[fastball]

Niantic isn't a travel booking company... they weren't making money off of that, so why should they be at all liable for those kinds of costs?

I can't think of any situation where that makes sense. If I book a trip to a water park and book an outside hotel, and the water park shuts because of very bad weather, should they reimburse me for my hotel? Of course not! So why should Niantic do so?

[Karunamon]

The difference here is that weather is out of the organizer’s control, while this is pure negligence. If you host an event that never could have worked because you failed at really basic logistics like “can people get coverage here”, it makes sense to me that you get to cover travel costs that people wasted getting to your broken event.