LET'S LEARN A LESSON FROM THIS

Fireworks, broken cables injure fans at wrestling event
by Kyle Doyle
3.31.08


Accidents happen. It is inevitable, especially in the world of live events. It doesn't matter if its a fan getting hit in the face with a baseball at a game, a wheel flying off a stock car at a dirt track hitting someone in the stands, or in this case mal-guided pyro hurting people in the crowd:

http://www.cnn.com

Cnn.com reported this morning (3.31.08) that fans suffered burns and other injuries during a pyrotechnics malfunction at a Wrestlemania event in Florida this past weekend, under the glaring headline "Fireworks fall into Wrestlemania crowd". Clicking on that headline would sent you to Florida TV station WFTV-9's website article detailing the accident. You can view the article
here: http://www.wftv.com/news/15748647/detail.html

I'm not jumping on the promoters of this event by any means. If anything, I sympathise with their situation, as events of this size clearly are not fly-by-night productions. Tons of people pay to see this stuff, and this promoter knows that they aren't going to do themselves any good by letting stuff like this happen due to carelessness.

My point here is how happy CNN was to round out their Monday morning headlines with this story as reported by the local Florida news station. These media outlets appear eager to paint the promoter as a bad guy right away, and put a wonderful spin on it that capitalizes on the upset nature of the victims. This news station didn't waste any time publishing pictures of any victims they could get a hold of. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Orlando's pool of lawyers were frothing at the mouth to slam lawsuits down on Vince McMahon and the WWE.

I would be ticked off if I'd got hit in the back with a cable or burned with some fireworks, so I'm not downing the victims here either. But let's all sit back for a second and consider, once again, just how quick the national media can and will capitalize on an accident in the monster truck industry. You don't see headlines about who won the Live Nation Finals, but if they'd have parked a truck in the first few rows of seating, then you can bet your sweet tush that it would be on there. This industry has taken time to build, but it only takes seconds to wreck it. Let's take this opportunity to look back at how we as an industry are running our events, and perhaps if we all renew our interest in putting safety first, we can avoid becoming the next headline on CNN. I know the monster truck industry craves more national spotlight attention, but remember, not all news is good news.

-KD