Aye, they did give away a heck of a lot of tickets. This was for the Friday night though. Mainly because it wasn't being supported locally. People travelled from all over the UK, Europe & even as far as South America to see Sasha & Diggers play together again. But bizarrely it didn't capture the imagination of the local crowd.
The problems regards the overcrowding on Saturday wasn't related. I don't think the event overall was oversubscribed, I think they just underestimated how busy the main arena, the outside arena & the DnB arena would be (and overestimated how busy their arena 2 would be!). The busy (rammed) 3 were the closely grouped together on the site. The walkways to each were convergence points, and this is where the bottle neck occurred.
When Coxy jumped on in the main arena and everyone flocked there, it was just perfectly busy in arena 2 for Dubfire - loads of space. Room for another few hundred, maybe even thousand people. I think it just needed better planning in regards to layout and set-times.
As for the bars, here is their problem: every year the bar situation seems to be a nightmare. So many people complain - and rightly so. But this prompts them to hire a new company to run the bars on the next event. Which kind of makes sense - why would you give the people who f*** it up another chance, right? But it also means that there is no continuity. The people who ran the bars last time may have fudged up, but maybe **maybe** they could learn lessons and get it right next time around. A new company? Sure. They have no prior bad experience. But no experience of the venue and the logistical problems either. So, in all likelihood, we will see the same again.
The fact is it has been subpar for a while. And I personally think they'd be better of sticking with the same company, just negotiating a better fee based on their previous performance.
(Just as a sidenote to the above, the entire time I was in the main arena - which was busy throughout the day, but especially so immediately before and during Cox - the bar at the very back I got served almost immediately and they were well stocked throughout. So I think you just needed to pick your bars. Unhelpful if it is the other side of the site)
