High-profile mishaps at concerts and festivals are forcing a shift in how organizers, security firms, and insurers think about risk – away from static plans and toward real-time intervention.
Michael McDermott (pictured), head of sports, entertainment and contingency at HDI Global Specialty SE Canada, said a run of incidents in Canada and abroad has reset expectations on what constitutes adequate protection at live events.
“In Toronto and Ottawa, we had issues around stage collapse and crowd crush, resulting in injuries and deaths,” he said. “Even in the US, the organizers and planners, there’s more emphasis on following the rules, following what the municipal guidelines are.”
Those events pushed basic questions – about engineering, capacity limits, and emergency access – back to the forefront. Municipalities have responded with stricter permitting and clearer requirements, leaving less room for improvisation by promoters and contractors.
Vehicle threats have added another layer of complexity. McDermott pointed to a Vancouver cultural festival where a car drove through crowds, as well as rising expectations that community events harden their perimeters.
“The city is saying, well, you need to put traffic protection,” he said. “Can the event organizers really afford to do that? Putting up traffic calming zones is really difficult. So how do these small festivals protect the public?”
For smaller organizers, installing barriers, redesigning site layouts, and paying for additional security personnel quickly becomes a budget issue. That, in turn, can influence the type and amount of liability insurance they purchase, and how much risk they retain.
At the top end of the market, terrorism remains a central concern. McDermott said large tours and flagship festivals are increasingly structuring event cancellation programs that respond to security threats, not just adverse weather.
“You have to look at some of these artists – could they be a potential target for a terrorist issue?” he said. “There was a large event cancellation policy in place for a concert of a major international artist as a result of terrorism, so expenses were covered as a result of that.”
Newer threats, however, are less conventional and harder to model. McDermott highlighted an incident at a Quebec festival where attendees reported being pricked or injected in dense crowds.
“There were some needle attacks,” he said. “Visitors were feeling like they got injected with something or got stabbed by a needle. Is it a dirty needle? Are they being injected with something? How are the security firms managing that exposure?”
Those questions go to the heart of what a “reasonable” standard of care looks like for screening and access control. If an investigation later concludes that basic searches, bag checks, or entry procedures were inadequate, organizers and their contractors can find themselves exposed to litigation.
Against that backdrop, McDermott said the industry is being forced to think beyond paper plans.
“This applies to any industry – communication is the key,” he said.
He argued that effective protection now depends on live, multi-directional communication between security, production, and artists. Frontline staff must be able to escalate concerns about surging crowds or emerging threats within seconds, not minutes, and those alerts need to trigger visible actions on stage.
“If there is a potential for a crowd crush, how are you protecting the people at the front of the barriers from being crushed by the crowd?” he said. “Security can get to the artist, saying, ‘Hey, you need to warn the audience to calm down and to apply calming measures to the crowd who are potentially surging.’”
If that fails, he added, security has to be empowered to act even if it means interrupting the show.
“If that doesn’t happen, the security company can say shut off the sound,” McDermott said. “There’s active communication at all times to help protect the public.”
The weather is adding pressure from another direction. With more frequent extreme systems, organizers are expected to demonstrate that they can adjust start times, shuffle lineups, or pause events when forecasts deteriorate.
Organizers, McDermott suggested, will increasingly be judged not only on the quality of their lineups, but on how visibly and decisively they manage emerging threats – even at the risk of disappointing paying customers.
“You want to make sure that you are getting good press on how you manage a situation,” he said.
