Festivals Warning: Don’t Buy Dodgy Wristbands

Anyone who thought using wristbands at festivals was foolproof might have to think again.

Reg Walker of Iridium Security, who deal with some of the biggest festivals in the country, warned the UK Festival Conference (which took place in London yesterday) that he feared criminal gangs were ready to flood the market next year with what describes as “highly convincing” fakes.

“What’s worrying is the quality of the wristbands, right down to the bar-code. They’re highly convincing and virtually indistinguishable from the real item. And when you have hundreds of people all trying to get through the gates, the pressure is on the security staff to let people in.”

He believes that this problem was about to become a major headache, as gangs significantly step up operations, targeting the likes of Download and Sonisphere:

“The amount of effort and expense they have gone to, means it is not commercially viable to produce these in their hundreds. I believe it was a test run and that next year there is a plan to manufacture them in their thousands. One or more of the major festivals is going to get hit unless we deal with this now. This is the most serious problem and the most serious challenge we face in 2010.”

Almost all festivals these days use wristbands for entry and exit. And all this means one thing: don’t get conned by dodgy ‘agencies’ or touts, online or otherwise.