If you’re organising a rally, race meeting, sprint or track day, you’ll already know the truth in that the paperwork is never the exciting part… but it’s the part that could bite.

When I managed the British Rally Championship, the essentials were clear and unglamorous:

● Public Liability (third-party exposure: spectators, guests, sponsors, landowners)
● Employers’ Liability (staff and, depending on structure, people working under your direction)
●Property cover (awnings, kit, and a couple of vehicles that mattered more than they should have)

And candidly? The fundamentals of event liability cover haven’t changed that much. What has changed is what can derail you quickly. Two areas I’d take far more seriously now:

1) Cyber risk (now a practical event risk, not an IT problem) Ticketing, timings, entries, comms, sponsor deliverables, data – events run on digital rails.
The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has specific guidance for major events, and it’s worth a skim even for smaller organisers because the principles scale down well.

2) Management / director exposure (the “I wish I’d known then” one). If you’re running an organising club, company or championship structure, governance decisions can become personal decisions very quickly. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have looked harder at directors’/management liability style exposures, not just the obvious event-day liabilities.

A final point that gets missed: if you’re relying on “built-in” event arrangements, always read what is and isn’t covered. Motorsport UK’s organiser information and permit guidance is a useful baseline reference for what sits where.

So, organisers: what’s changed most for you in the last 10 – 20 years? Costs? Volunteers? Landowner requirements? Compliance burden? Or is it simply the speed at which small issues become big ones?

(And if you’re organising this season and want a second pair of eyes on how your liabilities are structured, that’s exactly what we do at Lynx, without the waffle.) Give us a call for a chat.