NEWS
BIGGER PICTURE
What: Download Festival Where: Donington Park, Leicestershire When: 10-14 June Image: Matt Higgs
With Glastonbury taking a fallow year, the mantle of the UK’ s biggest music festival this year was passed north to Download in Leicestershire. Promoted by Live Nation, the twenty third edition of the heavy rock event sold out in record time and was attended by 95,000 fans eager to catch headliners such as Limp Bizkit, Guns N’ Roses and Linkin Park.
Both Download’ s main‘ Apex’ stage and second‘ Opus’ stage were expanded this year on the back of a new partnership between Live Nation and Star Live. Designed and constructed using the company’ s Titan staging system, the Apex stage is now claimed to be the UK’ s largest festival stage.
The main arena area also saw four new 25m Titan SQ AV towers built, along with new infrastructure elements including V-Tower delay positions, FOH structures, camera platforms and viewing facilities.
Live Nation also invested in improved facilities in the campsites and an expansion of the nonmusic offering at Download. That involved new collaborations with Final Fantasy XIV and book series Fourth Wing, the creation of Rock School workshops and wellness activations.
Other new introductions this year included the Four Quarters Arcade Bar, that housed more than 20 arcade games, and the Hellfire Stage that hosted fire-cooking demonstrations and advice from expert chefs.
Download Festival promoter Andy Copping hired Far and Beyond( FAB) to take over the operational elements of the event in 2024. That marked a homecoming for FAB founder and CEO Jess Sheilds, who grew up in and around the hugely successful Donington Park event both literally and professionally.
6 accessaa. co. uk