Dracula wants your blood - for Romanian music festival

SPH Brightcove Video
Music lovers pay in blood to enter the Untold Festival in Transylvania to encourage Romanians to donate.

(REUTERS) - It's an unusual deal for getting into a music festival - but the posters say you can pay with blood.

Romania's Untold Festival has teamed up with the country's national institute for blood transfusions to provide free or discounted tickets in exchange for blood donations. The idea is to raise awareness in a country with one of Europe's lowest levels of donors.

"I think it's a very good idea, it's stimulating. As I understand it there is not enough blood in hospitals and young people receive tickets for the concert in exchange, so everybody is happy," said Cosmin, a blood donor.

Up to 500 people are estimated to have "paid with blood" for their tickets, the organisers said in a statement.

"Today we had over 200 donors, a really high number. We tried to move some donors to the next day as we don't have facilities to deposit all the blood," said Adriana Sime, the director of the Blood Transfusion Centre.

Organisers have said they expect as many as 300,000 people to attend the festival - a four-day ticket costs the equivalent of US$75 (S$102).

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