The Holiday Bowl here in San Diego was just cancelled just hours before it’s scheduled start. UCLA announced too many of its players were sidelined with COVID. It was due to be played at Petco Park, a baseball facility. It was going to be the first football game played there. Needless to say, quite a bit money was spent to convert it.
What’s the chance whoever paid for the conversion is insured for such a loss?
For that matter, how about all the people who traveled to San Diego for the game? The money for travel, hotels, and other such expenses would be for nought.
I read the other day that some who had tickets and non-refundable hotel reservations to the Gator Bowl are now very upset after Texas A&M dropped out.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the organizers of the bowl have some manner of insurance policy in case of the game being cancelled, though whether or not that policy would cover the expenses of converting the stadium for football play (as opposed to having to refund tickets and reimburse advertisers) is an open question, and the answer may never be publicly known. Regardless, given how many sporting events have been cancelled, postponed, or played in front of empty stands in the past two years, if the organizers did not buy some manner of insurance for the event, either they are unwise, or such insurance wasn’t available.
That said, the Holiday Bowl has been held in San Diego for decades; they moved to Petco this year because the stadium where it had previously been held, San Diego Stadium, was demolished earlier this year. The bowl has a five-year contract with Petco, and I would imagine that the modifications to Petco would be used for future bowl games, as well.
As far as the fans who had gone to San Diego, I would imagine that they will be reimbursed for the price of their tickets, but that’s it; it’s no different from buying a ticket to a particular baseball game, on a particular day, which gets rained out – you might get reimbursed for the ticket (or be issued a rain check for a future game), but the team isn’t going to pay you back for having traveled in from out of town to see the game.
As far as I know, since the onset of COVID, “event cancellation” insurance policies all exclude pandemic/infectious disease coverage.
It’s one thing it you booked something pre-Covid, and then got screwed because everything shut down in 2020. But if people are booking non-refundable travel to attend mass events now, it’s caveat emptor. Nobody owes you a refund if you didn’t plan for the possibility that it might be cancelled.
Is this the case? I haven’t given it much thought, but pre or post Covid, the other industries did their part and don’t owe you anything. The airline flew you there and the hotel gave you a room for the night. Simply because a third party cancelled an event which was the true reason you wanted to be there is not their concern.
It seems like this would be similar to an Uber driver taking someone to meet a date who never shows and then asking for a refund for the Uber ride. The pandemic refund question doesn’t seem to apply to the outside vendors at all.
I’m pretty sure that most airlines and hotels are currently allowing you to cancel, or at least give credit, right up to day before the flight or reservation. This has been true for the 6 or so trips I’ve taken since the pandemic began, including the one I just took over the past holiday.
Even if this is the case, such policies wouldn’t help out-of-town fans, such as in the OP, who travel to a city for a game that winds up being cancelled a few hours before kickoff.
True, although at this point in the pandemic, I think that people are aware that it’s a legitimate risk when they book. Plus, San Diego isn’t the worst place in the world to be when you’re stuck with nothing to do. And your spending money is what you get back from the ticket refund! 