More than 700,000 attend Saudi Arabia's top music festival
- By AFP -
- Dec 21, 2021
Record crowds of over 700,000 revellers flocked to Saudi Arabia’s MDLBeast Soundstorm music festival, authorities said Monday.
The electronic music festival saw international entertainers and musicians — including superstar French DJ David Guetta — perform at the event.
The festival, which ended on a Sunday, comes as Saudi Arabia sees a spike in coronavirus cases amid increased fears over the spread of the new omicron variant.
Over the four days, 732,000 people flocked to the event, “one of the largest music festivals in the world,” said Turki al-Sheikh, head of Saudi’s General Entertainment Authority.
The festival has since its launch in 2019 witnessed large crowds who can freely mingle.
“We’ve never seen anything like this in Riyadh before — crowds, music, VIP rooms,” one Saudi woman, who attended the festival, told AFP.
The rise of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in 2017 has ushered in a number of reforms.