ABSTRACT

We were writing the last pieces of this chapter when we heard the shocking reports about the Las Vegas shooting, an event crisis in 2017, where over 50 people were killed and 500 injured while participating in an outdoor music festival that took place near to Las Vegas Boulevard. This example of event crises and many others, including the bombings at the Boston Marathon 2013 (New York Times, April 16, 2013), the Manchester concert hall terrorism attack in 2017, the shooting at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2015, or the attack at the Christmas market in Berlin in 2016, exemplify in the most dreadful manner that public events can be impacted by numerous high-profile risks. Public events are manifold and diverse and so are the risks and crises associated with them. These events are a specific form of planned “social occasion” (cf. Merriam-Webster Dictionary) and, when used in the context of event management, refer to formally organized mass gatherings. To differentiate our understanding from other uses of the word event, we use the phrase public events (Public Event Law and Legal Definition, 2017). Our motivation is that public events that involve large masses of people constitute specific challenges to organizing due to the inherent risks they pose and their potential for producing crises. This claim is demonstrated by many studies of public events including cultural and arts festivals, concerts, sports events including the Olympic Games, and other mass participation events. It is the chief aim of this chapter to address and integrate aspects of the various bodies of literature in a multitude of disciplines that address public events and provide learning and insights into the management of event risks and crises.