The United Kingdom takes its music festivals seriously, but nothing is more precious than rooting for their team to bring it home in a football match. Over the weekend, Glastonbury Festival overlapped with England’s match against Slovakia in the Euro 2024 tournament, the game that would determine its place in the quarter-finals of the competition. The festival wouldn’t screen the match, but Louis Tomlinson saved the day when he brought a flatscreen television into the festival campgrounds so attendees could gather around and watch.
The musician’s younger sister Lottie Tomlinson shared a brief vlog of their festival adventures on TikTok, writing: “We brought a TV into Glasto to watch the England game.” In the clip, under grey skies, Tomlinson and his crew carried in the television, two buckets of stones, and a St. Georges England football flag. Another scene in the video shows dozens of people sitting on the ground around the flatscreen with even more standing around in the back — first watching in anticipation as the game went into extra time, then jumping around in celebration following the team’s win.
“It was a little bit touch and go at times because the signal kept going in and out,” Tomlinson told BBC, who branded him as “the god of this festival” in an interview at the event. “Luckily, we got the win. We pulled it off. Made up, made up.”
In a separate interview with the Guardian, Tomlinson revealed that the television was actually the second he brought into the festival grounds. “The first got cracked,” he said. “I wasn’t going to take credit for it because it looked like we were going to lose in normal time, but now that we’ve equalised I’m happy to.”
when Glasto won't show the footie pic.twitter.com/BA2zf1kYto
— Paul Weedon (@paulweeedon) June 30, 2024
Tomlinson attended this year’s Glastonbury Festival as a fan, rather than a performer. The weekend saw major sets from Coldplay, Dua Lipa, SZA, Shania Twain, LCD Soundsystem, Disclosure, the National, Burna Boy, and more.
