The insurance sector is also part of the backstage of a festival

Upon entering a festival venue, the thought of any visitor is only one – to enjoy the music and seek fun with family and friends. However, between the curtains of the main stage lie months of work and preparation leading up to the event, in which the insurance sector plays a key role that is only visible to a few.

Thus, several questions arise: what goes on “behind the scenes” of all the complexity of organising festivals? When certain concerts bring together tens of thousands of people, what is the cost of an adequate policy for that same scale?

Since the rise of the summer festival phenomenon, there have been many cases of event promoters and organisers who have encountered critical difficulties that threaten their entire business – an invisible risk to the public, but a serious one for these organisations.

From the cancellation, interruption or postponement of an event to the non-appearance of artists or damage to equipment, anything can happen in the preparation of a large-scale initiative.

This is a challenge that is not restricted to festivals, being transversal to the entire entertainment and leisure industry, with events of different needs and dimensions including cinema, sports initiatives, fairs, congresses, fashion shows or theatre shows.

What does a promoter need to consider? The attendance of key people for the show, the availability of equipment, favourable weather conditions, the safety of spectators, among others.

The entertainment and leisure industry, due to its great exposure to all these unpredictable and uncontrollable factors, requires insurance coverage capable of foreseeing in detail all possible threats and minimising the impacts of unexpected situations, and policies are designed to cover the risks of event producers and organisers, preventing unaffordable losses for the company.

As much as the experience of each visitor naturally focuses on enjoyment and peacefulness, it is up to the insurance sector to warn of all the risks linked to this activity, developing increasingly complete solutions for risk mitigation and, in this intense period of events and music, we must also call for safe festivals full of good cheer.

Opinion article by David Sousa, Director of SEMPER, published in Marketeer.