Hurricane Faces RFID Storm

The Australian firm that supplied the RFID system at this year’s Hurricane Festival in Germany is disputing promoter FKP Scorpio’s version of why it wasn’t used.

FKP chief Folkert Koopmans told Pollstar the system wasn’t used because it wasn’t functioning correctly but Perth-based EITS Global claims it was due to “serious contract and other disputes around protection of the EITS intellectual property.”

“To our great disappointment, we were left with no choice but to cancel our involvement in that festival and to leave the site. It had nothing to do with technical issues or rollout problems,” the EITS website explained.

Koopmans, who tested the system at Hurricane after seeing it work at Australia’s Future Music Festival, may now face a legal wrangle with EITS.

He had set aside euro 250,000 ($312,000) to make refunds for the credits that some fans had already stored on their wristbands, only to find he had close to euro 100,000 ($125,000) left after they’d all been repaid.

“We had, for example, set aside euro 300 to compensate some fans who were claiming that they’d put euro 100 on the band,” Koopmans explained. “It now seems that some of them had problems activating the band on their way into the site and had more than one try to get in.

“We are now investigating the possibility that each time they tried, they activated a further euro 100 on the wristband without being aware of it,” he said.