Guest blog from Scott Sutter of Strategic Risk Transfers. He is a race director and is in the insurance business. He has been working on getting this product together for the past couple of months and is excited to share the news about Virtual Race insurance and how they have leveraged the RaceJoy technology as part of the offering.
The short answer is… Yes, you should.
Here’s why – insurance will cover your defense costs.
Participation waivers are great. Critical, even. But they will not prevent someone from suing you. Should a lawsuit land in your inbox or the Sheriff personally serve the notice, you’ll need to defend yourself. This is why event liability insurance policies were invented.
Here’s the wild problem: Event liability policies are mechanically designed to insure a certain space and time (ie; the race that follows a specific course, on a certain date, between certain hours). This doesn’t jive with a virtual race – that may or may not be tied to a specific course and can span weeks. That said, even if you wanted to buy insurance… you couldn’t… because it didn’t exist.
Back in February, as we watched COVID-19 force race after race to convert to virtual format, we began creating a solution for this massive coverage gap. Working with Tokio Marine-Houston Casualty, one of the largest event insurers in the world, we completely retooled event liability insurance to fit the virtual race exposure.
This retooling was a heavy lift. It required a holistic approach. Attorneys crafted specific waiver language. RaceJoy is the GPS-based tracking software solution that allows us to quantify risk. RunSignUp will be the gravitational force at the center of it all.
At long last, we are all excited to introduce our virtual race insurance program to you!
Here are the details:
For Virtual Races That Follow a Set Course:
We can offer $1,000,000 in event liability coverage – that includes participants – as well as spectators and volunteers when the following parameters are met:
- Course must be closed to vehicle traffic.
- Participation is limited to daylight hours (no night runs).
- Online registration must be provided my RunSignUp.
- Race Timer must be RaceJoy Certified.
- Participants must use RaceJoy smartphone app.
- Course must be inspected prior to start of the race.
- Maximum Distance is 13.1 Miles (Half Marathon).
The minimum cost is $400 per policy. We can insure multiple commonly-owned events on a “master” policy to improve the economics.
For Virtual Races That Do Not Follow a Set Course:
We can offer $1,000,000 in event liability coverage – that excludes participants – but will include spectators and volunteers.
However, we can provide $50,000 in participant accident coverage. This way, in case a participant sends you a $3,000 medical bill, you would have some coverage.
The minimum cost is $300 per policy. We can insure multiple commonly-owned events on a “master” policy to improve the economics.
Hopefully you will never need insurance. But it only needs to work once to pay for itself.
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact Scott Sutter of Strategic Risk Transfers via email at scott@srtins.com or phone at 508-304-6106.
Onward!