The cause of overcrowding at Jamie Webster's sold out gig has been confirmed following an investigation.
Some 11,000 people made their way to the M&S Arena to watch the 28-year-old singer perform at his highly-anticipated hometown show on November 19 last year. However, claims quickly surfaced online of long queues, as well as "overcrowded bars and flooded toilets".
Jamie Webster announced on stage that police were at the concert before he was forced to cut his encore, and played an apparent shortened set as concern grew among the crowd. But operators at the arena have confirmed they had "operational issues".
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A review into the event found the crowds formed due to a technical fault with a new bar system and queues colliding from three separate areas. They said they have since “revisited and revised” their layouts and how they handle crowd flow and gave assurances it was an "isolated incident", PA reports.
Faye Dyer, managing director of The ACC Liverpool Group said: "In November last year, we experienced some operational issues during a Jamie Webster concert held at the arena. This was an isolated incident with reports of overcrowding in one area by two of the floor bars.
"The crowd congestion was resolved, people were dispersed and the event was deemed safe to continue. We immediately launched an internal investigation which has been completed.
"This review confirmed that the build-up of congestion was due to the intersection of three separate busy areas in addition to a technical fault with a new bar facility which also contributed to customer delays."
She added: "The safety of our customers is our number one priority and we take any incident seriously. We are committed to continuously ensuring the arena experience is the best it can be for customers, artists and team members.
"We immediately revisited and revised our layouts and processes in relation to crowd flow. We are also accelerating plans to create additional bar and toilet facilities on the arena floor to further enhance the customer experience."
Jamie Webster previously spoke out about what happened that evening as he said: "There was congestion at one of the bars and people had, from inside the arena, phoned the police and said 'look, it's not safe by this bar here'. Apparently what happened is that the e-bars went down, the internet went down and everyone was forced on this one bar which was by the only entrance for standing, so people were stuck outside trying to get in, and people couldn't get through."
This comes as scrutiny on the safety at venues has heightened following the crowd crush at the O2 Academy Brixton in December when two people died. Next month, Eurovision is set to come to Liverpool after the UK was chosen to host the competition on behalf of war-torn Ukraine.
In-person tickets for the grand final sold out in just over half an hour after being released at the start of March in which the venue will host nine shows in total including three live shows, for the final and two semi-finals, as well as six preview ones. However, the number of fans expected to attend is significantly less than its full capacity due to the size of the song contest’s set.
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