I don’t think it’s that bold of a claim. Organizers ask attendees to spend a lot of money to attend, buy lodging and everything else, not to mention pay a lot to organize and it takes a lot of time and effort to line up all the required facilities. I’ve been part of organizing at least a few big events and if we had a late stage hard cancellation, there probably would’ve been lawsuits.
I mean, they've been running this event, which has topped 20k attendees, for something like 30 years. So one entity with the relevant experience is... them?
In 20+ years of attending events events regularly I have never heard of a venue change on relatively short notice. In fact to the degree some conference moves from, say, SF to Vegas, they usually announce that at the previous year's conference.
There's a huge difference even at this scale. Seven months was apparently long enough for them to make arrangements to hold it at another venue nearby (I'm sure rearranging it is/will be a lot of hard work, but they're doing it); would seven weeks have been?
That's a big claim to make. Can someone with relevant experience confirm whether this is true?