CCME 2022: A Brand Experience to See Off Summer in Style

It’s undeniable that Coca-Cola is a brand with runaway success worldwide, and a festival born from it was never going to be any different.

The Coca-Cola Music Experience opened its doors for the first time in 2011, with the goal of creating a meeting point between younger audiences and music. Over the years, it has grown so much that the venue was changed and an extra day was added to the experience.

The show, which has come to be crowned as the biggest fandom festival held in Spain, has featured internationally renowned artists such as Aitana, Bizarrap, Måneskin, Manuel Turizo, Sebastián Yatra, and Tini.

But what does it take to pull off a festival of this scale?

More Than 50,000 Attendees: How Do You Control Such a Massive Influx of People?

In 2022, the Coca-Cola Music Experience ran for two twelve-hour days, with around 25,000 people coming through each day. Making a festival of this scale possible requires strict access control. How is it done?

Ticket validation for access control is organizers’ biggest ally, since it allows entries to be checked reliably and, on top of that, gives a real-time count of attendees. All of this runs through the Exyt-Events app, backed by the necessary equipment deployment.

Validators, equipped with PDAs and using the QR code printed on the tickets, checked the authenticity and validity of each one at the different access points around the venue. The platform, which gives live oversight of validation levels, could even flag tickets that were:

• Duplicated
• Invalid
• Counterfeit

Ticket validation is also paired with access control at the venue. Thanks to NFC wristbands, a simple tap between wristband and PDA was enough to log an attendee’s entry or exit.

This easy exchange of data becomes a real advantage: it lets organizers stay within set capacity limits and know in real time how many people are on site, all through the availability of live reports and data.

What is Exyt-Events? It’s an app that brings together every sales channel on a single platform, allowing all event access to be validated and controlled quickly and securely. This solution makes it possible to manage multiple venues, spaces, formats, and ticket types at the same time.

Access Management: Open to Every Kind of Attendee

At the Coca-Cola Music Experience, access wasn’t limited to the general public, who had to buy tickets to enjoy the festival — there were other groups beyond the usual ones too.

The staff who worked before, during, and after the event are one example. It makes sense that they wouldn’t follow the same procedure as the general public, since their access requires its own specifications. Meeting those needs relies on knowing the participating companies well, along with the roles and workers involved.

Once the work-related information was collected, attendees were segmented according to their group through Exyt’s Acreditados platform, in order to give them the right access. So what groups existed to structure accredited access? At the 2022 festival, they included:

• Support staff
• Technicians
• Press
• Artists

Exyt’s management wasn’t limited to identifying people, either — it also covered the vehicles of authorized staff or VIP attendees.

In every case, the accreditation process included sending an email to attendees with details such as access information or their accreditation attached. On top of that, thanks to the Acreditados platform, managing all these groups was made simple, since it allows organizers to:

Minors: An Audience That Needs Special Attention

The Coca-Cola Music Experience isn’t just a festival that allows minors in — it’s one where they’re a key audience taken into account throughout the entire organization. In fact, specific measures have been put in place and every detail has been handled with care to protect them as much as possible.

Attendees under 14 had to come to the event accompanied by an adult. Those above that age could attend unaccompanied, thanks to the festival’s welcoming environment. On top of that, while every attendee had to complete registration after buying their ticket, minors had the added feature of being linked to an adult guardian. That way, if any incident occurred, everyone would be accounted for and it would be easy to locate their family member or guardian.

Given that the festival is also attended by adults — and, as a result, sells drinks not suitable for minors — an alternative was put in place to protect younger attendees.

The idea was to create wristbands for anyone under 18, making them easily recognizable to bar staff so they could be kept out of adult areas and prevented from buying alcoholic drinks. These wristbands featured:

A Festival Without Cards or Cash: The Cashless Era

More and more events, festivals especially, are choosing a cashless NFC system to make payments easier during the event. There’s no question this method is an improvement, making for a more convenient experience for attendees, who no longer need to handle cash, cards, or even their smartphones. Wristbands become an all-in-one solution, combining event access, balance top-ups, and spending on site.

At the Coca-Cola Music Experience, once tickets had gone through validation, every attendee was given a wristband fitted with NFC wireless technology, enabling data exchange between devices and the wristband to make spending within the venue easier.

Thanks to this, attendees could head to the different food and drink stalls to order and pay using nothing but their wristband. Paying was as quick and easy as tapping the wristband against the PDA device.

But how did that wristband have balance on it in the first place? Attendees could top it up at the cashless stations located around the venue, adding funds with cash or card. This could be done as many times as needed, and attendees even had the option to request a refund for any unused balance.

But cashless payment offers benefits that go beyond that — benefits organizers can take advantage of too. With the right tools, the process is simplified and the risk of fraud is cut both externally, allowing real-time control of the flow of money, and internally, reducing fraud that could come from staff. It also breaks down barriers like connectivity, since the system can run independently of it.

Being able to gather data on this service creates the opportunity to learn its strengths and weaknesses, setting a precedent for future editions aimed at year-on-year improvement and better resource optimization. This innovation has marked a real leap forward in internal management and customer service.

A Digital Partner From Ticket Purchase to Event Close

After two days of music, two twelve-hour days non-stop, the Coca-Cola Music Experience has established itself as one of the favorite family leisure plans for closing out the summer.

Many elements are essential to keeping up the success, innovation, and buzz, the venue, the organization, the technical crew, or the artists themselves. But there are other key services that keep a festival running as planned: ticket validation, capacity control, accreditation, tracking and registering minors, or cashless payment.