Special event officers will be on hand during Day N Vegas Festival
UPDATE November 10, 2021
Day N Vegas promoters have posted to social media a map of the Las Vegas Festival Grounds venue where the three-day event will be held. The post alerts attendees to “plan ahead” and “study the map to learn your way around.”
The map shows the three stages set up for the festival. The main “Frank” stage is where Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone will perform as the sole final acts for Friday and Saturday night. The stage is at the corner of Sahara Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard and looks to be a bottleneck for fans that will flock to the stage toward the end of both
nights. Off the Strip has reached out to Day N Vegas for a response to questions about crowd
control and event safety. Those emails have not been returned.
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Producers of the Day N Vegas hip-hop festival have moved quickly to substitute one all-star performer for another – Post Malone taking over for Travis Scott – but the investigation into the tragedy at Houston’s Astroworld festival raises questions about crowd safety at the November 12-14 event at Las Vegas Festival Grounds.
Among the most notable questions: How will Day N Vegas organizers manage the crowd when Malone is the only artist performing in his time slot? The crowd surge that contributed to eight deaths and dozens of injuries at Astroworld occurred when Scott, who organized the event, was the only artist performing on stage. Malone will take the stage at 10:45 p.m. on the festival’s “Frank” stage – one of three at Day N Vegas – and will be the final performer of the evening. Kendrick Lamar will be the sole performer to close out Friday night on the same stage.
It’s also worth noting that the Las Vegas Festival Grounds is a much smaller venue – 37 acres – than the 350-acre NRG Park in Houston, which has hosted Astroworld since 2018. An estimated 50,000 concertgoers were involved in the deadly crowd surge at Astroworld.
It’s unknown how many people have purchased tickets to Day N Vegas, and emails sent to a public relations spokesperson and also through the festival’s contact page were not returned prior to publication. Day N Vegas is presented by Goldenvoice, the company behind the massively popular Coachella and Stagecoach festivals.
A spokesperson for Las Vegas Metro Police, which will have special event officers on hand during the festival, tells Off the Strip that the department has reviewed the safety plan for the festival and provided recommendations to organizers, although specific details were not provided.
“When people go to these concerts, they’re expecting to be in a large crowd and have a reasonable expectation that they should be safe,” says Officer Misael Parra. “We have a safety plan in place, and our goal is to ensure people can come here to have fun and do so in a safe manner.”
In a statement announcing Scott’s cancelation on social media, Day N Vegas wrote, “The security and safety of all attending Day N Vegas has been and is always top priority in our festival planning. We continue to work hand in hand with law enforcement, medical personnel and public safety agencies on our protocols for the weekend.”
There have been no additional statements addressing how festival organizers will move fans from one stage to another during the show. The Day N Vegas website does not have any information specifically related to crowd safety, nor does the website for Goldenvoice.
Day N Vegas first arrived in 2019, with Scott slated to be among the top headliners. However, he also canceled that performance due to a knee injury. He wrote in a Tweet:
A post-festival review on Uproxx noted that, “the three-stage setup felt like it could have worked a lot better if the layout were tweaked to allow freer movement between them, and if the fest’s organizers had spaced out the performance blocks a little more.”
The Las Vegas Festival Grounds have previously hosted the Rock in Rio USA festival and the iHeartRadio Music Festival. In May 2022, it will host another anticipated hip-hop/R&B event, the two-day Lovers & Friends Festival presented by Live Nation, the same promotor behind Astroworld.
