Major festivals impacted by global IT outage
Romania’s Electric Castle, Latvia’s Positivus and Austria’s Poolbar are among the major festivals impacted by one of the worst IT outages in history, this weekend.
Last Friday, a faulty security update by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike caused 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers to crash around the world, with businesses, banks, hospitals and airlines among the worst-hit.
Thousands of flights were cancelled due to the glitch, causing some artists to miss their scheduled sets at the weekend’s festivals.
Electric Castle’s 10th edition was hit with 14 cancellations by artists including Sleaford Mods, Hospitality Night, Sasha, Dov’è Liana, Jayda G, Ron Trent, Zack Fox, Hoax, PVC, Anais, INJA, Unglued, Voltage and Kings of the Rollers.
“It was crazy… the most difficult edition to handle,” EC’s Renate Rozenberg tells IQ. “We have to admit that what happened on Friday turned us upside down but we are so grateful because, once again, we were shown that we really are a community – not only with our team or the festivalgoers but with the artists and their teams.”
“Everybody tried really hard to solve an unsolvable situation”
“Everybody tried really hard to solve an unsolvable situation but you couldn’t book a new flight or even open airlines’ websites,” she continues. “But the artists were so patient and some even waited in the airport for 12 hours or so. It was amazing how hard they tried to attend the festival.”
A handful of artists even arrived minutes before their sets, according to Rozenberg.
“Nina Kravitz, for example, was supposed to perform on Friday at 11 pm but at 6 pm she was still stuck in an airport. We didn’t know if she would make it but she did at the last minute, and she was there on stage and performing and everything was great.”
While Electric Castle kept all its headliners in place, Latvia’s Positivus wasn’t so lucky. Two of the three headliners, Offset and Nothing But Thieves, were forced to cancel their performances at the festival due to the outage.
“In its sixteen years of existence, the Positivus Festival had never faced such immense challenges as it did yesterday”
“In its sixteen years of existence, the Positivus Festival had never faced such immense challenges as it did yesterday,” organisers wrote on Saturday (20 July).
“Until late [on Friday] night, we were searching for a charter flight to bring Offset from London to Riga,” they explained. “As soon as it became clear that it would not be possible for him to fly on Friday with a special flight, we searched until late into the night for possibilities to fly on Saturday. The technical personnel of the artists were already in the festival area yesterday and ready for the concert. However, the artist himself was so worried about his ability to get back to America that they decided to cancel the show.”
Nothing But Thieves, on the other hand, were unable to transport their large amount of luggage due to issues at the airport and the band’s headlining spot was filled by Benjamin Clementine. All other artists arrived at the festival in Riga.
Friday ticket holders were invited to attend the festival on Saturday.
Elsewhere in Europe, Austria’s Poolbar festival was forced to reschedule Bombay Bicycle Club’s show from Friday to Sunday (21 July), as the band’s flights were affected by the glitch.
Combination tickets to the festival were made valid for Friday and Sunday. Ticket holders who were unable to attend on Sunday could return their tickets to booking offices.
The festival was taking place between 4 July to 11 August in the city of Feldkirch in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg with between 20,000 and 25,000 people.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.