A security guard at London’s O2 Academy Brixton, which has been closed since a fatal crowd crush occurred at the venue in mid-December, has alleged in a BBC report that other guards regularly took bribes to let people in without tickets.
Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, and security guard Gaby Hutchinson, 23, both died after a show by Afrobeats star Asake on 15 December, with several more injured.
The guard, speaking anonymously to reporters from BBC Radio’s File on Four, said that staff working at Brixton Academy events would often let in “a couple of hundred” people in exchange for cash.
The guard said that the venue’s security contractor, AP Security, “knew what was going on and … did nothing about it”, and that bribery had been discussed in meetings with management but no guards accused of taking bribes had ever been reprimanded. AP Security did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on these allegations; Brixton Academy declined to comment on the allegations of bribery.
“When you let a few people in, they would text their friends, and they’ll text their friends,” the security guard said, saying that bribery was rampant across venues using AP Security staff. “The bouncers started being greedy, and it got out of hand.”
The security guard also told the BBC that the Brixton Academy was understaffed on the night of the Asake show, with about 110 security guards present as opposed to the 190 necessary for such an event, which was expected to draw a sold-out crowd of 4,921 people. (In a statement to the Guardian, Brixton Academy denied that there was insufficient security present, saying there were 157 security guards working on the night of the Asake show.)
The BBC also spoke to a concertgoer who attended a Fred Again show the week before the Asake show with a fake ticket. The attendee paid cash for a ticket that was sent to him on WhatsApp, and he was directed to a specific security guard onsite who let him in “really, really, fast, I would say fake-scanned”.
In the days after the Asake crowd crush, Lambeth council suspended Brixton Academy’s licence for three months. Earlier this week, it announced that the venue would remain closed until at least April, extending the licence suspension.
Police said that the closure was instigated to “allow time to work with the venue to facilitate a safe reopening and to ensure appropriate safeguards, aimed at improving public safety, are in place”.
In a statement earlier this week, Academy Music Group, the licence holder at Brixton Academy, said that it had “recognise[d] the gravity” of the incident and that the venue would remain closed indefinitely, even if its licence was reinstated.
“Academy Music Group (AMG) is committed to understanding what happened and cooperating with the various investigations that are under way, including providing full cooperation to the police,” it said.
This article was updated on 17 January 2023 to reflect that there were 157 security guards present on the night of the Asake show, not 158, as a spokesperson for the Brixton Academy previously said.
