MGM Mass Shooting Settlement Will Cause Price Of Music Festivals To Skyrocket

Insurance Companies Likely To Increase Fees To Promoters

By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Music Festivals Blogger

The incident was horrible and is still affecting people’s lives.

And while far less severe than loss of life and the mental anguish of being there, the fallout from the 2017 mass shootings at a Las Vegas country music concert will affect future festivals from an organizers and spectators standpoint.

After a court approved an $800 million settlement – most of which will be paid by insurance companies – expect ticket prices for future events to skyrocket.

The reason is simple: insurers are paying out $751 million of the settlement. And you can bet that they will look to recover that by dramatically raising the cost of insurance for future concerts and festivals. And the bigger the festival, the more their prices will increase.

There is also this factor: there will be increased security personnel on site at the events and that is an additional expense for concert and festival promoters.

So who do you think will be paying that extra cost? It will be the paying customers, of course. As well as sponsors, of course, with increased sponsorship fees.

Already, tickets to large music festivals are expensive; weekend tickets prices of $350 are common and the highly-popular Coachella Music Festival starts at $475. Imagine what those prices will be post-settlement.

MGM was sued by several people for failing to protect concertgoers as well as for failing to stop the assailant from assembling an arsenal of weapons and ammunition leading up to the shooting.

The settlement will go to 4,400 victims and relative of victims. The incident took the lives of 58 people and injured more than 850 people. There were approximately 2,200 people at the outdoor concert at Mandalay Bay.