Organisers of Guns N’ Roses’ Dubai show at Autism Rocks Arena have responded to fan complaints of traffic congestion.
An estimated 30,000 attended the much-anticipated March 3 show that reunited Slash and Axl Rose on stage. The venue’s usual capacity had been increased by nearly 10,000 to meet demand.
However, many ticket-holders were stuck in traffic for hours and took to social media to express their dismay. Some claimed they missed parts, or all, of the show.
117Live, organisers behind the gig, had previously advised fans to get to the venue early to avoid traffic. Doors opened at 4pm to allow for early arrival. Guns N’ Roses took the stage at 9pm.
“With little experience of attending 30,000 capacity concerts in Dubai, there were some fans that did not take on-board the organiser’s warning of beating main road traffic by arriving early, thereby experiencing heavy highway traffic right before showtime for the Guns N’ Roses concert,” a 117Live press release read.
Previous large-scale concerts in Dubai included One Direction at the Sevens Stadium in 2015 (nearly 33,000 attendees) and the Rolling Stones at du Arena in Abu Dhabi in 2014 (approximately 30,000 attendees). Both ran relatively smoothly.
Autism Rocks Arena is a comparatively new venue to the city. It is a temporary, purpose-built site that opened in March of 2016 with a Nicki Minaj concert. Before its opening, Thomas Ovesen, CEO of 117Live, told tabloid! that a permanent 25,000 capacity venue would eventually be built adjacent to the temporary venue. Financing for this has since been put into place.
“We’re probably a month or so from revealing the drawings. It’s a pretty innovative, and new approach to design that will allow a combination of a sports and live entertainment venue to be based under a roof, so you have a shading and air-condition system that [will] allow us to do events into the hotter summer months as well,” said Ovesen over the phone on Tuesday.
“The whole idea was that we want to have that venue built here, and in the meantime, we want to get people accustomed to visiting the area for live events. That’s why we’re rolling out what I think, in a very soft market, is a very mpressive calendar of live events.”
Ovesen said in Monday’s press release that Autism Rocks Arena has welcomed over 65,000 guests thus far, 40,000 of them this month alone — 30,000 audience members attended Guns N’ Roses on March 3, while 10,000 watched Bryan Adams on March 9.
“In a market where public transportation is still being developed and implemented, and very large scale concerts are generally far and few in between, we will keep investing in transportation services and internal venue road system improvements, whilst working closely with the Dubai Authorities to also assist general road traffic for the very big events where the overwhelming part of the audience still will want to travel by the means of their own cars,” said Ovesen.
Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose told the audience that he himself had to avoid three-hour traffic to the venue by driving through the desert. Adams joked a week later that it had taken him hours to get to the relatively remote venue.
“Is this still Dubai? Are we still in Dubai? Because it took us four hours from the hotel to get out here,” he quipped.
117Live will be announcing more 2017-2018 shows in the coming weeks, according to the press release. Information regarding traffic and transport arrangements for their next big gig, Justin Bieber on May 6, will also be released.
