That would be funny.
“Ladies and gentlemen if I could have your attention please! Sir, you’re going to need to put the bong down and listen... Thank you.”
Yes, that’s funny but the reality is that people working at large festivals like this *should* be at least run through a short workshop on what to do in the event of some sort of incident. Where are the emergency exits? How do they work? All of that. But they’re not. They’re minimum wage workers. Or worse.
My friend and I roadied the San Francisco dates during the first Lalapalooza tour for $200 cash and two garbage bags of Camel cigarettes. Yeah, I’m serious. We worked a lot in the mornings and evenings but spent most of our time baked up and watching the bands. Any incident at all would have been a *complete* disaster because there were *no* emergency exits at all. IIRC there were two “entrances” that were choke points to guarantee that those who didn’t pay were kept out. This is the primary concern of the promoters - guaranteeing that only those who paid get in. Emergency exits are places where folks can sneak in which means they would need to hire more security to watch them - and that’s not going to happen.
Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for there to be an incident like this at some festival. My guess is the promoter will simply file bankruptcy and those who end up suing will get very little if anything.
When I was young many decades ago, drive-in movies were everywhere. Besides getting sneaked in via hiding in the trunk of friend's cars, sometimes I would sneak in via an emergency exit. Security never locked the gates, and rarely drove in that way. I turned off my lights, had a kill switch on the brake lights, and drove my car in that way to avoid paying.
You're right, first concern of promoters is to limit entrance to paying customers and reduce number of exits to limit non-paying customers. It's money first (otherwise no concert at all).