Sacramento State made crowd safety ‘mistakes’ for Lil Yachty concert, expert says
One of the world’s leading crowd safety experts said the concert after the Sacramento State homecoming game on Saturday night met “no industry standards” for events.
Paul Wertheimer, who founded the company Crowd Management Strategies, reviewed videos students posted to TikTok of the chaos at the game. He said the university made “all the mistakes they could possibly make,” leading to a situation that could have been a lot worse, even lethal.
More than 20,000 people attended Saturday’s homecoming game against the Northern Colorado Bears, making it the university’s most-attended homecoming game and its third-most-attended game ever, according to the college. Following the Hornets win over the Bears, rapper Lil Yachty was scheduled to play a concert which was cut short due to crowd control and sound issues.
University spokesperson Lanaya Lewis declined to answer The Sacramento Bee’s inquiries about event safety and directed the reporter to university President Luke Wood’s Instagram post.
Wood wrote in the caption of a photo of himself with Lil Yachty that the university opted to end the rapper’s set earlier than planned “due to behavior from some community members (not our students) that did not meet our standards of decorum.” He said that the homecoming game, in which the Hornets defeated the Northern Colorado Bears 40-35, was still a “great success.”
Wertheimer said that it is the event organizers, not concertgoers, who are culpable for the dangerous conditions at Saturday’s show.
“When the university president gets up there and pontificates that it’s outsiders, he’s just setting up a legal defense,” Wertheimer said.
Regardless of who was responsible for the crowd’s behavior — and contrary to university spokesperson Lewis saying there were no injuries — students in attendance reported experiencing bruises, cuts, breathing problems and asthma attacks and witnessing others seriously bleeding.
What happened at the Sacramento State Lil Yachty concert
TikTok videos show attendees jumping over barricades and sprinting to the stage at the edge of the field after the game concluded. Students who attended say that they received conflicting messages from security about how the transition from game to concert was supposed to proceed.
Freshman Kayle Brent said that “security looked confused” and that there was no effort to hold people back from jumping the barricades and running onto the field.
Fadaka-Soetan was one of the eager Lil Yachty fans that followed people onto the field and managed to get close to the stage alongside her friend, Brent. She noted that a group of young women requested to be pulled out because they were uncomfortable with pressure from the crowd behind them.
Once at the barricade, Fadaka-Soetan started to experience similar discomfort. The show was delayed as security personnel were working to reunite children who got separated from their parents. TikTok videos show security calling out the names of missing children on the mic as the audience chanted for Yachty to come onstage.
The mayhem began in earnest when Yachty took the stage and the back of the crowd pushed forward.
“In the beginning it was cramped but we could still move,” Brent said. “As soon as he came out it was a huge push — there were so many waves going forward, backward, side-to-side. It was really hard to gain control of yourself.”
Fadaka-Soetan was stuck between the front barricade, being held by security personnel, and the crowd pushing into her from behind. She described the people pushing into her as mostly “grown men” and doubted that they were university students.
“My stomach is at the metal barricade getting pushed into it, and the security guards are pushing back,” she said. “It was so painful.”
Meanwhile, Yachty was encouraging the crowd to dial up their energy and create a moshpit.
“Open up the mother f------ moshpit,” he said into the mic. In a video Fadaka-Soetan posted to TikTok, audience members can be heard screaming in terror. One yells out “He’s going to kill us.”
“Everyone’s already going crazy — he has the best view of what’s going on, and he’s saying all this stuff to get people to react even more. It was so frustrating,” Fadaka-Soetan said.
Fadaka-Soetan and Brent got separated from one another as the former was stuck against the barricade and the latter was being pulled backward into the crowd. Brent, who was having trouble breathing, managed to get out of the crowd with a group of young women begging security to be let out.
Fadaka-Soetan eventually fell with the barricade as it broke. The contents of her wallet spilled on the ground and she was stepped on. She pleaded with a security guard to let her out, and after several minutes she was let out of the crowd.
Just after she began walking away, Yachty abruptly stopped in the middle of a performance of his song “NBAYOUNGBOAT,” gestured to others onstage to cut the music and then exited the stage. Concertgoers estimate that he played eight minutes of his planned 25-minute set.
Crowd safety experts react
Crowd-safety expert Wertheimer said “Festival seating,” or a standing room environment, is the most dangerous and deadly crowd dynamic in live events.
He said that it was the university’s responsibility to create a security plan that would prevent chaos. He pointed out that with the known circumstances ahead of the game — a record number of attendees, the excitement that comes with a homecoming game, the fact that many people would be drinking alcohol, the draw that the artist has to people outside the school community and the reputation Lil Yachty has for inciting crowd surge at previous concerts — event organizers should have known to create a much more robust safety protocol.
Spencer Fomby, a former police lieutenant with crowd safety expertise, emphasized the danger in transitioning from a seated event to a standing room on an open field, especially without a system, infrastructure or staff in place to ensure safety and orderliness.
Many students reported conflicting responses from the security staff in the time between the game and the concert. It is unclear whether the concert was meant to be open to everyone attending the game or if the stage was supposed to be accessible only to those with tickets or wristbands.
Rappers Quavo and Blxst are set to perform at Hornet home games on Friday and Nov. 15, respectively. Wood wrote in his Instagram post that a revised plan is being developed for Friday’s concert.
University spokesperson Lewis, on behalf of the university, declined to answer questions about security protocols, how they would adapt their practices for future post-game concerts and how much Yachty was paid to perform.
“It’s quite clear to me that the president got out in front pointing the finger at somebody else for the fact that they had little to no crowd management,” Wertheimer said. “He had time for a photo-op with the artist but didn’t have time to make sure the crowd was protected.”
Both Fomby and Wertheimer likened the situation to the crowd crush at the 2021 Astroworld Festival, which caused 10 deaths, 25 hospitalizations and nearly 5,000 total injuries.
