Update (Wednesday, March 11 at 10:00 am): Coachella is officially moving to two consecutive October weekends. In a statement Tuesday night, production company Goldenvoice said that coronavirus concerns motivated their decision. “At the direction of the County of Riverside and local health authorities, we must sadly confirm the rescheduling of Coachella and Stagecoach due to COVID-19 concerns,” it read. “While this decision comes at a time of universal uncertainty, we take the safety and health of our guests, staff and community very seriously.”

Coachella will take place from October 9–11 and 16–18 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Stagecoach, Goldenvoice’s country festival, is rescheduled for October 23–25. According to the statement, all ticket purchases for the April dates will be honored, and the company is working on a process to issue refunds.

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Last Friday, the organizers of South By Southwest, Austin’s sprawling 10-day film, music, and tech conference, made an announcement they were dreading. Due to concerns about the spread of Covid-19, SXSW was cancelled for the first time in 34 years, after the city of Austin declared a public health emergency and many celebrities and corporate entities pulled out of their scheduled events. As festival season approaches, more organizers are facing similar dilemmas, and a cancellation has come from Miami’s Ultra Music Festival—without refunds. Now, six weeks out from Coachella’s first weekend, Variety reports that production company Goldenvoice intends to move the festival to October.

According to Variety, Goldenvoice is contacting agents and asking about availability over consecutive weekends in October; they also intend to move Stagecoach, the country music festival that takes place on the same grounds in Indio in late April, to the fall as well. The company has not yet commented publicly about their plans, and a request for comment was not immediately returned. On Sunday, Riverside County, which includes Indio and Palm Springs, declared a public health state of emergency after the first locally acquired case of coronavirus was identified; six cases have been identified altogether. The BNP Paribas Open at the tennis center in nearby Indian Wells was set to begin on Monday with modifications to prevent disease spread, but it was cancelled Sunday.

Ultimately, the question of whether or not Coachella goes on as planned might come down to insurance coverage. It’s unclear whether or not the festival’s cancellation insurance covers communicable diseases. One of the cofounders of SXSW told the Austin Chronicle that the festival's cancellation was not covered by insurance, and the Guardian reported on Monday that communicable disease coverage is rare in the industry and has largely been taken off the table in the wake of coronavirus and its global spread. “You can’t insure against something that is happening,” music insurance broker Steven Howell told the newspaper. “If your house is on fire, you can’t then decide to buy insurance.” He added that some of his clients buy coverage for communicable diseases annually, but the majority do not.

If Goldenvoice is forced by local authorities to cancel, it could leave the company on the hook for millions. According to Variety, preemptively moving Coachella to the fall might allow Goldenvoice to avoid triggering their cancellation insurance policy. Considering the widening scope of the epidemic and its increasing impact on daily life, they might not be the only production company weighing such a decision.

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