Most event insurance policies don’t cover pandemic diseases, meaning it's better for promoters to get shut down than do it themselves.
Since launching last week, a petition requesting that South by Southwest be canceled or rescheduled over concerns about the coronavirus garnered more than 55,000 signatures and spawned a slew of media coverage.
But even under that kind of mounting public pressure, the annual music, tech and film conference resisted those calls until Friday (March 6), when Austin Mayor Steve Adler declared a local disaster and forced SXSW to shut down for the first time in its 34-year history.
From a financial perspective, SXSW organizers’ reluctance to cancel the annual festival is easy to understand. Most event insurance
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