Will the success of test events be the answer to faster venue openings?

One of the biggest obstacles facing venues and festivals is knowing when to open back up the doors. It’s not easy to know exactly when the safest time might be, given the state of the world. But with the introduction of test events and their collected data, organizers may finally get a specific timeline and it might be sooner than we think. Test events have become a growing way of examining the spread of COVID-19 in a crowd at medium to large scale shows. The idea is to gauge the level of risk and exposure when given a specific capacity and safety measures.

According to the 2021 IMS Business Report, test events, such as the shows in Barcelona with 5,000 people and Liverpool with 15,000 people, have shown favorable transmission rates compared to base transmission. Oliver Dowden, a British culture secretary, has deemed their UK pilot shows a success given that 58,000 people were involved and only 15 (.026%) positive cases were recorded.

One of the factors most effective towards minimizing the exposure of COVID-19 is also testing and vaccination programs.

This data becomes even more important to the question of reopening because demand for events is at an all-time high. According to the IMS Report and Skiddle data, the value of festival tickets sold is up 123% from March to May 2021 compared to 2019. Also, the value of festival tickets sold in March of this year was more than the entire duration of 2020, and the value of festival tickets sold increased by 3999% in March 2021 compared to last year.

It’s clear through the data that people are ready to get back on the dance floor. The only question is how can it be done safely. It seems that continuing the process of test events might get us to that point sooner rather than later.

Download the 2021 IMS Ibiza Business Report here.

Image Credit: Koen van Weel / AFP