Post #5 - Event review - Bacardi NH7 Weekender Music Festival

Event - Bacardi NH7 Weekender Music Festival.

Location - Pune, India. 

Official link - https://www.facebook.com/nh7weekender/
Review period - Dec 2018

Quick review

Brief Background

• NH7 weekender is one of the biggest music festivals of India touring multiple cities and covers diverse genres including rock jazz, reggae to name a few. There is also fair inclusion of electronic music.

• It is a great platform for famous as well as independent and emerging artists from India and around the world.

• Pune is the home city of the event, where it happened for the first time in 2010. Since then it has been to several cities including Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Noida, Kolkata and Shillong.

Attendees stats

• Total attendees - Officials figures for 2018 event are not out yet, as per our observation, an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people were present at the event at a time on the last day of the event.

• Gender ratio - Women : men felt roughly like 1 : 2.5 inside, in the food stalls section. We could not do enough sampling though. While entering the event on the first day, a random counting of the people walking towards the entry gate gave a ratio of 1:3.

• Dressing - While the men are generally dressed well covered, a lot of females come wearing very revealing dresses. It would be difficult to write down a ratio but, at least 10 girls could be seen wearing only lingerie like bras (please let us know in comments if you know what are these called) to cover their tops. Though last year, the ratio of girls wearing tops exposing their midriff was higher, with almost 1 in every 7 girls doing so, this year it came down to almost 1 in every 15 or more. The acceptance of those lingerie like bras seemed to increase this year.

• Age ranges - Majority below 25 years. 18 to 21 seemed to be a significant group.

Other information

• Fun activities - There were stuff like life size fussball booths, where people would position themselves like the human figures on rods in a game of fussball. Also, there was a photo booth which captured photos of people jumping on a trampoline from multiple angles and sent them a compiled version of those. However, in past years, there could be seen one or two people, once in a while holding a "Free Hugs" banner in earlier years, whereas not even a single such boy or girl could be seen this time. There was also a "Camp Tinder" in the 2017 edition, which was absent this year. Although it was not a dating booth, as there was no blind dating sort of thing going on there, the crowd was just hanging out or playing some games or listening to some smaller casual jams by the artists. 

• That year, there was also an "It's a match" phone screen cutout with face cuts wherein two people could put their faces and get a photo.

• Event entry - Regular tickets priced at approx 3500 INR for 3 days, with discounts for those under 21 and for early bird and pre-season sale.

• Event rules - Alcohol is served only to those above 25 years of age. Bands are issued to attendees at the registration counters after verifying their identifications. Sections serving alcohol were gated and bouncers at those gates allowed entry for those with the alcohol bands only. 

• There were designated smoking zones. Checking was done at the entries to prevent those with drugs.

• Food and other stalls - 

• There were two large food courts, with varieties of food from different cuisines, lots of T-shirt stores with nice designs and alcohol being served next in at least two arenas.