The South by Southwest Festival’s official site has announced that the famed festival due to start next week has been cancelled for the first time in its 34 year history.
An order has been handed down from the City of Austin and the SXSW festival organisers have had to acquiesce. In a statement on their site, they indicated that despite the Austin Public Health board stating on Wednesday that “there is no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer,” the situation has moved a lot faster than anticipated.
As a result, they “respect the City of Austin’s decision” and are exploring options to reschedule the event. This follows in the wake of numerous movie studios already withdrawing from the event over concerns of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak. The festival brings in more than $350 million dollars to the city.
The two founders of the event have also revealed that the organization lacks insurance coverage for disease outbreaks, even as they have it for a bunch of other things (terrorism, injury, property destruction, weather).
SXSW becomes the most recent in a string of major public events to be cancelled or delayed from the Disney+ official EU launch to the release of the new James Bond film to MIPTV.
Questions are now obviously arising about other upcoming events including CinemaCon, Coachella, Cannes Film Festival & E3 which are all still slated to continue as planned for the moment.
Source: SXSW
