OFFSET SHOW 2025 - STATEMENT & CONTACT
Our refund-submissions form will close at 23:59 on Monday 12th May 2025.
Firstly, we would like to thank everybody for the significant growth of our event in 2025. We are truly humbled by just how much this event has increased in popularity in the last 12 months. Despite the issues of which we shall go into more detail below, the event itself was an overall success, again, because of you. We thank you for your continued support.
We would like to extend our sincere apologies to all attendees affected by the significant traffic issues during entry to Offset Show 2025. We acknowledge the frustration and disappointment caused by the delays, and we deeply regret that many of you were unable to enjoy the event as intended. On the day of the event, a series of unforeseen road incidents combined with overwhelming attendance levels and large amount of non-event traffic, led to severe congestion around the venue. These circumstances created a challenging and, in many cases, inaccessible route for guests arriving at peak times.
For those who did not witness any previously mentioned incidents, this is what occured... During the hours of 10am and 11am, a vehicle not attending the event was travelling South via Tredruston Road - This is the road that leads to the entrance of our General Public car park. This vehicle was greeted by another vehicle heading North on the same road, of which then caused a situtation whereby both vehicles attempted to let each other pass. One of the vehicles proceed to fall into the ditch that runs adjacent to the road, causing a complete blockage of the road itself - due to the amount of space required to recover the vehicle in a safe manor. This then initiated long term delays. Our events team, along with third-party security, did everything possible to clear the incident as quickly as possible including physically removing the vehicle from it's location, as well as doing everything that they could on-the-spot to aid in the congestion caused. However, due to the extreme levels of traffic, long term queues still insued beyond this point. Neither of these vehicles were attending the event.
We have seen a number of social media comments stating that we cannot use this incident as an excuse for the traffic issues that occured. We understand this mindset and would like to respond by saying - Incidents of this nature can and will cause extreme traffic delays of varying lengths, much like on a motorway when a minor incident occurs of which causes many hours of traffic. You then sit in these queues before getting to the incident location and see nothing as it has all been cleared. This is what occured with this particular incident.
Why did we not open other entry gates? Due to many of our team being assigned the task of clearing said incident, as well as handling the mass on-foot traffic at multiple entry gates, we did not have the man power to open other gates and get everybody in safely. Please remember that we cannot simply just open gates and allow mass-egress without an established parking-scheme or pre-planned safety procedures in place at these new gates, and these systems cannot be thrown together on-the-spot without significant pre-planning, to ensure the safety of our attendees. Opening multiple gates without all of this in place could have resulted in even more chaos, with vehilces crossing lines of traffic at multiple ends of the venue.
Traffic Plan - In previous years, our traffic management plan has been more than adequate. We have even discussed the plan working too well for the level of attendance we've had in previous years. Due to previous attendance figures being our primary reference point for predicting this year's footfall, we assumed that adding a dedicated exit route would be a sufficiant change that the sceheme required. We'd also like to state until the previously mentioned incident occured, the plan was working. Yes, there were queues forming, however they were moving steadily up until this point. We are not using this incident as an excuse, however until it occured the traffic was flowing - slowly, but steadily flowing. We'd also like to state that all traffic plans were approved by all of the correct governing bodies - we are in no way blaming these departments, but would like to assure you as our attendees that all protocals were followed.
To conclude, the combination of mutliple traffic incidents taking place prior to 12pm on the day of the event (x1 mentioned above, x1 close to the venue on the A39, x1 on the B3314 - a main route adjoining onto the A39), as well as massive on-the-day guests arriving, and general traffic levels on a sunny day in Cornwall, resulted in exteme traffic congestion whilst attendees were attempting to enter Offset Show 2025.
Localised News Outletts - Before going into detail on how we're going to make this situation right for you all, we'd like to address the inquiries stating that the event was not advertised enough. . Since 2020, we have attempted to make contact with multiple localised news outlets to assist in spreading the word of the event, both for advertising purposes as well as assisting local residents with learning of the event taking place. We have had minimal response from these outlets, excluding x1 radio interview in 2021. We have noticed multiple online articles being published post-event this year, however none of our pre-event contact attempts were acknowledged. We are disappointed by this and feel that this is a massive lack of journalistic responsibility to local residents, as pre-event coverage would assist everybody massively compared to all of the post-event articles we have seen. We hope that future events receive some form of coverage to assist in locals learning of the event taking place. In regards to our advertising - In 2025, we spent upwards of £20,000 on social media advertising, with one of our main adverts being a "expect traffic delays in the area" to assist in local knowledge of the event taking place. This particular advert was seen by over 114,000 individuals (as per statistics provided by Meta), however local non-event traffic was still very high during peak times.
How are we going to make this right? - Due to the traffic issues being initiated by circumstances out of our control, and the traffic flowing up until these incidents, we are not obliged to refund any un-scanned tickets. That being said, we are commited to making this right for people. We will also be putting all profits from this year's event straight into a dedicated third-party traffic management scheme in 2026.
- FREE TICKET ROLL-OVER! Thankfully due to all of our pre-sales being a QR code based system, we can see who's tickets were scanned and who's weren't, on the day of the event. We are going to be giving all UN-SCANNED ticket holders, a FREE ticket for Offset Show 2026. This will be done automatically via email shortly, but please note that it can take time to generate the new ticket. We will honour this promise - keep an eye on your spam folder.
- NO ticket price increase in 2026! Despite us now turning VAT registered and 20% of every ticket sale going to the government in the form of VAT tax. We will take the hit so that you don't have to.
- CHEAPER TICKETS FOR LONGER! All early bird prices will be extended beyond the deadline of previous years, meaning cheaper tickets will be available for longer.
- We will also be cutting our marketing budget, to reduce the online exposure of the event. This budget cut will then be put straight into paying for a dedicated third-party traffic management scheme.
We understand that many of you may still wish to get in touch, which is why we've provided a form below for you to do so. Please note, that all complaints filed outside of this form may not be processed. We'd also like to make you aware that all social media comments & messages will not be classed as official complaints, due to us requiring the complaints to be processed below, so that our system can automotically detect your order information along with your contact information.
Finally, we'd like to thank everybody for their feedback this year - good or bad. Every email comment, message and letter will be taken on board to ensure improvements where necessary at future events. We hope to see you all in attendance at Offset Show 2026, and keep an eye on our social media for more updates coming soon.
Thank you,
The Offset Show Team
Our refund-submissions form will close at 23:59 on Monday 12th May 2025.
Complete the form below: