Leeds Festival boss feared Netflix documentary Woodstock ’99 would lead to ‘copycat’ arson attacks

Melvyn Benn said fire safety measures at the 2022 event were stepped up after Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 landed on the streaming service just weeks before the August bank holiday. The three-part documentary told how the US music festival descended into riots and violence in 1999, 30 years after Woodstock’s first edition.

Mr Benn, the managing director of organisers Festival Republic, admitted to a group of Leeds councillors that knock-on disorder as a result of the programme had been a “worry”.

Speaking at a licensing committee meeting about last year’s Leeds Festival, he said: “At Woodstock ’99 there was fairly significant disorder and setting fire to tents and other infrastructure items. The concern I had was that there may be copycat activity at Leeds Festival, because the Netflix programme at that point in August last year was in the top 10 most watched Netflix programmes.

“We increased our fire provision very significantly across the weekend. It had been a dry period as well, but it was principally because of that (documentary). There was an increase in camp fires reported, but that deliberate vandalism and damage that we may have expected as a result of Woodstock ’99 being shown so widely didn’t materialise.”

Mr Benn told the committee that there were 29 rubbish fires reported in 2022, up from 17 in 2021. The number of recorded tent fires also rose, from two in 2021 to eight in 2022. Organisers are now set to ban campfires from this year, mainly to improve air quality.

Mr Benn added: “Probably for the last 10 years we’ve allowed camp fires less than knee height and less than a step wide to be permitted. We are banning them principally on environmental grounds from 2023. We think that will carry some good favour with our audience that come to the festival. It will, I hope, have an added benefit of potentially reducing tent fires.”

Videos emerged on social media of various tent fires this year, with one mum saying her daughter had been left shaking in fear as a fire raged near her own tent. Police said at the time that the tent fires had only been “sporadic” amid claims of “carnage” on the final night of the 2022 festival.