Are these VIP boxes the future of socially distanced live concerts?
This concert venue may have a very important solution to live music in the coronavirus era.
About 2,500 people watched Sam Fender perform from 500 individual VIP-like platforms and pens in one of the UK’s first properly social-distanced concerts.
The outdoor show on August 11 was held at the Virgin Money Unity Arena, in Gosforth Park, Newcastle, where the private platforms and pens were all spaced about 6 feet apart. Boxes like these could be the future of live music, as COVID-19 limits the gathering of large groups, potentially for years.
“We are delighted to play a part in bringing back live music events as we start to emerge from lockdown,” Helen Page, group brand and marketing director at Virgin Money, told the BBC.
![Fans gather in private VIP-like boxes at the Sam Fender rock concert at the Virgin Money Unity Arena on August 11.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/vip-boxes-music-02.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=878)
![Each pen was spaced out about 6 feet.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/08/vip-boxes-music-01.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=878)
The venue sold out of tickets in minutes, the BBC reported. Next up at the arena will be Sir Van Morrison and Maxïmo Park.
Other venues have looked to drive-in concerts as a potential solution for entertaining safely, including one in the Hamptons featuring the Chainsmokers that was later described as a “fiasco.”
The Virgin Money Unity Arena scene, captured on video by Kieron Donoghue, was a stark contrast to events here in the states, where ’90s Shrek-rock band Smash Mouth performed for a definitely-not-social-distanced crowd of thousands in South Dakota. Photos showed a packed, mostly mask-less crowd.
“We’re all here together tonight! F - - k that COVID shit!” Smash Mouth frontman Steve Harwell, 53, said onstage, earning cheers from the crowd at the biker-friendly festival.