Quote Originally Posted by mookien View Post
That should have never happened, and certainly should not happen again.

The public entity holding the rights to the event should insist (in a contract with the promoter/organizer) on a surety bond, or performance bond, that will cover at least a portion of subcontractors' costs in the event of financial default.

Such bonds, though they act more like a "loan" in actual practice, provide insurance against bankruptcy. The cost of such "insurance" would likely be an incremental cost of each ticket.

It surprises me that in the country (Great Britain) that invented modern insurance, this kind of protection isn't routine. Does anyone know why?
IIRC this topic/question was pretty well beat to death in thread(s) after the first Gathering. My polite suggestion is to keep this thread looking forward, with discussion of the upcoming event, and use past thread(s) for post-mortem of the previous event.