As an agency founded on helping rights holders secure hosts for the some of the biggest sports events in the world, we often talk of the four key sport impacts. Delivering economic impact, destination marketing, social and cultural development and legacy are crucial to any sophisticated city and its strategic vision.
Sports events have been shown to consistently deliver these, time and time again. Hosting the Rugby World Cup and Fifa World Cup changed the perceptions of post-apartheid South Africa, Barcelona 1992 spearheaded an unprecedented urban regeneration, London 2012 ‘inspired a generation’ and the 2016 Uefa European Championship delivered an economic impact of €1.22 billion (US$1.3 billion) to France.
There is, however, always a cost. These benefits come at a price, and increasingly, cities are starting to say ‘no’ or ‘we can’t’ – the recent decision around Durban’s Commonwealth Games being a topical example. Rights holders are having to work harder to find hosts that can, and are willing to, meet both their strategic and operational requirements. In the meantime, ambitious cities, both established and emerging, are looking at more cost-effective ways to optimise their profile on the world stage.
Of course, it’s not all about the money. Inclusivity is a critical and growing city objective. We often talk about participation in terms of sports participation, but what about inspiring the next generation that don’t want to get into sport? How can sports rights holders use the power of their events to drive a broader set of social inclusion objectives? Participation doesn’t necessarily need to mean the number of children lacing up their football boots across the country – it might mean the number that are visiting local museums, volunteering in community programmes or geocaching their way across urban landscapes to find ‘treasure’ at iconic city hotspots.
Similarly, it needs to be asked whether big sports events always deliver what cities themselves seek. When people travel to watch a sports event, are they seeing the city itself or the four walls of an arena? Are they actually experiencing the city and would they recommend it to their friends? Sports rights holders have a unique opportunity to integrate their event into a city to drive visitors to that hidden quarter, to live like a local, to do something different. There is an increasing expectation that the event and the city must integrate to drive the visitor experience and, ultimately, return visitation.
Sport rights holders will be more aware than ever that city event agencies are increasingly investing in hosting non-sport events. The common denominator of this new breed of events is that they create ‘sharing’ moments – something that in our digital world provides the greatest possible positive exposure for a city.
The advent of social media has created a legitimate alternate platform for events that do not create the typical ‘broadcast television moment’ but instead focus on highly visual ‘social moments’. These can be incredibly powerful – sometimes shared by millions of fans around the world. These fans are not simply viewing the image, but engaging with it, thus creating a far deeper interaction with the subject.
A good example is Vivid Sydney, an 18day light art festival that in 2016 attracted 2.3 million unique visitors. Our colleague and curator, Anthony Bastic, regularly talks about the strategic positioning of key exhibits which will be photographed and shared with a global audience. The new challenge is: how can sports rights holders use their assets to create new, shareable experiences that will engage a global audience and, in turn, deliver enhanced value to their host?
It’s clear something is changing in the industry. There are new, dynamic players vying for the attention, and budgets, of cities across a broad remit spanning art, culture, music – and sport needs to fight for its share of voice.
We work with a wide range of international cities and the briefs we are receiving from them are proof of this changing mindset. Cities already know about the World Cups and European Championships. Now, they want to know what they don’t know – the untapped alternative events. To meet this demand, we have created a database of over 2,000 events, from privately owned music events to mass participation cultural experiences, many of which deliver comparable benefits to traditional, set-piece sports events.
The database has now become a powerful, bespoke tool. Cities have an idea of what they think they might host, but once we input their specific criteria and analyse the data, they are always surprised (and energised) about the events that come out top. In many instances, instead of recommending they enter a competitive bidding process, we’re advising them to approach an emerging private event or even invest in developing their own owned-event asset.
As public scrutiny on finances gets greater, cities need to deliver against far wider ranging objectives. They need to fill hotel nights but they also need to engage with their disenfranchised youth, to deliver on sustainability pledges and to ensure that their Instagram hashtag is on the rise. To do all of this, they need to think creatively – and they need their major event partners to do the same.
