A major event brings together players from many industries. It is a temporary city, a microcosm of society, that requires power, transport, infrastructure, lighting, project management and so on – many of which are provided by private companies on short term contracts. Coordinating this is inevitably more complex than for a permanent economy with an established supply chain for its services.

Considering the sheer amount of products, services and equipment required to stage a major event like an Olympic Games or a major festival, you would think that it would be easy for any number of suppliers to get involved.

Sadly though, not everyone knows how to access these major event procurement opportunities.

What are the barriers to getting involved in major event projects?

Firstly, when it comes to a mega event like the Olympic Games, they generally involve a large proportion of public funding. This means organisers are under great pressure from the public, amplified by the press, to demonstrate how funds are being distributed.

This can result in protectionism, incentivising domestic companies and making the procurement process less attractive to overseas providers. Or some processes can result in projects being contracted to the lowest bidder rather than the best solution provider.

In other cases, there can be a lack of transparency. Half of the stadiums used for the FIFA 2014 World Cup have come under scrutiny for alleged irregularities and bribery, with officials having been accused of accepting bribes in exchange for contracts.

Other barriers to contract opportunities come from within. A company may simply not have enough contacts or experience in the major events sectors, or the confidence to gain those contacts. While there is not a lot a private company can do about how procurement processes are run, there is a lot that can be done to raise your profile and gain confidence.

Top tips for smaller suppliers

1. Promote your activities through the media. Talk about your event successes at every opportunity – be active and build up a following on social media, engage in conversations, become known in your field.

2. Get involved in events of all sizes. It’s not all about the Olympic Games. Annual festivals and smaller local events provide constant earning opportunities and are easier to establish long-term relationships with.

3. Get Networking. Come to the best events in the sector where you get face to face with buyers. Events like Host City and the Event Production Show are all about the business of hosting major events.

4. Join an association. These can offer great advice and support from other members and confer quality status on their members. For example, Host City 2019’s Strategic Partners are the leading international associations in the event hosting supply chain.

5. Always believe in your soul. You are gold!

In the beginning, the event procurement process was nonexistent. Until, according to Harvey Goldsmith CBE, “A bunch of bean counters were brought in to say, hang on, can you evaluate the process? And then the procurement business started. This immediately knocked out smaller, innovative start-up companies who wouldn’t have a chance of getting into the procurement process.”

Legendary music promoter Goldsmith has staged countless major events – not least Live Aid – but procurement has not evolved much since this “big bang” moment when the process was first established.

“So, you would end up with the same two or three companies basically doing everything and unfortunately that’s pretty much true today,” he told delegates at the Event Production Show in London on 27 February.

“If you look at the companies that are out there producing major events, it’s the same companies. You’ll see the same people go from Olympics to the Millennium to New Year’s Eve at the Eye, to Rugby World Cup and Cricket World Cup – it’s a club of clubs!

“It’s unfair, it doesn’t let innovation in and it doesn’t let new creative ideas or people in, which is a problem. We need a procession of new people coming in.”

Goldsmith was joined on the panel by Simon Hughes, Vice President of the Business Visits and Events Partnership. “We don’t engage with people in procurement enough and they don’t engage with us enough. We need to have that conversation much more frequently," he said. "It does a huge amount of damage for startups and creativity, which are the key drivers for what you do.”

On the question of how innovative companies can get involved in major events, Goldsmith said: “You have to think in a different way. You’ve either got to team up with a company that is capable of jumping the hurdle of procurement, or package people together and come up with something that’s so different they have to take notice. It is a difficult issue today.”

One of the issues is the lack of a clearly defined route into a career in the live events industry. “The event entertainment business is a very insular industry, which strangely enough doesn’t encourage outsiders. There is no degree you can take to become a booking agent,” Goldsmith said.

“We are constantly asked how to break through into the business. The only way you can break through is to push yourself through. Before I did my first gig, I went into a shop I bought a little Vox amp to get backstage into gigs!

“The only companies that have got involved are the ones who have the confidence to push themselves through. You’ve got to have the confidence to find ways to get over the hurdles.”

Goldsmith said procurement processes do not favour UK companies. “As much I do believe that, as much as we have the best entertainment music talent in the UK, we also have the best behind-the-scenes talent by a long mile – so why do have to employ Americans and Australians to do our big events when there are companies in the UK and can do it better? The hurdles are different. It’s a very odd process and some terrible mistakes have taken place.”

He cited the London Olympic Stadium as an example of just such a mistake.

“One of the legacies of the Olympics is that there is a big stadium in Stratford that went through hell on wheels because of a complete, total, utter screw-up from the Mayor who did not knowing what he was talking about, to a current Mayor inheriting a bill of £200m more than should have been spent, and the most mismanaged process of operation I’ve ever seen in my life.

“There are lots of screw ups that go on and get buried. Everyone raves about the Silver Jubilee; if anyone cares to dig down deep enough and look at the economics you will find that financially they are disasters because they didn’t do the process properly and went to the same old teams.”

Financial disaster is one thing, but safety issues are quite another, and this is just one area where the sports and entertainment event sectors can learn from each other.

“We have seen the recent trial of those dreadful events in Sheffield,” said Goldsmith. “I remember many years ago doing my first ever concert at St James’ Park with Bruce Springsteen and refusing orders from the police, who were about to arrest me, to let the doors open, because I had walked around the exits and discovered that three quarters of them were padlocked.

“I went back to the management and said, why are these gates locked? They said, that’s what we do for a football match. I said, I don’t care what you do for football – there’s going to be 50,000 people standing outside this stadium until you unlock the gates. I can’t imagine what would have happened if there had been a problem there. But that’s what they used to do – their attitude for football was very different. 

“We have to have the same environment for sport as we do for entertainment, because they are visitor attractions and the same rules must apply.

“It’s quite strange because, until very recently sport events were looked upon as something was pure and sport-driven. What many sports forgot is that they are also entertainment, and if they are attracting a crowd, the same values go in sport as they do in music. There may be a band on stage – it’s no different from seeing your hero racing. You’ve got to give the customer the experience of high quality and therefore the rules we go by in entertainment remain the same.”

It’s not just sports and entertainment that can learn from one another; there needs to be more learning for business events, said Hughes.

“We had a decade of sport where we targeted specific major world sporting events and we were very successful at that. Perhaps we should be doing that more in the festival world, in the entertainment world and in the business events world – looking at the way UK sport has used major events as a vehicle for driving the UK into a competitive position and attracting new events to the UK.

“Let’s target the kind of things that we could bid to bring into the UK; or build on the events we are doing here and make them more international. Sports bids have been phenomenally well organized, that’s where there is great success and learning for bidding for other major international events.”