Martial Arts Event Insurance

What is event insurance, and why is it needed?

Event insurance (as it’s referred to) – or Event Public Liability (PL) Insurance (to be more specific) is designed to provide Public Liability cover (which provides defence and cover in the event of injury or damage to property) to the named event. This is particularly important as it will be protecting not just participants but also spectators, of which there is usually quite a larger number comparatively to a normal session.

If you consider why this is necessary, you need only think of the cost of defending yourself in a court for a claim of compensation if a member of the public were to trip on a mat or speaker stand (for example), break a leg and then be unable to pay their mortgage! With event insurance, it’s important to remember this is specifically for the event organiser and does not provide ‘fighter insurance’.

Can’t my instructor insurance cover this?

No, it can’t. Instructor Insurance (or let’s be specific, and refer specifically to Instructor Public Liability) is designed to provide cover in the event of an injury or damage to property resulting from your instruction.

Events are unique functions, and can often have a number of spectators and competitors in one (or more) locations within a venue at any one time. As an instructor, you can’t possibly be accountable for the supervision of everyone. Even with a very small inter-club event, you will stand have parents or visitors coming into your dojo. If there was to be an injury (for example, a parent of a student slips on a wet floor entering your dojo) this can’t be put down to an instructor fault through instruction, as they were never a part of your class.

For this reason events insurance is an important consideration for anybody hosting an event, regardless of size.

Can I just buy event insurance?

You can purchase an event insurance extension to your membership at any point through our member’s area or the myBMABA app.

What Does It Cost?

For non-contact and semi-contact events with up to 500 spectators, the cost of £2,000,000 Event Public Liability insurance is £139.99. For full contact, it becomes £199.99. We can also provide £5,000,000 Public Liability for a small surcharge.

Will it cover full-contact fighting?

There’s a bit of a misunderstanding within our industry surrounding events insurance and competitors insurance, as they’re not the same. It’s very hard (and expensive) to cover a competitor for injury. This is quite simply because there is a very heightened risk of injury, inherently, because of the nature of sparring or competition.

Public Liability is unlikely to be effective by default too, because of Volenti non fit injuria (a common law doctrine which states that if someone willingly places themselves in a position where harm might result, knowing that some degree of harm might result, they are not able to bring a claim against the other party in tort or delict).

With this in mind, it won’t provide ‘fighter insurance’ and we will go out on the limb and state that no off the shelf event cover policy will provide this cover for less than £1,000. If you can find it elsewhere, your event cover with us is on the house.