Coachella Breaks Attendance Record in First Weekend

The first weekend of this year’s Coachella festival set a new record for attendance at the annual event, NBC Los Angeles reports. According to the Indio, California police department, approximately 80,000-85,000 people attended each day of the three-day festival, up from 70,000-75,000 last year, the previous all-time high. This increase in attendance is all the more impressive as Coachella expanded to two consecutive weeks this year, with an identical lineup performing on the same grounds on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Along with the jump in attendance, there was also an increase in arrests at last weekend’s festival. The Indio Police Department took 134 concertgoers into custody, mainly for alcohol-related issues, up from 48 arrests last year. Still, given the enormity of the Coachella crowd, the audience was generally well-behaved. “Compared to other events, sometimes there are 200 arrests at football games,” Indio police spokesman Benjamin Guitron told NBC.