Looking over the show floor of the North Building at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada show was held on March 2, 2020.Fred Lum
The global novel coronavirus pandemic has thrown event organizers into crisis mode, prompting some to cancel at the last possible minute, leaving attendees in the lurch with untold financial costs.
In the span of 18 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, the NBA suspended its basketball season and sent Toronto Raptors players who played against an infected Utah Jazz player into self-isolation; the NHL and MLB followed suit; the Juno Awards week in Saskatoon was cancelled, stranding musicians and industry staff who flew in early; and Quebec Premier François Legault banned indoor events for more than 250 people in the province.
Montreal’s National Home Show, which in past years has seen as many as 85,000 people attend, was scheduled to open at noon Thursday. General manager Jean Saad told The Globe and Mail at 11:15 that morning that the four-day show would go on for the sake of its nearly 400 exhibitors and planned attendees because it was a local show with no expected international visitors. “When we are asked to stop the show by the expert authorities, we will do so,” he said.
Less than an hour later, Mr. Legault’s decree forced the National Home Show to close its doors minutes after they opened.
The consequences of the spread of COVID-19 will be far-reaching, putting immense pressure on organizers. Events and conferences that do continue may risk transmission of the disease by unwitting carriers, which happened earlier this month at a massive Toronto mining conference. Those that cancel could risk enormous financial loss: The organizers of the Toronto tech conference Collision, who announced last week that the conference would go digital only for 2020, expect to lose as much as $10-million.
Collision chief executive Paddy Cosgrave told The Globe that large organizations such as his, which hold multiple events and have a healthy cash pile, can survive last-minute cancellations – but smaller organizers can be put out of business.
“Every penny matters," said Mr. Cosgrave, whose organization runs multiple major tech conferences across the world, but started small. The combination of refunds and sunk costs can be precarious. “This would have been the case in earlier years. … You need to take in a lot of money to survive," he said.
For some organizers, cancellations are context specific. The lobby group Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters has already cancelled a hundred-person meeting in British Columbia over coronavirus fears, but as of Wednesday, was still planning on holding an awards gala in Winnipeg for 400 people in two weeks, where all attendees would be local. “We will take our lead from Public Health,” said Dennis Darby, the lobby group’s CEO, in an interview.
The situation changed quickly. Twenty-four hours after the interview, CM&E said they would make a final call on Monday to either cancel or proceed with the Manitoba event. An hour after that, the organization said it expected to cancel the gala.
Despite increased emphasis from public-health officials to minimize close contact with others, many event organizers are holding out until instructed by a government or health authority to cancel.
The result is an inconsistent patchwork of cancellations in any given city. E-commerce provider Shopify Inc. cancelled its annual Unite conference in Toronto, for instance, but other Toronto gatherings still planned to go forward as of mid-week.
Toronto Comicon organizers said Wednesday that they were doing everything they could for guests’ safety, but planned to open their doors later this month. The One of a Kind craft show, also scheduled for late March, said the same on Wednesday – then, on Thursday, said in a statement that: “We are currently exploring other options in terms of timing.”
The decision to cancel can be an emotional one. The organizers of the 100th-annual Vancouver International Auto Show had conveyed in recent weeks that the show was going ahead, but behind the scenes were carefully deliberating the impact of cancelling it, with millions of dollars and a centennial anniversary at stake.
“There were lots of conversations, and they accelerated in the last few days,” said Blair Qualey, CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of British Columbia, which runs the auto show. As Wednesday turned to Thursday this week, and other events worldwide pulled the plug, his board decided that “we don’t see a path forward that doesn’t put people in jeopardy.”
With 115,000 people visiting the auto show in a good year, that meant “millions and millions” of losses among his association, exhibitors, attendees and the local economy. “Everybody was excited about the 100th-anniversary show,” Mr. Qualey said. “It’s a painful experience.”
Your time is valuable. Have the Top Business Headlines newsletter conveniently delivered to your inbox in the morning or evening. Sign up today.