Representatives from across the global events industry gathered at a roundtable organised by the International Association of Event Hosts (IAEH) to discuss the future of major sporting events. Recurring themes included the need to engage audiences, measure impact and communicate value amid rising hosting costs and growing scrutiny of publicly funded events.

“We are entertainment”

Hugh Brasher, co-founder of Athletics Ventures – a joint venture between UK Athletics, Great Run and London Marathon Events – argued that sports rights holders must increasingly see themselves as part of the entertainment industry.

“We are entertainment,” he said. “Sports rights holders need to understand they are entertainment.”

Brasher said mass-participation events such as the London Marathon succeed because they create platforms for participants to generate their own experiences and narratives.

“You have to think about how you are going to be more entertaining,” he said. “We need to look at what works on different platforms such as TikTok.”

He also highlighted Athletics Ventures’ “playground to podium” approach to widening participation across demographics and making the commercial offering more suitable to bigger brands.

“The London Marathon used to be predominantly white male participants,” he said. “Now it is a sea of everyday people. If you see people who look like you doing it, you think you can do it.”

Brasher added that marathon running occupies a unique position among sports because elite athletes compete directly alongside amateur participants.

“There is no other sport where world record breakers compete alongside the man on the street.”

He said that the most important thing to do in expanding your offering is to find the right partners to grow with: companies with the same values and whose strengths compliment your own.

Economic returns

As well as the London Marathon, Athletics Ventures’ portfolio includes the London Athletics Meet, the UK Indoor and Outdoor Athletics Championships and the 2026 European Athletics Championships. The organisation is also working on the UK bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships, which has received support from the Prime Minister.

According to Brasher, hosting the event would deliver a 9:1 return on investment. “It’s a no-brainer to back the bid” he said.

Iain Edmondson of Legacy Delivery Ltd supported this claim, pointing to a £40-50m investment equating to up to £450m socioeconomic return for which estimates have already been made, based on benchmarks from previous events.

Governments are increasingly willing to support major sporting events where organisers can clearly demonstrate social and economic returns, Edmondson said.

He highlighted to the UK’s growing pipeline of events, including the 2026 Commonwealth Games, the 2027 Grand Depart of both the Tour de France and Tour de France Femme and UEFA Euro 2028.

“A lot of money is going into these,” Edmondson said. “Government is being the advocate, saying it’s worth the investment.”

The UK Government is exploring the possibility of a future northern England Olympic bid, alongside new policy developments around stadium regeneration, a proposed Sporting Events Bill aimed at simplifying the process of bidding for and delivering major events, and the appointment of Lord McConnell as adviser on soft power and major events.

Rising costs and public funding pressures

IAEH Finance Director Joel Lavery, of the West Midlands Growth Company, warned that international federations often underestimate the financial realities facing host cities.

“Federations often come into cities with unrealistic expectations of what public funding can afford,” he said.

Perttu Pesa, IAEH Chair and Major Events Director at Tampere, also cited escalating costs as a major concern for future hosts.

“Existential threat” to major events

Dr Mike Duignan of the Centre for Events and Festivals argued that the global events industry is struggling to communicate its wider social and economic value.

“Worldwide, we face an existential threat to major events. Many people think they are not a good thing,” he said.

“I believe they are a good thing; we’ve just been poor at articulating it.”

He criticised the lack of formal professional structures within the sector, describing the industry as “a bit of a wild west”.

“The business events industry is the 16th biggest in the world, but is poor at advocacy,” he said.

Duignan warned that organisers often rely on fragmented or insufficient data when assessing impact.

“Datasets from individual events are nearly always too small. We assume a lot in events.”

He added that advances in big data and AI present both opportunities and challenges for demonstrating value and long-term impact.

“Veracity matters,” he said. “We can’t tell truthful enough stories about the impact we have.”

Reputation and rights

Sports lawyer Yasin Patel of Church Court Chambers said reputational risk is an increasingly important factor for sports organisations and venue owners, citing controversies involving Manchester United and footballer Mason Greenwood.

He also noted that media rights continue to represent the single largest revenue source in professional sport.

Brasher concluded by cautioning against over-ambition in creating entirely new event concepts.

“Creating new IP for unique events is incredibly difficult. It’s better to add shoulder events to what you’ve already got.”

FOAMHAND has a reputation for successfully planning and delivering major event projects on the global stage as seen through recent major events such as the London 2017 IAAF World Championships, Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, America’s Cup Bermuda 2017 and even NFL’s Super Bowl 50. With on-going projects for the next Commonwealth Games host city Gold Coast 2018 and the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang 2018 FOAMHAND are helping to ensure you, your teams, contractors and event partners are ready.

Being Operationally Prepared – Case Study: London 2017

At the start of 2017, FOAMHAND were commissioned by the local organising committee for the World Para Athletics Championships and IAAF World Championships in 2017. Our main objective to review the anticipated event-time operations, facilitate operational readiness desktop exercises, and develop an appropriate Command, Coordination and Communication (C3) architecture that would support the safe running and coordination of the event.

With 24 weeks to go before the event started to receive its first arrivals there was a significant time pressure to ensure functional areas were familiar with their operational plans and were appropriately tested. Our team’s aim was to quickly evaluate the level of preparedness of all functional areas, highlight areas of potential risk and identify opportunities prior to the ‘Summer of World Athletics’.

Adam Down FOAMHAND CEO said “Readiness is not just a box on the organisational chart to give comfort to executives, nor is it something that can be purchased. For teams to ‘be ready’ is a state of preparedness that takes time, effort and commitment from everyone involved.”

Building on our team’s existing relationships with local partners, combined with our international event operations experience, enabled our team to quickly establish a Readiness Road Map for London 2017. The readiness programme provided direction to the functional areas and highlighted the touch points for interoperability, whilst reassuring senior management and financial investors.

As is often the case in major events, time and resource constraints meant that functional areas focus on their own operating plan and fail to discover the reliance placed upon them in other operating plans being developed across the organising committee. This gap becomes far more difficult to bridge the closer you are to the event.

In parallel, the FOAMHAND team was tasked to design and build a trusted Central Operations Management Centre that could support functional area operations and coordinate the Organising Committee event-time delivery. A key challenge balancing the expectations of external partners, many of whom had significant involvement with London 2012 Olympics only five years earlier in the same venue. This balancing act needed to meet the available budget and resources in comparison to the “greatest show on earth” as the Olympics is often referred to. Events smaller in scale but in many cases no less complex do not have the financial flexibility to over-scope facilities as a risk mitigation measure - which is usually central to any business case justification and is regularly discussed in post event lessons learned sessions.

FOAMHAND used their team’s delivery of the Readiness Programme for London 2017 to illustrate the importance of readiness at all levels to the functional areas, showcasing best practice for Venue based workshops and understanding the ‘Client Journeys’. Our readiness desktop exercises provided a platform to evaluate multiple scenarios in a safe environment to support learning, process improvement and ensure plans were deliverable. The most valuable outcome was taking staff and partners on the journey to becoming operationally ready to assist in the creation of what became the Championship Coordination Centre (CCC); a compact but agile C3 centre specifically designed for the event by FOAMHAND. During the event, the CCC was carefully resourced by the right mixture of event professionals, planning oversight, communications specialists, volunteer radio loggists, and all managed by FOAMHAND. The CCC enabled London 2017 to engage and respond to external partners, coordinate its own operations beyond the main venue footprint, and seamlessly integrate with the existing operations of both the London Stadium and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Cherry Alexander MBE, Managing Director for London 2017 and Major Events Director for UK Athletics, said: “FOAMHAND were flexible and accommodating of our programme and broader needs. They were able to use their experience to quickly enhance the deliverables and understand our constraints. Their team also had the capability to assist with our response to evolving challenges arising from the recent terror attacks within the UK in the run up to the Championships. This helped to ensure our LOC felt confident and ready to deliver two successful World Championships”.

The World Para Athletics Championships and IAAF World Athletics Championships were held in July and August 2017 at the London Stadium on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This was the first time both events have been held in the same summer in the same host city. With 20 days of sporting drama and 3,300 athletes from around the globe competing in 245 events and almost 1 million ticket spectators it truly was a ‘Summer of World Athletics’.

City Operations & Precision Planning 

FOAMHAND is a global major events consultancy specialising in four critical event planning disciplines with a focus on core themes of integration, seamless spectator journeys and event readiness.

We use specialist online tools to enhance collaboration; and have world class experts in crowd modelling and dynamics. FOAMHAND are currently engaged by the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Committee to provide crowd flow modelling and management across all competition venues and were engaged by the Rio 2016 Organising Committee to support crowd and transport management operations for the Rio 2016 Opening ceremony.

With offices in the UK, New Zealand and Australia, we work with city planners, event organisers around the world to ensure a safe and enjoyable event for all, offering expert knowledge from our team’s major event experience which is founded on the planning and delivery of over 40 global events over the last decade.

All our team have first-hand experience of event day delivery and use this valuable knowledge to support clients by providing ‘real world’ practical solutions. For an event to be successful for strategic supporters, funders and governments, a city needs to keep working. Our ‘one team, one plan’ approach to event planning considers a broad range of factors, identifies partner agencies and influential stakeholders, and engages them in the process as early as possible. FOAMHAND bring this all together in the run up to a major event with functional area engagement workshops and various readiness activities to ensure confidence is high, teams and functions are integrated, and clients receive the levels of service as planned.

This article was written by FOAMHAND. For further information please visit www.foamhand.com or contact the team on +44 (0) 207 205 4105, info@foamhand.com or @foam_hand