The lead author of a recent paper on climate disruptions in mass gatherings is pointing to Los Angeles as a community where the investment in several upcoming major events will help boost local resilience against heat and severe weather.

With LA scheduled to host part of the FIFA World Cup of soccer next year, the Super Bowl in 2027, and the Olympic Games in 2028, “the clock is ticking as temperatures rise across the city, spurring a drive to further shade the hottest streets before millions arrive,” CoStar News reports. In response, “oak trees are set to replace low-shade palms, water stations are popping up at new transit shelters, and more fabric awnings are covering open-air walkways.”

The catalyst for that activity is ShadeLA, part of a national effort to involve commercial properties in cooling down U.S. cities, CoStar says.

For the professionals who organize them, it’s a “game-changer” to think about events as climate adaptation tools, with “budgets that build both spectacle and resilience” and “legacies measured not just in ticket sales, but in cooler streets and healthier communities,” Energy Mix alum Shawna McKinley, Vancouver-based principal of Clear Current Consulting, writes on LinkedIn.

“LA is aiming to show that major sporting events can do more than entertain. They can cool down entire neighbourhoods by leaving behind real, climate-smart legacies like shade structures and tree cover,” McKinley adds. “As event organizers grapple with how to manage a near three-fold increase in heat-related disruption based on our recent research, it’s a good reminder that gatherings aren’t just about bright lights and big celebrations, but the cool spots they leave behind.”

That was a reference to a new report in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction that documents the increased disruption facing events and mass gatherings. McKinley led the research team that looked at 2,091 events in 54 countries, all of them affected by severe weather, wildfires, or other climate impacts between 2004 and 2024.

Hundreds of Millions in Losses

The results have implications for an industry that drew am estimated 1.6 billion people to business events in more than 180 countries in 2019, generating US$1.15 trillion in spending and supporting 10.9 million jobs around the world, the authors write. (The extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the industry and made those numbers obsolete is one measure of how vulnerable the industry is to risks and crises beyond its immediate view, the study says.)

The research details financial losses at several specific events, including:

• $305 million at agriculture events in the United Kingdom in 2012, disrupted by floods;

• $178 million at the 2018 Australian Open in Melbourne, following a health and safety review in response to a local heat wave;

• $130 million at the 2018 Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR, due to wildfire and air quality problems;

• $40 million at the 2018 Tour Down Under in Adelaide, South Australia, due to heat;

• $14.1 million at the 2023 Ironman 70.3 Race in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, cancelled due to air quality risks caused by nearby wildfires;

• $10.6 million at the 2023 Ironman event in Penticton, British Columbia, cancelled due to a travel ban brought on by wildfires;

• $8.5 million for various Broadway shows in New York in 2012, cancelled due to Superstorm Sandy;

• $6.4 million at the 2023 Horse of the Year Show in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, cancelled due to Cyclone Gabrielle;

• $5.65 million at the 2018 Ride to Conquer Cancer in Calgary, cancelled by air quality caused by wildfire—for an event ironically named for fossil fuel pipeline operator Enbridge Inc.;

• $5.25 million at various live music events and festivals in Valencia, Spain in 2024, all cancelled due to flooding;

• $3.4 million at the 2016, 2018, 2022, 2023 Birds of Prey World Cups in Colorado, cancelled due to storms or storm warnings;

• $2.8 million at the BeaverTails Ottawa Ice Dragon Boat Festivals in 2023 through 2025, all cancelled due to winter warming.

Some 69% of the event case studies confirmed climate change as the cause of the disruption.

So far this year, the researchers have documented just over 500 disrupted events, McKinley told The Mix in an email. “The LA fires, Cyclone Alfred, and the recent heat waves in eastern North America and Europe are notable contributors,” she wrote in early July. “And of course there are the scorching conditions at Wimbledon” earlier this summer. “The Manitoba wildfires have also placed pressure on hospitality to cancel events in order to free up rooms for evacuees.”

Vulnerability on the Rise

Some events in the survey dealt with two or more climate disruptions in tandem, the authors found—including at least 100 facing heat, smoke, or both during wildfires, or storms that brought some combination of flooding, wind, and hail.

“For example, 600 Scouts attending the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea fell ill during a heat wave exceeding 38°C in August 2024. Eight days later, 40,000 attendees at the same event were evacuated ahead of Typhoon Khanun,” McKinley and her co-authors write.

“However, other incidents are more emergent and may indicate increased vulnerability to unexpected or changing weather situations,” they add. “In October 2024, organizers of the British Columbia Cancer Foundation Tour de Cure decided to permanently cancel the event in the face of increasing cost and uncertainty, in part due to extreme heat, smoke, and rain that had impacted the event four out of six consecutive years.”

Overall, the research team found that:

• Major storms were the most common primary cause of disruption, covering 55.8% of the sample, followed by specific storm types like floods or hail at 14%, minor storms at 12.2%, heat at 8.6%, air quality problems at 4.6%, and wildfires at 4.4%.

• While major storms were the biggest cause of event disruptions in the U.S. and the UK, they were eclipsed by wildfires in Canada and flooding in Australia.

• Actual crowds were affected at 385 of the events in the survey; the rest were either cancelled of rescheduled.

• Outdoor festivals accounted for 53% of the disrupted events in Australia, 25% in Canada, 23% in the UK, and 18% in the U.S. Exhibits, concerts, and races figured prominently in the lists for different countries.

• Arts, culture, and entertainment events were hit hardest, comprising 38.3% of the sample, followed by social events at 24.6%, sporting events at 20%, and business events at 9.2%.

• The relatively small proportion of events that reported their attendance ranged in size from fewer than 100 to more than 100,000 participants, with the most frequent impacts in the 100 to 50,000 range.

Data-gathering was limited primarily to English-language countries, a factor the authors cited as an opportunity for further research. The 2,091 disrupted events included 1,202 in the United States, 274 in the United Kingdom, 217 in Canada, and 106 in Australia.

Event Organizers Taking Notice

Business meetings and conferences only accounted for about one in 10 of the events in the study inventory, and meetings industry organizations haven’t generally been in the forefront of the effort to reduce the carbon footprint of events or acknowledge climate-related risks. Senior trade associations like Meeting Professionals International, the Professional Convention Management Association, and the Convention Industry Council issued no official responses to the study, McKinley said in response to a question from The Mix. But she added that she’s seeing progress across the wider events sector.

“There is a feeling among organizers in the sport, live music, and culture sectors that they now have a way to articulate the wider problem of climate stress on events they have been experiencing for some time,” she wrote. “They acknowledge the collective challenge and see the need for collaborative response.”

The business event community “is different,” she added. “Beyond major storms, there has been a sense indoor events are more immune to disruption from fire, smoke, and heat.” But that aura of safety is being challenged by logistical issues like the impact of heat and drought on rail access for meetings and fairs, calls for hotels to cancel event room blocks that are needed by wildfire evacuees, or the way extreme urban rainfall can overwhelm the power systems that support indoor trade shows like the Middle East Energy 2024 event in Dubai.

“These are more emergent risks for business events that will demand attention,” McKinley wrote. But after a couple of decades of efforts to shift the industry’s environmental profile from within, she said there are positive examples to draw on.

“It takes an ability to see credible opportunity in the problem, create a vision, secure investment, and orchestrate collaboration so interested parties see the mutual win,” she wrote. “While the disaster and disruption might wake us up to the fact there is a problem, I don’t really think it is what motivates event sector players to successfully act. It’s a desire to be part of the solution, and create in community with others. That’s what sparks new solutions.”