 Welcome to the wide world of e-sports, a show devoted to all things e-sports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Today our topic is e-sports risk management, keeping your event safe. With me is Angela Hazlett, my partner in Norr Sports Risk Management and the host of the sports playbook. Welcome, Angela. Kathie, I am so excited to join you and talk about a subject I know we're both passionate about, which is risk management, such an important topic. Thank you for having me join your show. All right, every event director should pay attention to this. I hope that if you put on events that you will pay close attention to this show and adhere to what we tell you about. And this is only a half hour show, so there's a lot more to learn about. And I actually published a textbook called Managing Risk and Sport and Recreation, the Essential Guide to Lost Prevention. Unfortunately, it was published before I got involved in e-sports and probably before the word e-sports was even used. But anyway, we're going to go through a number of risks and talk about them. And we're going to start with kind of the most important one when I think about an electronic sports event. And that is power outage. Excellent. I'm so glad you brought that up because of all the events and tournaments that can happen, power is very critical for e-sports and very essential. I think we can break this down into really two different fronts. There's two concerns that could occur. Something that is facility or system-wide where the entire event has lost power. The entire facility has lost power. And that makes it really challenging because it might be something that has to do with a problem with the facility itself or external. Like maybe the power went out because of a storm outside. And this is very challenging because you're going to have to think about either delaying an event, rescheduling, canceling, having a backup location and an alternative plan. You could have a generator to at least get some lights on, but that's probably not going to solve a problem if you need an internet connection. So that can be a major issue. And speaking of kind of the system-wide, facility-wide disruptions, having some kind of wired ethernet connection to avoid any kind of Wi-Fi disruptions, that would be a preferable approach as well. But then we can flip and look at the more of a smaller scale power disruption where a particular console or a panel of consoles might go down. And this is something that you can plan for and be prepared. So have extra stations. Have backup gaming devices at power strip outlets, extension cords, LED screens if you're having this being watched by a live audience. Having someone there who their responsibility is to correct any of these problems if they do occur. Because we're talking about the need for a lot of power to power all these devices. And it's possible that you may lose power to the equipment. And that would be a critical problem in eSports. You know, Angela, what's interesting to me is that back in the day, we always had to make sure we had flashlights and lanterns. But now everyone has an iPhone and they have a flashlight on their phone or they have another type of phone. And, you know, so at least we know that attendees will be able to maneuver and get around with some light. That's a great point. They can help you provide some temporary lighting to at least evacuate the facility, evacuate the location. Sure, because, you know, there could be a need to evacuate because if you lose power and you lose the internet and you can no longer hold the event and you have a large event, for example, you may need to orderly get everyone to orderly leave the facility. So part of your risk management plan will have to be evacuating people in the event that there is a power outage and you don't want to have people trampling each other. So, you know, that everyone has their phone light on. You have your exit signs in compliance with fire codes. And people can be led out in an orderly fashion. So you probably want to tell people about how to do that. Yes, absolutely. Great. That's a great point. We need to have a communication plan, what the message is going to be. And your staff that are helping support the event or volunteers that are there, they need to know what that plan is as well and how to communicate that in a reasonable fashion. We don't want to induce panic, often a power outage is in a panic type situation. But we do want people to safely get to a well lit location. And we'll talk a little bit more about how you evacuate when we're talking about fire. That's our next topic. Absolutely. And fire is a reason why people may need to evacuate more quickly than just having a simple power outage. But protecting people is the number one priority and should be the number one goal and focus. So getting people out in a safe orderly fashion, having a great communication plan, informing the fire department that your event is happening or knowing what the fire plan is for that facility can be very important having that conversation. And where the nearest exit routes are located. If one exit is blocked, how do you get people out in a safe and efficient manner? And then we have to think about protecting property too. There's a lot of expensive equipment that goes into hosting an eSports tournament. And you have to think about that money that is in the facility as well. There might be merchandise or other equipment there. So to try to protect that, that should be a secondary focus to try and preserve property as best as possible. The last piece really thinking about with fire is looking at business continuity. How do we keep our business going? How do we keep our operations going? How do we maybe finish the event or conclude the event in a reasonable fashion? Those are also things to think about. Kevin, what do you think about that? Okay, so one thing that most commercial facilities have are fire protection systems, which includes sprinklers. And sprinklers cause water damage. So we're not only talking about fire damage, but we're also, when we talk about fire, we're also talking about water damage. Because even if you didn't have a fire protection system, which was sprinklers, you would have firefighters that might spray water into the facility. And you know what's interesting to me is I think about, when I think about protecting property, I think about everyone grabbing the hardware. And then I think about if you're on an airplane and there's an evacuation and you're going down the slide and you're bringing your luggage with you, I can kind of see people trying to evacuate in haste carrying large computer equipment. So usually you just need to protect yourself and get out of there. And so perhaps announcements should say, leave your computer behind, just come evacuated. Yeah, absolutely. And that could cause quite frankly a trip hazard if there's plugs that are being kind of pulled and, you know, there's concrete, a trip hazard can create a problem in evacuating. Hopefully all the equipment is insured. So getting people out and getting people out safely should be the priority. And the equipment is replaceable, right? So that should be a secondary priority. Sure, absolutely. Now we'll move on to weather risks. Okay, so if you turn on the news, if you're not watching about Ukraine right now, you're watching about a tornado that has been wreaking havoc in Texas and other states. So one weather risk of concern is tornado, hurricanes, heavy rains, flooding, earthquakes, tsunami, heat, snow, ice, it really depends on your location. And unfortunately, you know, there are certain areas of the country and of the world that experience, you know, they have a high risk of some of these. And in Hawaii, we have hurricane risk, tsunami risk, earthquake risk and heat. And in other places, snow and ice are an issue, heavy rains, flooding, another issue that we have here, but everywhere has their own risk. And any event organizer should look at, assess those risks and be aware of what risks could occur. And they should look at the impact on attendance, whether attendees can safely attend the event. I mean, can they drive there? Are they going to be able to do so safely? Maybe the weather event is not expected until during your event or not expected until they're driving home from the event. All of those need to be considered. Can they access the venue? And then we talked about power outage. With a lot of these weather events, there's a risk of power outage. So you add another component to it. And you have that risk of people, property and business. So you should be aware of weather forecast by paying attention. And even if your event is inside, don't think that the fact that there's going to be lightning might possibly impact your event. Or don't think that the possibility that there's heavy rain or snow might impact your event. You may need to provide appropriate warnings to attendees about that. And you might need to warn them of any possible challenges like ice and snow. So you'll need to take action to make your event safe in light of the weather issues. You may need to be putting up warning cones because there's water that accumulates that could cause slip and falls. There could be issues of parking lot safety. You may have to clear paths of snow and ice. You also have to be willing to cancel an event or postpone an event in light of severe weather. And you should have an emergency plan in place in case there's a weather issue during your event. You might have to make decisions about whether to evacuate or shelter in place. If you shelter in place, you may have to have provisions for those people sheltering. So any thoughts on that, Angela? I think you covered a wide range of recommendations. I would add that if it's possible to adjust the time of your event, the start or the finish, then that's also maybe a good choice as well. Sometimes rescheduling for another day might cause a significant disruption. But an adjustment by an hour or two really can make a big difference where weather won't disrupt your event. And going back to the power outage piece, you certainly don't want weather adversely impacting your ability to access power for your event. Sure. And we mentioned that parking lot and that's a good segue into human actions. Absolutely. So there are so many things and so many ways that human behavior impacts the events and creates risk. And sometimes it's intentional. Sometimes it's unintentional behavior. But I think we should talk about violence because violence is an issue. Specifically, there's an incident that happened involving an active shooter at an eSports competition in an event in Jacksonville, Florida in 2018 where a gunman came to an eSports competition that was held at a riverfront pizzeria restaurant. There were professional competitors competing for prizes in this online streamed event. It was a regional qualifier for an event in Las Vegas. So basically an active shooter opened fire, killed two competitors, nine others suffered from gunshot wounds and two more were injured fleeing the area. So this active shooter situation has unfortunately extended into the eSports gaming community. So Electronic Arts was basically issued a statement in response to the shooting and they are the software publisher who behind the Madden football video game series, they were sponsoring the games competitive circuit. They canceled the remaining qualifying tournaments and their CEO basically said that they would run a comprehensive review of safety protocols for competitors and spectators. Look for a consistent level of security being provided at all of their competitive gaming events. And I think that's an important lesson for all events to carry forward in thinking about active shooters as a possibility, especially since the gamers, they're focused on their devices, their consoles and they're looking at their computer screens and everybody's focused on that. They're not focused on who else is in the room and what else the other people are doing in that space. So someone else should be kind of monitoring that situation. For the larger events, I think you certainly want to think about providing some kind of security. You may even want to do some kind of screening like metal detector screening as people are entering the venue, particularly spectators that don't have a reason to necessarily bring in anything in their devices. But providing that kind of security and protocols would go a long way. But the other area we should be thinking about is fighting. I know a lot of trash talking is really popular in esports, but fighting is a very real outcome between competitors, between fans. And I know bad behavior really violates esports code of conduct and most platforms, community rules. But that is a reality of the situation that this is an issue we have to be mindful of. And a lot of these events can be intimate where people are in close proximity to one another. Emotions are intense and some of these events are larger scale. So providing venue security, and that could even extend into the parking lot as well. So having those protocols in place. Katherine, is there anything you wanted to add about the violence aspect of human actions? Now, fortunately, esports doesn't really have the culture of people fighting in the arena like in things like soccer. I mean, you see worldwide soccer or football matches where people are fighting. They set fire to the stands. They run onto the field and all this stuff. We haven't really seen that yet with esports, but esports is pretty young. And as people become more passionate about their teams, then it's possible that there those kind of things should happen. But when you're developing your risk management plan, it's always a good idea to consider the possibility. So at least you've thought about what you're going to do in that situation. Exactly. That's exactly right. We should always be looking to what's happening at other events and other venues locally, nationally, internationally, and we should be using them as a model to kind of inform our best practices for risk management strategies and decisions. The other aspect of human behavior that should be considered are accidents. These are not intentional. People trip and fall injuries. These are things to think about. And then one other aspect, so basically your design of where you place equipment, how you do the layout of the facility distancing between people, things like that can be helpful to mitigate any kind of trip and fall injuries. But we have to also think about the gamers are really spending a lot of time on their devices and they are often maybe subject to kind of carpal tunnel syndrome, repetitive strain injury, back pains. So elite players spend a lot of time and in particular seated positions. And so on their devices also something else that's really interesting and unique to eSports that competitors that when they're in really an intense play can actually suffer collapsed lungs from holding their breath during really intense moments of play. So maybe the warning to players remember to breathe, maybe pay attention to make sure they're putting oxygen back into their body. So just kind of reminders that they need to breathe then don't hold their breath, but also providing good ergonomic setups for when they're sitting in their chairs and playing eSports. That's a really important piece as well. So that's something to consider. And then of course the amount of screen time, right? So how much screen time there's the fatigue that can happen with being in front of a screen for a long period of time. So really thinking through that kind of ergonomic piece I think is very helpful. Yeah, the human actions piece is really big here at how so many components and you know it's funny because not really funny but it's interesting that for a lot of events there would be an ambulance on scene. However, a lot of sporting events you wouldn't have that in eSports. So you don't, you have to, you would actually have to make that decision to call 911 if you have you know someone collapse or something like that. And you know because it isn't that common there would probably be you know more of a lag time of making that decision I would think. So it's something to think about. So the next topic is theft and tampering. And you know clearly you know there's a concern about theft of equipment, tampering. You might want to put serial numbers on the equipment. You might want to photograph and catalog them. You may need to do that for your property insurance anyway. And you may you know you may consider security in events because not only you need security for your event if it's a large event for you know to deal with these kind of issues that we've just addressed, but also security in terms of you know equipment that you have expensive equipment there. And you may want to have security cameras as well. One thing important with the theft and tampering piece is a culture of honesty and integrity having rules and enforcement of rules. There is a concern about content and streaming piracy. That isn't as I mean that's certainly something that can occur in events, but that's a really big issue if you're a publisher. And you know in terms of time I think I'm going to skip that and move on to cyber attacks and talk a little bit more about cyber attacks because cyber attacks are super a big concern if you have an event. I mean hackers are looking to profit from eSports. They'll target vulnerable players. They'll push targeted malware. They'll launch DDoS attacks or distributed and denial of service attacks against tournaments and a lot more. So and you know right now we have a big concern about cyber attacks because of the war in Ukraine and you know famously the Russians have threatened cyber attacks and so that's something that has to be you know we have to be concerned about. And then you know that goes along with well one thing that I'll talk about a little bit later when we talk about insurance is cyber insurance and the need. But I happened to watch a cyber insurance webinar this morning and it did occur to me that when you get a cyber insurance policy that they do have a lot of requirements before you can get that policy and those requirements are pretty much risk management requirements. And so frankly I think your cyber insurer can provide a lot of risk management guidelines to you in terms of how you should address that. OK. And then moving on to war and terrorism. OK. As as I mentioned with the Ukraine Russia war right now war and terrorism is at the top of our minds and these things have to be paid attention to. And right now for the United States the issue is more the cyber security piece. However if you're in Poland if you're in a NATO country if you're in even a you know a country that might be non NATO NATO but be close to the action you know you have to be concerned about these kind of threats. So you know that's something that you pay attention to. And you know a lot of insurance policies have exclusions for war and terrorism. So you do want to know what your policy covers. And now let's move on to COVID-19 something that we want to be over with. Yeah I think I think most of us probably know the best practices for COVID-19 but just kind of think about how do you best prepare for situations where you want to avoid people getting sick. Monitor the circumstances monitor the situation you may have to make changes pivot and then just be diligent in enforcing those procedures maybe distancing between consoles between players hand sanitizer testing just be flexible think about how you can pivot in that situation. And then I would sort of go into the social distancing aspect you know maybe is it reasonable to have a facility where so the next slide here he talks about the social distancing piece like should we keep people separated should we have them close together maybe if they're not facing each other maybe it's okay to have them seated next to each other but not across from one another. And that kind of leads me into the transportation piece because people need to come to these events right and go home from these events some people are traveling as teams recently there was a golf team that was traveling and unfortunately the coach and the golfers were killed in a car accident and this just really reminds us that it's important to think about transportation and how that can be a risk particularly if a coach is driving an entire team so should entire teams travel together can you get a third party contractor like a bus with a dedicated dry professional driver you know that will shift some liability with your organization and then the coach can really work on being responsible for those in the bus and maybe keeping them from distracting the driver in that environment. And if people are going to be transporting other teammates or family you know if parents and friends are driving other teammates you know maybe you want policies procedures releases and permissions for them to be driven by other people as well that could be something to consider as well. Speaking about releases let's look at liability waiver okay so I'm sure many of you have signed a liability waiver it serves as a defense to a lawsuit it doesn't mean that if you signed one that or if you have people sign it if you're an event organizer that it won't make it so you're not sued it just means that that you might be able to get out of the lawsuit by filing a motion for a summary judgment and having it dismissed. Liability waivers have to comply with local laws of your jurisdiction or the jurisdiction where the event is held or whatever jurisdiction is selected so you can't just pick a liability waiver off of the internet I draft them all the time for people and you know it depends on their their particular jurisdiction what the laws are okay and can we show that slide again please. And so you want to make sure it's clearly worded and unambiguous and by signing basically the participant is assuming the risk okay. Yeah and I think it's interesting to go back to the active shooter that happened in Jacksonville Florida and that event was was it didn't have they didn't have a permit to actually operate that type of event in that facility so you know when you're talking about a waiver or even when we're talking about insurance if you're not actually following the local rules and you're holding an event that doesn't have the proper permits that could be a problem so that's not necessarily going to save you if you aren't following the rules of the local jurisdiction. Absolutely and you know I will point out that electronically signed waivers are legally enforceable um and that seems to be a common way now let's move up to the insurance piece um and show that okay so when we keep talking about insurance insurance is basically risk financing it's transferring the risk the financial risk to another company which is the insurer and you'll want to buy general liability insurance property insurance cyber security insurance and there may be other insurance you know packages you might want to get you need to talk to a broker a professional to advise you on that. Anyway it was fantastic discussing with this with you Angela. Yeah absolutely Catherine I've really enjoyed it and there is this one more piece that I want to impart on the audience is that these video games do have copyright protection and you do have to have permission to actually use those in public tournaments so that's another way to avoid some risk but thank you for allowing me to be part of this conversation and I hope everyone can avoid having these challenges at their venues and during their competitions. All right fantastic and you can find us at norsports.com and um you know contact us if you have any questions regarding sports risk management or e-sports risk management and thank you to our viewers for joining us today next week my guest will be Ryan Sia to talk about rake tectonic pro the world's first force pad and keyboard set see you then. Thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com mahalo