High costs have forced Vivid Sydney organisers to not hold a drone show at this year’s edition of the festival, themed Dream.
The high costs come from the increased need for public safety resources following last year’s near-crowd crushes of 94,000 people at the 1st of 3 drone shows, which has now resulted in New South Wales (NSW) Police & Transport For NSW raising concerns around the drone show format & its crowd management, which were shockingly to be the same measures/format as last year’s disastrous implementation. A quarter of a million people attended last year’s 1st drone show, over double the average daily attendance.
Another claimed reason is reports of drones falling from the sky during major events worldwide.
When Vivid first held a drone show in 2016, it took 6 years for the next one to be held.
The media launch of Vivid Sydney 2025 – Dream will be held next Wednesday.
Unfortunately, we have had to make the difficult decision not to proceed with drones this year.
The changes required to mitigate the safety risk at Vivid Sydney 2025 created a significant increase in cost.
We don’t want to tip all our money into those costs or into those measures.
In the broader context of rising costs for staging events, Destination NSW has decided this is not the best allocation of resources
What we prefer to do is have a really successful event for 2025.
Karen Jones, Acting Destination NSW Chief Executive Officer
Opinion
As far as Sydney Spectaculars is aware, only 1 drone has ever fallen at Vivid Sydney. A total of 10,500 drones have flown since the 1st drone show in 2016. Making it a 1 in 10,500 chance that a drone would fall at Vivid so very unlikely. While there have been significant malfunctions at other events globally including in Australia, these are rare. The drone shows are also held over Circular Quay with a launch from a barge in Campbell’s Cove. Drones are more likely to fall into the Quay then onto Campbell’s Cove crowds & if they did, Campbell’s Cove only needed to be sealed off. Drones may go wayward flying wherever they want but that is hard to predict to occur particularly as they are not programmed to do that. It is highly likely, in our opinion, that the real sole reason for the drone show’s non-appearance in 2025 is due to last year’s crowd crushes.
However, to add more drone shows to spread the crowd out (unlike last year, when they surprisingly reduced the amount of drone shows despite their popularity), probably is currently too expensive for the event. The most drone shows Vivid has ever held in 1 edition is 8. To make drone shows at Vivid Sydney safe, they need 35: 1 per night except on Friday, the weekends & the King’s Birthday public holiday, when 2 per night should be held. As drone show costs continue to decline, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they return eventually but this may not be for a generation (30 years) at the current rate of growth.
NSW Police & Transport For NSW effectively admitted their incompetence for last year’s edition by saying this year’s proposed drone shows, which were shockingly planned to be the same as last year just with a different theme, were unsafe when last year’s clearly were also & they didn’t say a word. We all saw the outcome of that.
A relaunch of Elevate Sydney, Sydney’s 1st annual drone show, which was axed in 2023 due to NSW Government cost cutting, should now be considered, though maybe held in a different time slot to increase crowds. It was previously held in the week after New Year’s Eve, when Sydney is still recovering from its big night & thus receiving low crowds. However, any relaunch needs to have attendance capped to 70,000 with the number of shows held proportional to the total interest in the drone shows to prevent the Vivid situation. As stated before, this is a minimum of 35 shows during the Vivid period. Unlike Elevate, Vivid‘s drone show crowds though were amplified by the dense crowds already attending Vivid on those nights, which the event was already infamous for.
Sydney Spectaculars 
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