Why PTA Sports Groups Need Premises Liability Insurance

If you are a PTA organizer, then your school administrators, parents and students rely on you to put on well-coordinated events. It’s up to you to do so professionally, and to make sure that you cover all your bases when it comes to safety & risk management.
This is particularly true when it comes to organizing sports events. If you host an event that involves playing sports, then it should be pretty obvious to you that someone might get hurt at the time of play. As a result, you’ll need to have top-rated liability insurance to help you cover the costs of medical bills or other losses that these parties sustain.
However, it is not just players or spectators that could face harm as a result of a problem; property damage is a real threat to the area where the event takes place. If you are renting an arena or other complex to host this event, and damage occurs, then you will probably be on the line to repay the owner of the premises for their trouble. In these circumstances, rented premises liability insurance will help you cover these costs. It’s important to have, given the extensive responsibility you have to take for your own conduct when hosting a PTO event.
Understanding Liability Insurance
PTOs exist primarily to help you help others. Teachers, students, administrators and parents all rely on you to fundraise, organize and support your school’s success. This responsibility will involve a lot of coordination and interaction with others and will bring with it a high degree of liability for anything that might go wrong on your watch.
You of course want your events to go off without a hitch. However, you can’t guarantee that it will. For example, if you rent a basketball arena for a field day, then there is always a chance that one of the participants could get hurt. Their family could hold the PTO responsible, and sue or demand compensation for the player’s injuries.
In these cases, your PTO liability insurance can help you address the claim by the third party, compensate them for their losses, and cover any legal fees that you might face. Therefore, your liability coverage will enable your organization to weather the ramifications of a problem that occurred on its watch, without having to spend incalculable amounts of money that the organization doesn’t have.
A liability insurance policy will cover both third-party injuries and property damage, in most cases. Generally, your property damage coverage will allow you to pay for damage you might do to the property of a participant at your event. For example, if someone hits a baseball through a parent’s windshield, then your coverage might compensate the parent for the necessary repair costs.
However, whenever you host an event off your school’s property, you also involve another party: the person whose premises you are using. By taking your event on the road, you’ll need to be ready to take responsibility for any problem that might occur along the way. The coverage that will help you do so is called rented premises liability insurance.
Rented Premises Liability Insurance
Your school might not have the facilities available to host a large sporting event, such as a field day or other activity. Therefore, you might rent local arenas or playing fields for the prospect. However, by doing so, you are bringing your liabilities onto someone else’s property, and you must have liability insurance to help you out if something goes wrong.
For example, when using a rented basketball arena, a player might try to dunk a ball, which causes the backboard apparatus to collapse. This could cause the owner of the arena thousands of dollars in repair bills, as well as income lost because they can’t use their property optimally. Because the PTO’s event led to this property damage, the PTO is going to be responsible for the damage. As a result, you will have to pay for the necessary repairs, but your rented premises liability insurance can help you do so.
The general liability insurance within your PTO’s insurance portfolio is designed to cover losses occurring to those who are participating in events. However, it’s rented premises liability insurance that will take this coverage a step further, by helping you address the losses occurring to those whose property you are temporarily using. Therefore, it helps augment your organization’s overall liability package, and therefore help you better protect your own security.
Don’t hesitate to talk to your Bene-Marc insurance agent about the best way to structure your liability insurance to your satisfaction.