enabled people to gain entry to the event without having purchased a ticket from our website. We’ll never know exactly how many people did this."
Crowdsurge told Event it was not commenting further on Bloc, but
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To read our special report on the events that didn't work out over the Olympic period, don't miss the October issue of Event magazine by