Kerry Dixon hasn’t had a free summer in a decade. He runs the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog, and he usually spends May, June, and July, chasing down every rumor, booking, and itinerary he can find for the thousands of travelers who pass through the convention center each year. But in 2020, the world ground to a sudden halt. Conventions, concerts, festivals, and pretty much every other major public event simply couldn’t exist under the shadow of a global pandemic, and Dixon had a lot of time on his hands that he was never burdened with before.
“I was mostly concerned about the artists and small vendors,” says Dixon, over email, when asked to describe the fallout of last year. “While attendees might be sad that they can’t go, and I certainly missed seeing my friends, for artists and small vendors San Diego Comic-Con is where many of them make a large portion of their income for the year.”
But now, Dixon is preparing to come out of hibernation. San Diego Comic-Con is mounting a return for Thanksgiving weekend — with the hope that by then, COVID will finally be behind us. Dixon notes that currently, nobody knows much about what the proceedings will look like. Is Comic-Con going to be much smaller? Will it only be open to domestic travelers?
Hell, will it be restricted to California residents only? All of that is up in the air, as Dixon calculates what it’s going to feel like to be out on the floor, surrounded by strangers.
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Can live events work in 2021?
“I think everyone’s comfort level will depend on how things look closer to November,” says Dixon. “If case counts are low, if it seems like we’ve mostly got this thing beat, if we’ve all had months of being vaccinated and feeling ‘normal,’ whatever that means now — I think it’s going to be a really nice reunion event for many of us.”
It’s a familiar feeling for many, across the world, who are grappling with the idea of returning to packed events after more than a year away. Events everywhere have already announced their 2021 return. Bonnaroo is planning an October return, and artists everywhere are releasing belated tour dates that will carve up the back half of the year.
Fans and promoters are hoping for a normal 2021, as vaccine campaigns slowly chip away at the tide of the pandemic. Some people are chomping at the bit to finally have their regular schedules back, and others are gun shy about making their way back to the fold. But after a year indoors, those who’d want to actually attend those events are processing the future of social contact in their own way.
One thing is clear: The live events industry needs good news. COVID, and the resulting deluge of shelter-in-place orders, has absolutely devastated the sector. In a survey sent out last July to production companies, rental shops, and design firms by the publication Live Design, three quarters of the respondents said they’ve lost over 75 percent of their total business (and a similar number said they were forced to lay off or furlough staff).
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Mikayla Moyer, a marketing director who worked at Live Nation until May of last year, remembers the fallout well. “I have so many former co-workers who had to run a face-slap gamut: first their salaries were cut, then they were put on furlough, then finally they were let go altogether,” she says. There was no recourse; no chance to pivot, or recoup expenses, or explore other business models. Everyone in the industry just needed to hold on until the world reached the other side.
“There’s a concept in all live event contracts called Force Majeure — it’s a clause that essentially negates any party’s liability in the event of an ‘Act of God.’ A major storm, natural disaster, a coup, and so on,” continues Moyer. “If something major and majorly unplanned happens — that affects all parties negatively and equally — you buckle down and weather it together, rather than finger pointing.
I think once the writing was on the wall, everyone just took a Force Majeure mentality: this huge thing just happened. Let’s try and help where we can, but after a point, you just have to submit to the natural order of the world. And sometimes that means just sitting and waiting.”
The good news is that many health experts predict that concerts, conventions, and trade shows will be able to operate without incident in the relatively near future as more citizens carry shots in their arms. That is the thinking put forth by Dr. Amesh Adalja at Johns Hopkins University, who tells IGN that if an organizer is running an event where the majority of people are going to be vaccinated, it can go on in a “relatively safe manner.”
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“But so long as there are unvaccinated individuals there, and there surely will be unvaccinated people at these types of events, there’s going to need to be mitigation issues. If you’re running a venue, you need to be sure that people are still following the common sense regulations,” he continues. “There are some innovative solutions — at a concert, you could have vaccinated-only sections where people don’t mix — you have more flexibility. But with a mixed audience, it’s going to be more difficult.”
Like so many in-person, sizable events, so much of the planning relies on numbers. New data from the CDC show that cases are decreasing across the country on average, but remain high in specific parts of the States.
On May 5th, the CDC reported that daily cases decreased about 12 percent on average, but some states are still seeing high caseloads. Alongside the medical community, the CDC is recommending people get their full vaccine shots. If cases grow in counties and cities where big festivals are being planned, like San Diego or New York City, it could change how organizers and attendees feel about venturing out.
Dr. Adalja reiterates that the vaccines on the market are highly effective, and speaking for himself as a fully inoculated person, he wouldn’t have any qualms about attending a major event. The United States is on the brink of having half of its population vaccinated, and there’s hope that soon society will re-enter some semblance of normalcy by the summer. Fingers crossed.
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Legally, organizers behind giant festivals and events are covering themselves, too. Bonnarroo’s ticket sale confirmation includes a clause stating that festival goers “voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19,” as reported by Rolling Stone. There’s no denying an inherent risk that comes with being in a large group of bodies, even as vaccinations roll out across the country.
Medical experts are looking at a future where herd immunity doesn’t exist. There’s no way for events to guarantee safety, but as people start reintegrating into the world it’s up to individuals, organizers, and public health officials to set guidelines for the safest way to get back to some form of normalcy.
That thought is echoed by another Comic-Con blogger, who goes by The Swag Collector online, who feels entirely comfortable with his health status. “With the way things are moving, I’m not at all nervous about the idea of attending a crowded indoor event later this year,” they say. “I’m in good health and I’ve been vaccinated. I’m not in one of the high-risk demographics.”
Still, some customers remain a little nervous about the return. 27-year old Sarah Thomas has attended EDM festival, Electric Daisy Carnival, annually for the last seven years. 2020 wasn’t going to be any different. She purchased her ticket when she got home from the festival in 2019, long before COVID was a fixture in any of our vocabularies, and looked forward to keeping the tradition alive. Of course, the pandemic made landfall in the United States in early March, and suddenly the idea of showing up for a massive, springtime rave appeared untenable.
EDC was pushed to October 2020, and then May 2021, where it is still scheduled to go on today. Thomas has held onto her ticket throughout the ebbs and flows of past year, waiting for the chaos to finally let up. But once again, she’s made the difficult decision to postpone her eventual return to live events to an even later date. Even now, after 13 months of quarantine, it’s still easy for many people to feel a little uncomfortable about partying with strangers.
“EDC is something I look forward to annually and having a ticket throughout the pandemic gave me hope for the future of events once it passed,” says Thomas, in an interview with IGN. “A lot of factors went into my decision to transfer my ticket. I felt very uncertain and anxious about whether or not the event is going to happen based on lack of information from [event organizer] Insomniac, lack of an approved safety plan, and the current status with vaccinations.
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Due to that uncertainty, I had not yet requested PTO from my employer or booked flights and a hotel. With an announcement so close to the event date, the cost of travel has now gone way up.”
Sarah also notes that she hasn’t been able to schedule a vaccine in her state, and did not feel comfortable making her way to rave without the jab.
But EDC hasn’t slowed down. Barring any unforeseen catastrophe, the festival will make landfall in Las Vegas on May 21 to 23 — marking one of the first major formal public gatherings of the COVID Covid era. EDC organizer Pasquale Rotella estimates that 200,000 people will attend, and that EDC is going to institute a “health pass” system, which is planned to verify entrants for vaccine data or recent COVID tests. Considering that the event is held outside, where COVID does not spread nearly as effectively, the risk factors facing EDC are relatively low.
In the meantime, many will be buying concert and con tickets for the months ahead, trusting that we’ll all be out of this hell by the time the date arrives. Alyssa Bereznak, a writer in Los Angeles who recently got her second dose, just booked her calendar for a Japanese Breakfast show in October. She has no idea how she’ll react. “I anticipate that the whole thing will feel like some kind of rebirth,” says Bereznak. “I’m sure I’ll cry.” With luck, we’ll all be having the best nights of our lives, very soon.
“As soon as all my friends are fully vaccinated, we are f**king celebrating. So by the time I arrive at The Regent in October, things won’t feel so foreign, and the trauma of the pandemic will have faded a bit,” she says. “I have a feeling that by the fall, I’ll be less concerned about getting COVID at a concert than I will be with missing my bedtime on a Sunday night. But who knows, maybe everything could go wrong! If 2020 taught me anything, it’s to prepare for the worst.”
