Thousands of fans arrived at Black Rock Desert in Nevada this past week for the 2018 edition of Burning Man. The annual festival spanning for 10 days in the desert was almost cut short this year due to overcapacity. The Burning Man venue has a capacity of 70,000 attendees but police noticed that there were almost 1,000 more Burners in the venue this weekend.
Police at the event asked Burning Man to shut their event down for violating their capacity permit. However the event was allowed to carry on after they proved that enough Burners have left venue grounds.
Festivals and events often sell more tickets than the allowed number of attendees. Surprisingly many tickets go unused at every event and so to maximize on revenue, more tickets are sold to compensate those who don’t attend. But when events miscalculate, issues similar to the one that occurred at Burning Man this weekend arise leading to a chance of cancelation of the whole event. Fortunately for Burning Man this year, the issue all worked out and Burners were able to proceed with the final burn to close out another year of incredible festivities.