Live Events and Coronavirus: Cancellations, Ticket Refunds and Industry Impact

By TicketIQ

What events have been canceled or postponed due to coronavirus

Canceled:

• Sonic Temple, Epicenter, and Welcome to Rockville have been canceled.  (3/24)
• Lightning In a Bottle has been cancelled, and no refunds are being issued.  In a statement, the company said that they’re “working on a plan to make you whole over the next few LIB’s. This will include a system for crediting you for future years.” (3/21).
• The men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments have been canceled. (3/12)
  • All remaining winter and spring NCAA championships are canceled as well.
• All Broadway shows are cancelled until April 12th. (3/12)
• PGA Tour cancels Players Championship after first round along with the Valspar Championship (March 19-22), World Golf Championships – Dell Technologies Match Play (March 25-29), Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship (March 26-29) and Valero Texas Open (April 2-5). (3/12)
• The Big East basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The SEC, Big Ten and AAC basketball tournamentshave been canceled. (3/12)
• The ACC basketball tournament has been canceled (3/12)
• The Atlantic 10 basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Pac 12 basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Big 12 basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The WAC basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The MAC basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Conference USA basketball tournament has been cancelled (3/12).
• The Sun Belt basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Southland basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Big Sky basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Big West basketball tournament has been cancelled. (3/12)
• The American East Conference will cancel their championship game. (3/12)
• The SWAC basketball tournament has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Miami Open has been canceled. (3/12)
• The Metropolitan Opera has canceled all events through March 31st. (3/12)
• All US Men’s and Women’s soccer friendlies in March and April have been canceled. (3/12)
• The Houston Rodeo has been canceled. (3/11)
• Michigan and Ohio State canceled their annual spring football games. (3/11)
• Ivy League Conference Basketball Tournament (3/10)
• Madonna Tour Dates on March 10th and 11th dates canceled. (3/9)
• BNP Paribas Open (3/9)
• SXSW (Scheduled for March 13th to March 22nd – canceled 3/6)
• Ultra Music Festival (canceled on 3/6)

Postponements & Other News:

• Summerfest has been postponed. It has been rescheduled for September 3rd-5th, 10th-12th, and 17th-19th. (3/24)
• The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo have been postponed. (3/23) The games will be played in 2021. (3/24)
• Beale Street, SweetWater 420, Movement Detroit music festivals have all be postponed. (3/20)
• MLS has extended the suspension of all games. Their new target return date is May 10th. The extension was made in accordance with Sunday’s guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) In the press release it was stated that MLS still intends to play a full 34 games game season in 2020. (3/19)
• The Bonnaroo Music Festival has been postponed until September. It was original scheduled for June 11th to 14th and will now be held from September 24th through 27th.  (3/18)
• The Shaky Knees Festival have been postponed until the fall. The festival will now take place on October 16th-18th. (3/18)
• Cruel World Festival is postponed. The event will now take place on September 12th. (3/18)
• Bottlerock Napa Valley have been rescheduled for October 2-4. (3/18)
• Billy Joel has postponed several Madison Square Garden concerts. (3/18)
• Tool has postponed their April and early May tour dates. (3/18)
• The Rolling Stones have postponed their entire tour. (3/17)
• Elton John postpones 19 “Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour” dates between 3/26 and 5/2. (3/17)
• The Kentucky Derby & Kentucky Oaks have been postponed until September. The Derby will take place on the 5th and the Kentucky Oaks will be on the 4th. (3/17)
• The New Orleans Jazz Festival have been postponed. (3/17)
• Billie Eilish, Foo Fighters,  Thom Yorke, Third Eye Blind, Sturgill Simpson, Rage Against The Machine, My Chemical Romance, Wilco, Deftones, Disclosure, and  The Strokes have all postponed upcoming tour dates.
• Florida’s Tortuga festival was postponed from April 17th to 19th to October 2nd to 4th (3/16).
• Nascar postponed the QuikTrip 500 set to take place at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 15 and the Dixie Vodka 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on March 22 (3/13)
• The Masters Golf Tournament has been postponed. (3/13)
• Live Nation announces that it will be postponing current touring arena shows through the end of the month, including Billie Eilish, Jason Aldean, Zac Brown Band, Cher, Kiss, Post Malone, Tool, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Chris Stapleton
• The XFL has suspended their season.
• Major League Baseball is going to suspend spring training and delay the start of the regular season by at least two weeks. (3/12)
• The next two NASCAR races at Atlanta Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway will take place without fans in attendance.
• Jerry Seinfeld has postponed his New York City shows. “A rescheduled date will be announced shortly”.
• The National Lacrosse league has suspended its season. (3/12)
• The NHL season has been suspended.
• They Might Be Giants postpones upcoming 30th anniversary tour dates NYC, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. They have all been moved to September and December.  (3/12)
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony has been postponed. This year’s inductees includes Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, the Doobie Brothers, Whitney Houston, T-Rex and the Notorious B.I.G. (3/12)
• The NBA suspended their season following Rudy Gobert’s positive coronavirus test. (3/11)
• MLS has suspended their season for 30 days. (3/12)
• The ATP Tour has postponed all play for six weeks. (3/12)
• The state of California recommended a statewide limit on large gatherings of 250 people or more through at least the remainder of March. If implemented, it would have a major impact on events in the state. (3/12)
• Both the Men’s and Women’s NCAA Basketball tournaments will be played with no fans. Only “essential staff and limited family attendance.” (3/11)
• Pearl Jam Tour Dates (All tour dates postponed until June. (3/9)
• Coachella and Stagecoach festival have been postponed. The events were originally scheduled for April will now move to October. Coachella weekends will happen Oct. 9-11 and 16-18, and Stagecoach will happen Oct. 23-25.
• The Seattle Mariners will not play home games in March in Seattle. They are working with the commissioner’s office on alternative plans. (3/11)
• Ciara had to postpone her hometown performance in Fort Hood, Texas, for the Fort Hood USO grand opening. Both have been pushed back to later this year.
• Kiss canceled all meet and greets on their “End of the Road World Tour.”
• Justin Bieber downsized from stadiums to arenas.

What to do if my event is canceled or postponed due to coronavirus?

• If you purchased tickets on TicketIQ.com for an upcoming event that has been canceled, for any reason including the coronavirus, you will receive a full refund of the purchase price.  Postponed events include the remainder of the NBA and NHL seasons as well as The Masters and the XFL. While leagues like the NBA have made the decision to suspend the season, the individual games have not yet been cancelled. Currently, teams are making the decision on how and if to issue refunds for postponed events, and TicketIQ is following team policy. The situation in evolving by the day, as you can read about in this article from OregonLive.com.

• If your event has recently been canceled and hasn’t received notification of a refund please email [email protected].

• Refunds are processed and credited within a week or two of the cancelation. 

• If an event is postponed for a later date, your tickets are most likely still valid for the event. If you’re unable to make a rescheduled date, please contact us and we’ll do our best to accommodate.

How do I stay safe from Coronavirus at a live event?

Billboard recently published an article on “8 Tips for Attending Concerts & Avoiding Coronavirus“. They recently spoke with TV’s Dr. Mehmet Oz and two other event safety experts, and according to the article here are a few tips to help you keep yourself safe at live events:

“The best rule of thumb is the arm’s length rule, which is that you should try to keep people that far from you,” … “The virus doesn’t pass necessarily by people sneezing on you, it passes from them touching something that you touched, so the biggest risk is not the person a seat down from you, it’s the person who was in the seat before who coughed on [it].”

Steven Adelman, vice president of the Event Safety Alliance: Relax and do the things you would normally do to keep yourself disease-free. Both men say it’s wise to wash your hands thoroughly for 20 second or more (long enough to sing “Happy Birthday” twice), make generous use of the alcohol-based hand sanitizer that all venues should have on tap already, and when you sneeze or cough do it into your arm, not your hands.

… high-fiving, handshaking and other direct-contact hand-to-hand greetings should be put aside for now. “If you see someone who is hocking up a lung, move away,” he says. “If you’re on the floor at a concert, carry on as you normally would, but also be smart, so if you like moshing or crowd surfing, do that. But after you’re done, maybe hit the restroom and give it a good hand wash, find some hand sanitizer and put some on your hands and maybe get under the fingernails.”

Read more here.

What is Industry Impact Of Coronavirus?

By our estimates, the lost ticket revenue for the NBA, NHL and NCAA is approximately $1.4 Billion, based on market value (average secondary market prices*number of tickets*number of games) of all of tickets available for sale across 479 events that have been postponed or cancelled. The NBA suffered the biggest loss, with $690 million of market losses, followed by $404 million for the NHL and $288 million for March Madness.  Here’s a tracking sheet for value lost for each team in the NBA, NHL and each round of March Madness.