Electric Picnic fans can rejoice as the festival plans to expand – with next year’s tickets set to go on sale this Saturday.
As a record-breaking 60,000 people flocked to Stradbally over the weekend, Festival Republic director Melvin Benn revealed he will be making even more room for punters in the coming years.
He reckons there is room for growth in certain areas of the layout in Co Laois. Speaking from the final day of the festival yesterday, he told the Irish Mirror: “I’m certainly going to try and accommodate more people who are desperate to be at the picnic.
“I think you can see in providentia there’s part of the field that’s got growth in it and growth will come, there’s no question about that.
“Terminus is already a fixture, that’s almost part of the Electric Picnic folklore now. I think it’ll be there forever and it will grow.
“I hope to grow the numbers of the picnic a little too more, but not too significantly.”
Florence And The Machine rocked the main arena last night, signing off on another year.
But punters can rest easy knowing tickets are expected to go on sale again in just a few days, with registration for loyalty festivalgoers being already open today.
Organisers announced last week they were going to have a major clampdown on drugs this year.
Asked if he was happy with how this was implemented over the weekend, Mr Benn added: “We said we’d have a zero tolerance towards drugs and we’ve really pursued that.
“But that hasn’t been dramatically different to last year or previous years in that sense of it. It’s been very much as we normally do.
“The guards have had some decent seizures and they’re looking for dealers everywhere, not just here at the picnic, and we’ve been pleased with that.”
Plenty of famous faces were spotted getting in on the fun over the three days, including U2 frontman Bono, Love Island winner Greg O’Shea, model Roz Purcell and RTE presenter Miriam O’Callaghan.
Asked if he’d seen or spoken to the U2 frontman, Mr Benn said: “I think Bono was here to watch a couple of acts.
“I didn’t see him myself but I’m reliably told he was here to watch some other people.” When asked if he’d like to have U2 headline EP some day, he replied: “I’m always looking for headliners so who they are next year is a discussion.
“But U2 are way too big to play at the Electric Picnic.
“They’re a stadium band and we could never dream U2 would be coming and playing here I’m afraid.”
Meanwhile, an All Ireland Football final viewing party was forced to be shut down at Electric Picnic yesterday after eager fans tried to ram through the fences into the event.
A total of 200 football people were due to watch the highly-anticipated clash between Dublin and Kerry yesterday afternoon with free food and booze courtesy of AIB.
But an unprecedented number ended up trying to force their way into the ticketed event.
A member of security said: “Too many people came and it became a health and safety issue so we had to call it off.
"People were trying to jump over the fence and barriers so we had to call in the emergency response team for health and safety.”
