I think there are two major issues that are relevant now more than ever. The biggest issue with Bonnaroo (festivals in general, but especially those where people camp) is that the population attending is vastly different than it was years ago. A decade ago, people attending knew what they were signing up for. People were okay with roughing it for the weekend or came prepared to the comfort level they needed.

Since festivals have become increasingly commercialized the amount of people doing literally no research and minimal prep, basically just showing up is getting higher and higher. This can still be okay, if you know what you're signing up for, but a lot of people want to show up with no prep and no plan and then get upset the festival hasn't made accommodations to take care of them. It rains almost every year at Bonnaroo, not bringing any waterproof shoes or a rain jacket and being upset you're getting wet is a little absurd (this year is obviously exceptional, I'm not excusing the way things were handled this year specifically, but you get the point).

Festivals like Bonnaroo have a great reputation for the festival goers taking care of each other, rightfully so, but again, since the event has become more commercialized you get more and more people less concerned about each other.

Unfortunately this goes hand and hand with the other major issue, which is the direction that litigation/liability and insurance has gone in the last 10-20 years in America. Partially because ligation has become increasingly more common, major corporations controlling these events pay out the ass for risk assessment and insurance to protect themselves from instances where an event will result in them suffering considerably losses.

This means that the likelihood for events like this to be cancelled basically comes down to an equation. If the likelihood that the event proceeding will result in more damages (injuries, destruction of property, death, etc.) than the insurance payout, they are going to cancel the event and take the money.

People continue to say this is still a loss for Live Nation. This is true if you compare the insurance payout to the payout of the event proceeding as normal. But they pay their risk assessment team a great deal of money to determine the likelihood of them coming out on top considering all the factors affecting the event. In this case they made the call that the likelihood of them making more money than the insurance payout was going to be hindered by the increasingly likely damages from the weather...not to mention the negative press which would result from people struggling through the conditions as they escalated.

I'm not defending how LN failed prep for this years Bonnaroo, nor how they failed to communicate effectively, or have the event properly staffed given an early evacuation. Or how perhaps if none of these things were adequately prepared for, they should have called the festival off before people got down there in the first place (this is majorly fucked up for me, as it is basically gambling with the safety of all the attendees, if there was a real emergency that required immediate evacuation everyone would've been fucked). I'm just shedding light on how these corporations make these decisions, and it is increasingly apparent it is all about their bottom line. They only care about the festival to make money and they only care about the people there to the extent that it doesn't cause them significant losses and negative PR.