When news emerged late on the night on November 5th that something had gone seriously wrong at the Astroworld festival in Texas, the world wanted answers. We later discovered a crowd crush had taken place and eight people were dead. Two more died in hospital later – the oldest was 27 and the youngest was only 9.

Lawsuits against Travis Scott, one of the organisers of the event, started to pile up quite quickly. I don’t know exactly how many there are at the moment – there was around 130 when I stopped counting a few weeks ago. But there was one group amidst all this which remained very quiet – and that was promoters Live Nation.

They had very little to say for themselves, and have said little since the tragedy happened. And I’m not the only person who’s noticed – so have Congress in the USA. The powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee have launched their own investigation into Live Nation. Yesterday, they sent a letter to Michael Rapino, Live Nation’s boss, with a list of questions.

They want to know about arrangements for crowd control at the festival, security, what plans were in place for dealing with an event like this, whether there were any concerns over safety expressed by anyone before the day – and what they plan to do to make sure such an event doesn’t happen again.

Michael Rapino and Live Nation must reply to the letter and provide documentation backing up what they say by January 7th – which will no doubt keep Live Nation’s solicitors very busy as they chomp on their Christmas turkeys this year. Someone from the company also has to go and answer questions from the committee – this person must be nominated by January 12th.

Standard procedure dictates this hearing would normally be held behind closed doors. But if the committee wasn’t satisfied with the answers they received at this hearing, it wouldn’t take long for things to go public. Would Live Nation honestly welcome the prospect of a long, drawn out public enquiry that goes into the inner workings of their company? Not likely…