We had a great time at the Isle of Wight Festival. Access control was busy, well we did have over 75,000 people coming and going, but steady. Over 33,000 campers arrived on the Thursday, all weighted down with tents, sleeping bags and maybe just a little alcohol!
The weather was truly British, three days of sunburn and then on the last day, oh boy, did the heavens open. Still everyone stayed determinedly happy and you would probably pay a great deal for a mud treatment like that in a spa.
Sadly it wasn’t all happy, some poor people had been conned into buying non-legitimate tickets. These were picked up by our Access Control system as people tried to enter the site. It was terribly sad for the people who had been conned by these touts. There was some good news for them though, as the tickets were picked up so quickly, police were able to act immediately and a number of arrests were made, so hopefully people will get their money back via the courts.
We were also involved in the cashless trial with MasterCard, with VIPs being issued with wristbands that could be used for both Access and Cashless. The trial was an enormous success with 98% of people surveyed saying they would want to go the cashless route again.