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An Event Cancellation Sample Email / Message

During a 2020 Event Cancellation "Survival" Guide webinar, John Haak from EventSprout provided webinar attendees some great advice on dealing with event postponement, cancellation, and ticket refund scenarios.

John has ticketing experience with 2,500+ North American events. These events include the Indianapolis 500, Oshkosh AirVenture, and the Barrett Jackson Classic Car Auctions.

During the training, John provided and expanded on the following template for event organizers.

To have full context and benefit from the template below, you needed to be on the webinar. (If you missed the webinar, become a subscriber and request the link.)

That said, what follows should give event organizers a good idea of the recommended language and tone used if you have to postpone or cancel your event.

Disclaimer: What follows is educational and in NO WAY legal, accounting, or medical advice. If you use any of the following, please consult the proper professionals for your country.

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Dear FIRSTNAME,

As a valued fan of our (event) we wanted to take a minute to inform you of some options that have been set up for the current situation with the (NAME OF EVENT).

As you have heard, the local health administration has banned any events comprised of more than 250 attendees. Our event certainly exceeds that number.

We are working hard to reboot and reschedule our event for the soonest possible date that we can offer the quality of show that you are used to attending.

We know this schedule change was not in your plans and honestly, it was not in ours either.

Asking thousands of friends to change their plans to join your party is painful for all involved. We have been able to succeed in the past in presenting a fantastic (event, concert, race, etc.) for the past XX years, and we are not going to let this break that record.

To do this, we will need your help.

We would like for you to consider donating your ticket price to the foundation for us to have the ability to plan the replacement event. Once we get everything set, we will send you a special thank you invitation and offer to represent more than your actual ticketed amount in participating in the rebooted show.

We certainly hope that you see the value in this offer, but If you do need a ticket refund, "fair is fair." Please reply to this email with "Refund" in the subject line. We will process a refund to the purchase associated with your email above. That refund will be processed within 24 hours of your request.

Thank you again for your support and stay healthy out there. We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

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Let me know what you think of the above.