The owners of Manchester-based festival Bluedot have released a statement that claims without any government-backed insurance scheme, the financial risks were too high for the festival to go ahead this summer.
This statement comes after a recent YouGov survey showed that half of the UK population want to go to a live event this summer, with 75% of the participants believing that live events are critical to British culture.
The owners of Bluedot said: “Due to a lack of government support around insurance for events such as ours, the risks are too great.
“Despite continuous calls from our industry over the past six months the Government refused to step up and provide us with protection via a government-backed insurance scheme.
“Without such a scheme, the overwhelming risk and high upfront costs for us to hold Bluedot this year are sadly just too high.”
The festival had already been postponed back in 2020 to this summer but will now be expected to take place in 2022.
COVID-related event cancellation insurance is no longer available in the commercial insurance market and is not expected to return for some time, which begs the question as to whether or not the government needs to back more schemes to get all industries to where they were pre-pandemic.
Last year, Reinsurance News launched a survey which showed that the market broadly recognises the need for government supported backstop reinsurance schemes for future pandemics.
Asked about their view on this issue, 41.7% of respondents to the survey said backstop schemes are definitely helpful, while 28.8% said they might help a bit and 22.3% said they were essential.
In contrast, only 1.4% said backstop schemes would have no impact on the market, and just 5.8% said they could be unhelpful.
