astroworld
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Travis Scott is going back on the road, as he’s announced a new tour almost two years after the Astroworld tragedy.
The UTOPIA rapper broke the news through a post made on Tuesday (August 29th) through his Instagram account. The caption to the post bearing an NSFW image was brief, beginning with “UTOPIA Tour” and relating that tickets sales for the tour would begin at 10 A.M. on Thursday (August 31st) before adding his website and ending off with “Hsbsdbbddbsbsnsjsbdnd”.
The UTOPIA Circus Maximus Tour (inspired by his recent Rome concert) will kick off in the fall, beginning at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, North Carolina on October 11th. It will then cover most of North America, with the largest headlining date projected to be at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California on November 5th. The tour will conclude at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada on December 29th. Tickets can be purchased at the website, and Live Nation said that $2 from each sale will be donated to Scott’s Cactus Jack Foundation, a nonprofit aimed towards enriching the lives of youths in the Houston area.
One noticeable feature of the tour is that while there are two stops in Texas (Dallas on October 17th and Austin on November 21st), there is no tour date in Houston, Travis Scott’s hometown. Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston, had previously issued a statement earlier this month saying that Scott and the promotion team had “booked the Toyota Center for a concert in October.” Mayor Turner also said that the city expected the concert to be like others that have occurred there. “Before (Tuesday’s) announcement, Toyota Center representatives convened meetings with public safety officials and the city’s special events office. They will continue working together to ensure this concert’s safety, not unlike the thousands of concerts held at Toyota Center each year,” it read.
The tour announcement with Live Nation comes almost two years after the tragedy at the Astroworld Festival which occurred in November 2021 where 10 people died after a massive crowd crush. Earlier this year, a grand jury in Houston decided that Scott as well as Live Nation and other organizers would not be held criminally responsible for those deaths at Astroworld. They are still contending with civil lawsuits from over 400 individuals stemming from the incident.
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Just moments before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival, a contract worker had been so worried about what might happen after seeing people getting crushed that he texted an event organizer saying, “Someone’s going to end up dead,” according to a police report released Friday.
The texts by security contract worker Reece Wheeler were some of many examples in the nearly 1,300-page report in which festival workers highlighted problems and warned of possible deadly consequences. The report includes transcripts of concertgoers’ 911 calls and summaries of police interviews, including one with Scott conducted just days after the event.
The crowd surge at the Nov. 5, 2021, outdoor festival in Houston killed 10 attendees who ranged in age from 9 to 27. The official cause of death was compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being crushed by a car. About 50,000 people attended the festival.
“Pull tons over the rail unconscious. There’s panic in people eyes. This could get worse quickly,” Reece Wheeler texted Shawna Boardman, one of the private security directors, at 9 p.m. Wheeler then texted, “I know they’ll try to fight through it but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue. Someone’s going to end up dead.”
Scott’s concert began at 9:02 p.m. In their review of video from the concert’s livestream, police investigators said that at 9:13 p.m., they heard the faint sound of someone saying, “Stop the show.” The same request could also be heard at 9:16 p.m. and 9:22 p.m.
In an Aug. 19, 2022, police interview, Boardman’s attorneys told investigators that Boardman “saw things were not as bad as Reece Wheeler stated” and decided not to pass along Wheeler’s concerns to anyone else.
A grand jury declined to indict anyone who was investigated over the event, including Scott, Boardman and four other people.
During a police interview conducted two days after the concert, Scott told investigators that although he did see one person near the stage getting medical attention, overall the crowd seemed to be enjoying the show and he did not see any signs of serious problems.
“We asked if he at any point heard the crowd telling him to stop the show. He stated that if he had heard something like that he would have done something,” police said in their summary of Scott’s interview.
Hip-hop artist Drake, who performed with Scott at the concert, told police that it was difficult to see from the stage what was going on in the crowd and that he didn’t hear concertgoers’ pleas to stop the show.
Drake found out about the tragedy later that night from his manager, while learning more on social media, police said in their summary.
Marty Wallgren, who worked for a security consulting firm hired by the festival, told police that when he went backstage and tried to tell representatives for Scott and Drake that the concert needed to end because people had been hurt and might have died, he was told “Drake still has three more songs,” according to an interview summary.
Daniel Johary, a college student who got trapped in the crush of concertgoers and later used his skills working as an EMT in Israel to help an injured woman, told investigators hundreds of people had chanted for Scott to stop the music and that the chants could be heard “from everywhere.”
“He stated staff members in the area gave thumbs-up and did not care,” according to the police report.
Richard Rickeada, a retired Houston police officer who was working for a private security company at the festival, told investigators that from 8 a.m. the day of the concert, things were “pretty much in chaos,” according to a police summary of his interview. His concerns and questions about whether the concert should be held were “met with a lot of shrugged shoulders,” he said.
About 23 minutes into the concert, cameraman Gregory Hoffman radioed into the show’s production trailer to warn that “people were dying.” Hoffman was operating a large crane that held a television camera before it was overrun with concertgoers who needed medical help, police said.
The production team radioed Hoffman to ask when they could get the crane back in operation.
Salvatore Livia, who was hired to direct the live show, told police that following Hoffman’s dire warning, people in the production trailer understood that something was not right, but “they were disconnected to the reality of (what) was happening out there,” according to a police summary of Livia’s interview.
Concertgoer Christopher Gates, then 22, told police that by the second or third song in Scott’s performance, he came across about five people on the ground who he believed were already dead.
Their bodies were “lifeless, pale, and their lips were blue/purple,” according to the police report. Random people in the crowd — not medics — provided CPR.
The police report was released about a month after the grand jury in Houston declined to indict Scott on any criminal charges in connection with the deadly concert. Police Chief Troy Finner had said the report was being made public so that people could “read the entire investigation” and come to their own conclusions about the case. During a news conference after the grand jury’s decision, Finner declined to say what the overall conclusion of his agency’s investigation was or whether police should have stopped the concert sooner.
The report’s release also came the same day that Scott released his new album, “Utopia.”
More than 500 lawsuits were filed over the deaths and injuries at the concert, including many against concert promoter Live Nation and Scott. Some have since been settled.
The Houston Police Department released its final report on the 2021 crowd crush tragedy at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival on Friday (July 28). The more than 1,200-page document details the Houston PD’s investigation into the tragedy, which left 10 people dead and hundreds more physically injured. The report arrives just a month after a Houston […]
Travis Scott is back. The “Pick Up the Phone” rapper is set to launch Utopia, his first studio album in nearly five years, at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. He announced the livestream event through social media posts across Instagram and Twitter on Sunday (July 9). “Utopia is wherever you are,” he wrote in […]
You might not be seeing many headlines these days about the massive litigation underway in Houston over the deadly 2021 disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival. That’s by design.
In a ruling Tuesday, an appeals court in Texas refused to lift a strict gag order that for more than a year has barred attorneys and others from discussing the sprawling litigation over the crowd crush at Astroworld, which left 10 dead and hundreds physically injured.
ABC News had challenged the “sweeping” restrictions, arguing they clearly violated the First Amendment’s protections on free speech and had created a “news desert,” in which almost no reliable information about an important case was being shared with the public.
But in its decision on Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the Court of Appeals For The First District of Texas rejected those arguments. Ruling on a battle over judicial transparency, the appeals court did not issue any written explanation for why it had denied ABC’s challenge.
Starting hours after Nov. 5, 2021 incident, lawyers claiming to represent more than 4,900 victims eventually filed more than 400 lawsuits against Scott, Live Nation and other organizers. The cases, later consolidated into a single “multidistrict litigation,” accuse the Astroworld organizers of being legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, including not providing enough security and having insufficient emergency protocols in place. Combined, the victims are seeking billions in damages.
But for a case dealing with a mass-casualty event at a popular music festival with billions at stake, relatively little is known about the Astroworld litigation.
Shortly after Judge Kristen Brauchle Hawkins was appointed to oversee the cases, she issued a “publicity order” that largely prohibited attorneys from speaking about the case, citing concerns that “extensive media coverage” threatened to deprive the parties of their right to a fair trial by tainting the jury pool.
The Feb. 15 ruling was both specific and broad – banning attorneys from discussing a wide range of particular topics, including “the strength and weaknesses of any party” and “rulings of the court,“ but also imposing catch-all restrictions on “any other information” that would “prejudice the trial.”
In challenging that order to the appeals court, ABC News argued that it had deprived the public of information about important judicial proceedings over a newsworthy event. The network warned that attorneys were refusing to share even basic information about the case with journalists, out of “fear of violating its broad and vague provisions.”
“The Gag Order, coupled with the lack of transparency from local and state officials, has created a news desert where many questions raised in the days after the Astroworld Festival remain unanswered,” the company wrote. “By [lifting] the Gag Order, this court would provide those connected to both the Astroworld Festival and the litigation the ‘breathing space’ needed to freely share their experiences, the press the ability to hold them to account, and the public the valuable information they need to better understand the events of November 5, 2021.”
But on Tuesday, the appeals court rejected those arguments. In a one-paragraph decision, the panel recounted ABC News’ argument and said simply: “We deny the petition.”
ABC News can appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. An attorney for the company did not return a request for comment on Wednesday.
A task force formed in the aftermath of the Astroworld tragedy unveiled a new agreement on Tuesday (Nov. 29) designed to ensure event safety at NRG Park, the former home of the Travis Scott-helmed festival.
The interlocal agreement — put forth by the City of Houston-Harris County Special Events Task Force, formed in February — is meant to streamline safety protocols, permitting requirements and communication for large-scale events at NRG Park, the trade show, convention, sports and entertainment complex where a crowd crush during Scott’s headlining performance last November led to the deaths of 10 people and injured hundreds more. The document is an update to an existing interlocal agreement that was last amended in 2018.
Under the new agreement, any event hosting more than 6,000 people at the complex will require an on-site unified command center staffed by the Houston Fire Department (HFD), Houston Police Department (HPD), Mayor’s Office of Special Events (MOSE), Harris County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO), Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office (HCFMO), NRG Park and the event organizer. Going forward, review and approval of event capacity as well as site, security and medical plans will fall on the HFD chief or a designee. The HFD will also be tasked with clarifying requirements with event organizers to ensure they meet safety, medical and site planning requirements at the venue. Security plans will require additional sign-off by the HPD, while event plans will need sign-off from MOSE. Ideally, having a designated authority will lessen the likelihood of confusion and inaction during events. Permits for NRG Park will continue to be issued by the City of Houston.
The interlocal agreement “defines rules of responsibility and communication and makes us a better county to deal with whatever comes up,” said Houston police chief Troy Finner at a hearing Tuesday.
Mayor’s Office of Special Events director and task force co-chair Susan Christian tells Billboard that the new agreement is designed to ensure all parties are aligned when it comes to planning and executing large-scale events at NRG Park. “We’re much closer with this new [interlocal agreement] in achieving a more communicative process, as well as a process that involves peoples’ input,” she says.
In April, a report by the Texas Task Force on Concert Safety (TFCS) — created by Texas governor Gregg Abbott in the wake of the Astroworld tragedy — concluded that establishing standardized safety procedures could help prevent a similar mass casualty event from happening in the future. According to that report, the lack of communication around permitting, the failure to determine a chain of command and the absence of a capacity limit all contributed to the deadly crowd crush. It recommended the implementation of a universal permitting template that would help clarify the murky permitting process across the state. The Texas Music Office, which led the TFCS report, previously released an online Event Production Guide so as to centralize information around permitting guidelines and the penalties for not complying with them.
The new agreement is designed to help alleviate that confusion, but it’s only a first step in a long process to ensure safety for future events throughout Houston and Harris County, including the 2026 World Cup, which will be partially hosted in the city. “It is a thing of moving forward,” said Finner, “but also it is a work in progress. This is a great start.”
The City of Houston-Harris County Special Events Task Force will continue to meet quarterly to review and expand safety protocols. The agreement — which the Harris County Commissioners Court unanimously voted to approve — will now need signatures from Houston mayor Sylvester Turner, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, the Houston Police Department and the Houston Fire Department, among others. All signatures are expected by next week, says Christian.
On Nov. 5, 2021, 10 people died from compression asphyxia due to a massive crowd surge during Scott’s headlining performance at the 2021 Astroworld festival. In the wake of the tragedy — which resulted in thousands of lawsuits being filed against Live Nation, Scott and other event organizers that were eventually consolidated into a single giant case — the City of Houston-Harris County Special Events Task Force and the TFCS were formed in order to prevent similar mass casualty events in the future.
In addition to the aforementioned task forces, in Dec. 2021 Scott’s charitable entity Cactus Jack Foundation joined forces with The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) on an initiative designed to put new safety protocols in place in the festival industry. At the time, a draft USCM agreement stated that a comprehensive report based on discussions and research conducted by a working group comprised of individuals across multiple sectors along with outside experts would be compiled between January and June 2022. Billboard reached out to USCM and representatives for Scott but did not hear back on the task force’s progress.
More than a year into litigation over the deadly Astroworld music festival, attorneys for the event’s organizers say that nearly 1,000 fans who sued over their alleged injuries have ignored deadlines and failed to hand over “critical evidence.”
In a filing last week, attorneys for the defendants in the case — Live Nation, Travis Scott, Apple and many others involved in the festival — alerted Judge Kristen Brauchle Hawkins that 956 alleged victims had “not provided any response whatsoever” to basic requests for information.
“There is no excuse for the non-responsive plaintiffs’ complete disregard of their discovery obligations,” the lawyers for the organizers wrote in the Nov. 23 filing. “They should be compelled to comply immediately.”
Some lawyers for victims quickly pushed back, though. In responses on Monday (Nov. 28), attorneys repping dozens of purported non-responders said many of their clients had in fact filed the necessary papers — or had been dropped from the case entirely. Others said their clients had “experienced serious trauma” and that lawyers were “working diligently with them to complete their discovery response.”
The dueling filings came in sprawling litigation over Astroworld, in which a crowd crush during Scott’s Nov. 5, 2021 performance left 10 dead and hundreds physically injured. Thousands of alleged victims are seeking billions in total damages, claiming the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event.
As of May, court filings said that more than 4,900 alleged victims had filed claims in the case. But the latest filings this week suggest that number has now been winnowed down to around 2,500.
The two sides are currently in the midst of what is known as discovery, the legal process in which each side hands over evidence to their opponents. Earlier this year, Live Nation, Scott and other defendants had sought a variety of information about each plaintiff, including details about their particular injury, documentary evidence that they attended the festival and any messages or other digital records related to the festival.
In the filing last week, attorneys for the Astroworld organizers said a huge number of alleged victims had “wholly failed to respond,” despite the fact that the questions had been heavily negotiated with the legal team for the concertgoers.
“It has now been more than six months since defendants served their original discovery requests and more than a month since all extensions have expired,” the Astroworld lawyers wrote. “Yet approximately 38% of the Plaintiffs … have provided absolutely zero response.”
Failing to hand over this “critical evidence” soon could hamper the litigation in ways that cannot be undone, the organizers warned.
“The longer the non-responsive plaintiffs delay, the higher the risk that critical evidence or information in their possession will be lost, destroyed, or forgotten,” they wrote. “Cell phones get lost or destroyed, and the photographs and videos on them get deleted.”
A year after the deadly disaster at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld festival on Nov. 5, 2021, event organizers and victims are still locked in sprawling litigation over the tragedy, with hundreds of millions in potential damages on the line and no quick end in sight.
Beginning just hours after the incident, more than 4,900 alleged victims have filed legal claims against Live Nation, Travis Scott and other festival organizers over the disaster at Astroworld, in which a crowd crush during Scott’s headlining performance left 10 dead and hundreds physically injured.
The cases claim the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, including not providing enough security and having insufficient emergency protocols in place. One case, filed by the family of a boy who died that night, claimed Live Nation and Scott had “egregiously failed in their duty to protect the health, safety, and lives of those in attendance.”
Combined, the cases are seeking billions in damages over the disaster. Even if a final settlement comes no where close to that total — and it likely won’t — the huge potential penalties resulting such “mass tort” cases should serve a stark reminder for those planning future music festivals.
“In business situations there’s always a pressure to cut costs, but you can’t cut costs in a way that ends up costing people lives and limbs,” says Mark Geistfeld, a professor at New York University School of Law and an expert in such litigation. “The point of mass torts is that you need something out there to temper the profit motive.”
“These cases can be a real wake up call,” Geistfeld says. “Are we actually spending enough on security and things like that to make sure these kinds things don’t happen?”
The lawsuits over Astroworld were all filed individually by the different victims, but they’ve been consolidated before a single Texas state judge as a “multidistrict litigation” — a standard procedure aimed at avoiding the inefficiency of individually litigating many cases that share key similarities.
Such a move not only helps streamline the proceedings, but also could make it easier to reach a broad settlement with all victims, like the $800 million deal that ended similar litigation over a 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert festival.
“Settlements are the way these cases almost always end,” says Jay Tidmarsh, a professor at Notre Dame Law School and an expert in complex civil litigation. “They make sense because of the risks of loss on both sides as well as the cost of litigation.”
A year into the case over Astroworld, sources close to the litigation tell Billboard that the parties are currently in the midst of what is known as discovery — the laborious process during lawsuits in which each side hands over mountains of evidence to their opponents, like internal emails about how the event was planned. Requests for such info have been exchanged, and disputes over what should be disclosed will be hammered out by the judge in the months ahead.
The parties are also gearing up to start depositions, in which attorneys for each side will take testimony from the various figures in the case, potentially including victims themselves, witnesses to the disaster, people involved in planning and many others. Each side is also lining up their own “expert witnesses” — specialists and professionals who will offer dueling analysis on what went down at Astroworld.
That work could still take well over another year, given the sweeping scope of a case involving more than a dozen defendants and thousands of plaintiffs. But when discovery and depositions eventually wrap up, the case will likely head in one of two ways.
One is a quick settlement. Based on what gets disclosed during discovery, it could become apparent to attorneys for the organizers that they’re facing a very strong case. Or plaintiffs might get worried that their ultimate damages award might be limited, even after years of costly litigation.
“One way these cases go is what’s called global peace — a large settlement that will cover all of these claims,” Geistfeld says. “If the amount is right, it might just be better for both sides to take that route rather than go to case by case litigation.”
If the parties can’t reach such a deal, they’ll keep litigating. But they won’t just take all 4,900 cases to trial. Instead, the litigation will likely proceed toward what are known as “bellwethers” – a handful of trials over individual victims that aim to serve as a representative sample of the broader case.
In the bellwethers, the two sides will grapple over the core question in all the cases — whether the conduct of Live Nation, Scott or any of the other planners caused the injuries suffered by various concertgoers. As reported by Billboard last year, that question will turn on whether the planners could have seen such a disaster coming, and whether they then took the proper steps to avoid it.
No matter how those early cases play out, experts say the case is still likely to eventually end in a settlement. But the outcome of the bellwethers will play a huge role in decided how that deal is ultimately structured.
“What [bellwether trials] do is set a baseline for negotiation,” Tidmarsh says. “Say the plaintiffs lose almost all of the early cases, then the settlement value goes way down. Say they win millions, then the value goes way up.”
Travis Scott, Live Nation and other organizers of last year’s deadly Astroworld music festival in Houston appear to have reached their first settlements with victims in the sprawling litigation over the disaster.
Nearly a year after a crowd-crush during Scott’s Nov. 5 performance left 10 dead and hundreds injured, attorneys for the family of Axel Acosta, a 21-year-old killed in the incident, confirmed Thursday that they had reached a settlement with the organizers. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
“Victim Axel Acosta was a beloved son, brother, and student,” said Tony Buzbee, who also represents scores of other victims. “He was kind and loving. He is greatly missed. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
Separately, Houston’s ABC affiliate reported late Wednesday that the family of Brianna Rodriguez, a 16-year-old who died at Astroworld, had also settled their claims. Neither settlement is yet posted to the court’s public docket.
Live Nation and a rep for Scott did not immediately return requests for comment on Thursday.
The agreements represent two of the first known settlements in the sprawling litigation over the Astroworld disaster, in which thousands of victims are seeking billions of dollars in damages from Live Nation, Scott and others. The lawsuits, consolidated before a single judge earlier this year, claim the organizers were legally negligent in how they planned and conducted the event, resulting in one of the deadliest concert disasters in history.
The defendants, which also include venue manager ASM Global and the municipal Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation, strongly deny the allegations and have assembled a formidable team of lawyers to fight the litigation.
According to a legal filing in May, more than 4,900 people have filed legal claims stating they were injured in some capacity at Astroworld. In addition to the 10 people who died, 732 claims have been filed by people who needed “extensive medical treatment” and 1,649 who needed less extensive care. Another 2,540 were listed as “other,” meaning the extent of their injuries was still being reviewed. It’s unclear how many people claim physical harm versus mental and emotional harm, like post-traumatic stress.
The individual settlements announced this week are likely only a precursor to a larger deal. Similar litigation over previous concert disasters, like the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 60 dead or the 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100, were ultimately resolved with large settlements covering hundreds of victims.