Allegations of false advertising have been raised following the performance of popular nightclub act S Club 3 a week after originally publicised.
The group were initially booked to perform on Thursday October 21 at Tokyo, but Vision can reveal that despite continual advertising up until the 21st, Tokyo had actually planned for the act to perform the following week, on October 28.
The manager of the club commented to say that “due to unforseen circumstances, S Club 3 weren’t available to perform on the 21st,” though he did go on to say that he didn’t know why.
In fact, Vision has discovered that S Club 3 were actually booked to play at the Sheffield O2 Academy that evening, meaning they wouldn’t have been able to be in York in time for the Tokyo event.
October 21 was also the night of Viking Raid, meaning that Tokyo was already guaranteed a busy evening.
YUSU Democracy & Services Officer Dan Walker, who organised this year’s Viking Raid, spoke exclusively to Vision about these events, saying: “YUSU moved to book the largest Viking Raid, and indeed single student night ever attempted in York, over three routes and clubs including Tokyo. Tokyo also began advertising S Club 3 for the same night as the Raid.
“This had nothing to do with the ticket price or the running of Viking Raid from a union perspective. Tokyo’s promotion team informed me the day before the Raid that they would be moving the booking to the following week and asked me to publicise this fact.”
Walker noted that YUSU had not publicised S Club 3’s attendance of the event as the performers were a Tokyo-organised activity and not publicised by YUSU, and so he had responded to Tokyo to say that they should inform their mailing lists themselves, noting that clubs are “particularly adept at getting information out to students over Facebook.”
The Democracy & Services Officer went on to say that “As far as I’m aware Tokyo made no attempt to inform students of the change, which is a move I cannot personally condone.” He went on to praise students for exceptional behaviour on the night.
Vision questioned Tokyo’s manager about these accusations, who argued that an advert was put out on Facebook to inform students of the change in lineup. Nonetheless, students have claimed that such an advert never existed. After a thorough search of Tokyo communications to Facebook group members, Vision has been unable to detect any such notification to event attendees.
Even so, Tokyo’s manager has claimed that they did adequately inform people hoping to see S Club that night that they wouldn’t be in attendance until the following week. He went on to say that “It’s not as if we’re getting people to [the club] under false pretences – all our other acts have shown, and our future ones will do too.”
Students and other club goers first became aware of S Club’s no-show after signs went up around the event claiming that S Club 3 “can’t perform tonight” but would be there the following week for their Halloween Scareathon event.
First Year Education student Tallyia Charalambous explained that she was led to Tokyo “under the pretence that S Club would be there. I’d heard nothing about them not being around until about 11.30, after being in the club for a couple of hours, when I saw the signs on the walls.”
She went on to describe how “disappointed” she was that the act never showed up, especially as “the DJ consistently made comments suggesting that they’d be [there], including comments such as ‘We’re gonna have S Club here for you in a bit’.”
The Tokyo manager noted that the DJ was acting of his own accord on the night, however he claimed to have heard him state that S Club would be there the following week.
S Club did perform at the Halloween Scareathon the following week. Their agent was unavailable for comment.