A security guard and an unidentified man check out an area where
several people were killed as they were caught in a surging crowd. 

The general-admission ticketing policy for rock concerts at Cincinnati’s
Riverfront Coliseum in the 1970s was known as “festival seating.” That
term and that ticketing policy would become infamous in the wake of one
of the deadliest rock-concert incidents in history. Eleven people, including
three high-school students, were killed on December 3, 1979, when a crowd
of general-admission ticket-holders to a Cincinnati Who concert surged
forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime
unreserved seats inside.

Festival seating had already been eliminated at many similar venues in the
United States by 1979, yet the system remained in place at Riverfront
Coliseum despite a dangerous incident at a Led Zeppelin show two years
earlier. That day, 60 would-be concertgoers were arrested, and dozens
more injured, when the crowd outside the venue surged up against the
Coliseum’s locked glass doors.

Cincinnati police officers help people crushed during a stampede at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati.