AISTS WELCOMES 80 COUNTRIES TO COVID-19 ONLINE SEMINAR
This week, the AISTS welcomed over 500 representatives from over 80 countries for our inaugural online seminar; COVID-19 and Risk Management for Sports Events.
Joining the 40 participants of this year’s Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Sport Administration and Technology, the external attendees joined us from countries as far reaching as Switzerland, Latvia, South Africa, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, USA, Bahrain, India, Canada and many more.
Attendees represented organisations including the IOC, FIBA, FINA, Tokyo 2020, UEFA, ITA, World Rugby plus multiple private sporting clubs, venues and government and local agencies from across the globe.
Analysing the insurance risks of COVID-19
The seminar was presented online by Patrick Vajda, senior consultant at international insurance broker Siaci Saint Honoré. Patrick has been teaching at AISTS since 2003 and has three decades advising clients including the IOC, 14 Olympic Games in a row, and many International Federations on insurance options for mega-sporting events.
“Due to COVID-19 restrictions the AISTS moved its MAS lectures online in March,” explained AISTS executive director Dr Claude Stricker. “We decided to add an additional seminar to the Master’s Program to give our participants a real-time overview of what’s happening in the industry right now. Opening the seminar free to the public allowed us to share this important knowledge with the international sporting industry and hopefully provide some clarity and assistance during this time.”
The free online session – the first of its kind for AISTS – delved deep into the risks associated with the organisation of sport events including legal and operational, accident, catastrophe, cyber, contagious disease and epidemic, health and safety.
Patrick advised on how to asses, monitor and mitigate these risks, providing in-depth background information before moving on to the main topic of the afternoon’s session – the impact of COVID-19 on the international sports market.
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We will be publishing a separate article soon with some FAQs from the seminar. With over 70 questions asked we were unable to answer them all during the session. Please sign up to our newsletter in the website footer below to receive a copy of the FAQ when it’s published.
