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Background

Official logo for the 2021 edition of the Astroworld Festival

The Astroworld Festival is an annual music event founded by American rapper and hip hop songwriter Travis Scott in 2018, taking its name from his third album. The event was organized and managed by Live Nation and its affiliates. Apple Music streamed Scott's performance live.

Preparations

The 2021 festival was planned for two consecutive nights. Tickets were sold out in under an hour upon going on sale in May, and 100,000 in total were expected to attend. Authorities initially planned to limit attendees to 70,000 the first night, and that was reduced to 50,000 closer to the event, even though city fire codes permitted 200,000 people. The city of Houston and Harris County organized security for the event, with both Mayor Sylvester Turner and NRG Park General Manager Mark Miller claiming more than 1,000 security staff and police were present, more than double the total from the prior Astroworld concert, with the city specifically providing more for the festival than it had for the 2021 World Series, which had ended in Houston three days earlier. Inquiries to verify those numbers from the Houston Chronicle as of December 3 were declined.

NRG Park, owned and managed by the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation (HCSCC), also had two new gates and expanded room for crowd traffic flow added to their setup from the year prior around the 'Yellow Lot' parking area on which the festival was held, one of a series of them that surround NRG Arena, according to Miller on November 17. Despite the NRG campus being on county property, with local jurisdiction laws, the city of Houston and its fire marshal had the final say on the festival's permits, approving all ten regarding pyrotechnics, street closures, food safety, gas and electrical usage, and other contingencies, but Houston Police Department (HPD) Chief Troy Finner said on November 10 his department had no part in the writing or agreements of the original contract.

Executives from ASM Global, a company merger in October 2019 between venue management group SMG and entertainment presenter AEG, used by HCSCC to run booking and day-to-day facility operations, voiced concerns for weeks about the ratio of guests to staff. ScoreMore Shows, an Austin-based concert promoter in charge of the concert and Live Nation subsidiary upon the latter obtaining controlling stake in May 2018, offered to remedy this with supplemental staff hired on its own, but Harris County had exclusive agreements for NRG Park with crowd management and event security contractor Contemporary Services Corporation (CSC). As a result, on November 4, 2021, Harris County signed its first ever amendment to its contract with ScoreMore for the promoter to provide more security and medical staff of its choosing, however, whether they fulfilled their promises in that amended clause or if Harris County ever verified it and how remained unclear as of December 3. Parking staff requested that HPD close two major thoroughfares outside the complex beginning November 3 in order to avoid property destruction and stampedes similar to those seen in 2018 and 2019, with no word as of November 10 on whether the request was granted.

The initial version of the event operations plan, prepared by ScoreMore as part of Harris County's licensee agreement through ASM Global, included eventualities such as deaths, traumatic injuries, severe weather, an active shooter, civil unrest, lost persons, missing children, and unruly fans, but not contingencies for a surging crowd or mosh pit safety, nor mention of the 2019 Astroworld gate breach or prior security issues at Scott's concerts. Despite reports of subsequent revisions of the plan, several entities, including HCSCC, claimed to have never obtained them prior to the event. Early attendees recalled and experts post-incident observed a festival layout with little signage, poor lighting, a mainstage never utilized all day to assist with crowd control, only two water stations with line times near 45 minutes, minimal exit points from the festival's main venue, quadrants 100 feet (30 m) wide conducive to severe and unmanageable crowd surges, and access aisles too narrow for security and medical staff to move safely and efficiently. One lawsuit against Apple Music claimed early reports stated the streamer's camera team and equipment surrounded the quadrant barriers that split the premises horizontally and vertically, arguing concertgoers means of dispersal and/or exit were cut off in planning in favor of better vantage points for the cameras. Multiple ticket purchasers said they received neither an invoice nor a brochure for directions or best practices with their wristbands that came last-minute in the mail, while others were lost in transit entirely.

At the time of the incident, the head of risk management for security personnel, the security director, the interior and exterior security directors, and the company they all worked for were not listed in the Texas Department of Public Safety's private security license database. In a document obtained by CNN, the chain of command indicated the concert's executive producer and its festival director were the only people authorized to stop the concert, but the report did not specify who held those roles. Specific crowd control techniques to spot or prevent problematic behavior were also not detailed in the document.

HPD claimed to have 528 on-duty officers at the festival, including 367 for the night shift and 161 held over from the day, while early reporting indicated event organizer Live Nation provided another 755 security officers, including 505 event security staff, 91 armed private security officers and 76 off-duty officers from HPD paid privately, but all of those totals were later called into question, with no secondary verification as of November 18. HPD Chief Troy Finner disputed Live Nation's totals specifically, given what he described as poor record-keeping from the three to four security companies under their purview. Paramedical needs were covered by ParaDocs Worldwide, a contractor from Brooklyn, New York, which established a main medical tent and smaller aid stations around the venue.

Early reporting indicated the Houston Fire Department (HFD) stationed twenty ambulances outside the venue ahead of the concert, but Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association (HPFFA) President Marty Lancton later disputed that total, saying there were none of his personnel inside the venue as it was owned by the county, and they only had four staff members on standby outside. Early reporting estimates from HFD officials indicated around 50 ParaDocs personnel, but ParaDocs CEO Alex Pollak later disputed that total, saying they had 70 on the ground and clarified they did not own any ambulances, but five to seven were contracted separately to serve Astroworld. As only NRG exclusive vendors could be used for ambulance needs per the event's license, HFD logs at 1:21 p.m. indicated all five of the Harris County's Emergency Corps ambulances were already being used for the event which had to be supplemented by another private ambulance company that was an exclusive NRG vendor.