Music producer Serious cut the Africa Stage's capacity from 25,000 to 17,000 after
The Africa Stage is one of six hosting music along the Thames in London from 21-22 July as part of . Each stage represents a different continent as part of the free music festival for 500,000 people run by Serious.
David Jones, owner of Serious, told Event: "We've ramped up our preparations and after Bloc we reduced the capacity from 25,000 to 17,000. We feel we could have run a safe site for 25,000 people but there were issues about access onto the site and we didn't want to be in a position of managing a site that was bursting to capacity."
He added: "We're conscious that we have to give ourselves and the team the headroom to run the space well – primarily safely and secondly enjoyably. We're simultaneously running five other stages across London so we wanted to make a success and give a vision of what London Pleasure Gardens is going to be like in the future."
Tickets for River of Music must be booked online. Saturday's event at the Africa Stage is sold out, but several thousand tickets remain for Sunday and will go off sale at 4pm today. Jones said: "There will be absolutely no way of getting into the space on the day of the show [without a ticket]."
Serious has also laid the site with pea gravel and put in place teams to oversee London Pleasure Gardens staff as a "constant presence" on site, according to Jones.
Other stages like the Americas Stage at the Tower of London have been planned for several years, but Africa Stage was relocated from Jubilee Gardens to London Pleasure Gardens in early 2012.
The Last Mile Festival planned to celebrate the Olympics at London Pleasure Gardens
Comment below and let us know what you think.
For more in-depth and print-only Olympics features with official brands, don't miss the next issue of Event magazine by