South by Southwest Festival Canceled Over Coronavirus
March 06 2020 - 5:33PM
Dow Jones News
By Rebecca Elliott and Elizabeth Findell
Austin's South by Southwest festival has been cancelled due to
concerns about the coronavirus, the city's mayor said Friday, the
latest major event to be called off due to fears of the
fast-spreading disease.
"After consultation with the city manager, I've gone ahead and
declared a local disaster in the city," Austin Mayor Steve Adler
said in a news conference, adding that the order effectively
cancels South by Southwest for this year.
City leaders and health officials said earlier this week that
the two-week tech, film and music festival would go on as planned
starting March 13. But a wave of companies including Facebook Inc.,
Apple Inc. Netflix Inc. and Twitter Inc. said their employees
wouldn't attend, and more than 50,000 people signed a petition
urging that it be called off, putting pressure on organizers and
public officials to make a decision.
Since its inception as a future-minded music festival in 1987,
South by Southwest has grown to include film and technology,
becoming an influential gathering for discussing and promoting new
movies, artists, apps and other products -- as well as a popular
extended party. It now brings hundreds of thousands of people from
around the world to Austin each spring, including many celebrities,
politicians and CEOs.
Among the businesses that flowered with help from the festival
is Twitter, which gained buzz when many people at South by
Southwest in 2007 began using the microblogging platform. Artists
whose careers received a boost from performances at the event
include White Stripes and Katy Perry.
This year's show was initially scheduled to include appearances
by Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, and the Beastie Boys, who
were set to discuss "Beastie Boys Story," a documentary on the rap
group by Spike Jonze, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, who was set to
promote his documentary "The Nine Lives of Ozzy Osbourne." All of
them canceled earlier this week due to the virus.
World-wide, hundreds of conferences and trade shows are being
canceled or postponed as the novel coronavirus leads companies to
cut back on nonessential travel and government officials impose
tougher measures restricting large gatherings, adding up to tens of
millions of lost visits and revenue for local economies.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 06, 2020 17:18 ET (22:18 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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