If you’re one of the people who went to the Mardi Gras after party this weekend, you’re probably still scrubbing glitter out of places that you didn’t know had glitter. There’s a 50% chance that you’re also still fuming over not being able to get in to the main event after spending a decent chunk of money on tickets. If you’re one of those people, then take some comfort in the fact that the whole Mardi Gras after party was such a screw up that The NSW Fair Trading Commissioner is now involved.
If you hit up the clubs instead of heading to the afterparty, here’s what happened.
The official Mardi Gras after party was held at the Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park, and the organisers confirmed that the event sold out after 10,000 tickets were sold. There were five stages around the Quarter – four smaller ones and the main stage at Hordern Pavilion.
All well and good so far, except Hordern Pavilion has a maximum capacity of 5,500. The result was that thousands of people got stuck in lines all night, and missed out on seeing the show headlined by Sam Smith, Dua Lipa and Kesha.
Fair Trading Commissioner Rose Webb has said that she’s going to investigate whether or not people were mislead when they bought the Mardi Gras after party tickets.
“We are still looking into the circumstances of what happened,” she said.
“It’s one of those ones where you go, ‘Should they have only sold 5000 tickets because that’s what the Hordern Pavilion can take?’”
“At the moment it’s a bit hard to say categorically they’ve broken the law.”
For the people who bought Mardi Gras after party tickets, the outcome for you is going to depend on what the Fair Trading Commissioner finds. If she decides that the law wasn’t broken, then there’s not much you can do I’m afraid. If she finds that you were misled when you bought your tickets though, you’ll be entitled to a refund from Mardi Gras.
At this point, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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