In this age of constant access to entertainment, sports events are under pressure to become ever more entertaining and offer more activities within the schedule. But is this phenomenon of festivalisation – part of the DNA of mega events – a good thing for smaller events?
“It’s definitely a good thing for promoting and reaching out to new target groups and bringing communities together and entertaining them,” says Georg Spazier, who brought several events to the Region of Tirol following heading up marketing and communications at the 2012 Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee Company. He is now running his own agency, ITS GR8, with which he organises Europe’s biggest mountain bike festival.
“But for organising committees it’s additional work, additional budget, additional staff and coordination and so on. You probably need an extra team running it. If it's the one organising committee, doing everything can be overwhelming in many ways.
“There is a threat that sport moves out of the spotlight. We have to look at it more from a holistic entertainment perspective.”
The 2023 Olympic and Paralympic Games will incorporate a number of different cities beyond Brisbane, the nominal host. “I think it's great thing because I think it just gives more cities more opportunity,” says Alana Vought, Program Manager, City of Gold Coast’s Olympic and Paralympic Games Brisbane 2032.”
Involving wider regions can help to involve more diverse communities and in events, especially those communities that lack sports infrastructure, Vought says. “The Pacific islands have no training infrastructure at all. So to be able to bring some training camps into the country, to Australia, into the Gold Coast and have them train – it's a great opportunity for them and it's also a fantastic opportunity for our athletes to share.”
Birmingham, in the UK’s West Midlands, hosted the Commonwealth Games in 2022. “Festivalisation was good for Birmingham because it suited what we wanted to do with the Games, and that was could we involve more communities and different types of audiences,” says Nicola Turner MBE, CEO, United By 2022, who was Director of Legacy for the Games.
Birmingham 2022 wrapped a cultural and festival event around the Games for six months. “We eventually sold more tickets for the cultural and arts festival than we did for the Commonwealth Games itself, and actually then the community decided to put on Festival 23 the next year because they liked it so much.”
Triathlon is a sport which has seen huge rise in in popularity, and the events are getting bigger and bigger. This brings challenges as well as commercial opportunities, according to Kris Gemmell, Head of Marketing and Commercial, World Triathlon.
“There was an opportunity to give sponsors more bang for their buck, and they had more time to activate, but it was taxing for them to be in one place for a greater length of time,” he said.
“The question is, how big is too big?”
