Savage Race Class Action Alleges Insurance Scheme

A Savage Race class action lawsuit claims that the event organizers charge participants a fee for unnecessary insurance.

The Savage Race, an obstacle race hosted by Mad Cap Events, allegedly requires insurance that provides no value to participants, and is really just a profit center for the company.

The Savage Race class action lawsuit was filed by Florida resident Olivia Szerszen who says that she and many other participants in the Savage Race were required to pay $15 to purchase “nearly worthless” insurance.

Allegedly, Mad Cap Events misleads customers into thinking that the money from this fee goes to a third-party insurer, when in reality, the company receives a cut of each insurance sale.

According to Szerszen, the insurance is labeled as a “Mandatory Participant Insurance Contribution” and is both non-refundable and non-transferable. She says that the fee is charged each time a participant signs up for a race, even if the race is canceled and rescheduled. 

The obstacle course class action lawsuit says that Savage Race does not provide information about the insurance, including what type of insurance it is, if there are limits to the insurance or what benefits are provided.

Szerszen says that because the information provided about the insurance was so vague, she assumed that the $15 fee was paid to a third-party insurer. She assumed that the payment was not kept by Savage.

Allegedly, Savage Race encourages the assumption that the $15 fee is a passthrough fee paid to a third-party, because that is how it is presented in an invoice when a participant registers for the race.

The Savage Race class action lawsuit says that the fee’s presentation misleads customers into thinking that Savage Race does not have a role in providing the insurance and does not take profit from it.

Stressing that the insurance fee is indeed required, Szerszen notes that customers have to click a drop-down menu on the registration page to add the insurance fee and successfully register for the race. She says that a failure to add the insurance contribution is one of the most common reasons why customers have difficulty with registration.

Though the fee is required for registration, it is useless to participants, argues the obstacle course class action lawsuit.

Allegedly, participants must sign a waiver when they sign up for the race, which Szerszen argues effectively renders moot any insurance she might have been entitled to.

The Savage Race class action lawsuit notes that Mad Cap Events is not a registered insurer, and is therefore barred from selling insurance in the state of Florida.

Allegedly, the company’s practice of taking a kickback on the sale of insurance is unlawful — Szerszen claims that the true cost of the insurance is far less than $15, and says that Savage Race keeps the remainder as a profit.

The race fee class action lawsuit explains that in many other cases, Florida court has decided that charging hidden insurance fees violates the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The obstacle course class action lawsuit says that Savage Race misleads consumers to wrongly enhance its own profits. Allegedly, the company not only gains the price of the insurance fees charged, but sells more registration fees than it otherwise would have if it were not for this scheme.

In Szerszen’s eyes, the company effectively misleads customers into thinking that its race costs are lower than its competitors, and then charges more by tacking on this hidden fee to supplement the lower advertised cost.

She says that if the company were honest about the true cost of the race and included the insurance fee in the cost of the race, many customers might not have chosen to participate in a Savage Race, and would have instead chosen to participate in a comparably-priced or lower-priced race offered by a competitor.

The plaintiff seeks to represent a nationwide Class of consumers who paid a Participant Insurance Contribution for any race organized by Savage Race, and a subclass of people in Florida who did the same.

Have you participated in a race or obstacle course? Did you encounter any hidden fees when you registered? Tell us about your experience in the comments below.

Szerszen is represented by Scott Edelsberg and Aaron Ahlzadeh of Edelsberg Law PA, Rachel Dapeer of Dapeer Law PA, and Andrew Shamis of Shamis & Gentile PA.

The Savage Race Hidden Insurance Fee Class Action Lawsuit is Olivia Szerszen v. Mad Cap Events LLC, Case No. 3:20-cv-00267-MMH-MCR, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

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