Crowd chaos after first of Ed Sheeran's two Divide Tour concerts at Disneyland

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The British musician put on a spectacular show but unclear exit routes meant fans had a tough time leaving the venue

Kelly Ho |
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Crowds w

Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour 2019 finally came to Hong Kong on Wednesday night. While the British singer-songwriter delivered a spectacular performance, the buzzkill came at the end when fans had difficulty leaving the venue.

The first of the two nights of the Hong Kong leg of Sheeran’s tour took place last night at the Hong Kong Disneyland Fantasy Road Outdoor Venue. After the concert finished at around 10.30pm, audience members began to move from the spectator stands to an open area inside the ticketed zone to get to the public transportation interchange. But the crowd soon converged at a narrow main exit gate set up by the organiser, AEG Presents Asia, which led to overcrowding.

“I struggled to get to the public transport because it was really crowded within the exit area,” said our junior reporter Arabella Sharkey of the Canadian International School of Hong Kong, who was attending the gig to review it for Young Post.

Bernice Tsang, who was also at the show, said it took her at least 30 minutes to leave the main gate. Although there was signs pointing to different types of transport, people did not know they had to exit through the main gate batch by batch, before they could walk towards the bus and train stations.

“Basically the crowd exit plan at the Ed Sheeran concert is the worst I have ever experienced,” she said. “It is ridiculous how the organiser created a bottleneck point,” said Tsang, who has worked in event management for six years.

She said there could have been a stampede if someone had started pushing.

AEG Presents Asia did not respond to requests for comment.

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