Key revenue opportunities for venue team in a hybrid world
3 Types of Events
The 3 types of events we are seeing most frequently in the coprorate digital event space are:
Webinars, dressed up as events, but really just webinars run on teams, zoom or other purpose-built conference software.
Events run on what we describe as ‘middlewear’ fairly light-weight inexpensive licenced software platforms that enable event owners to lightly brand, mainly in conjunction with the platform brand. The functionality it restricted, zoom is often used to stream into them but you can have stages and event streams.
Bespoke platforms are a more expensive solution, but offer ultimate flexibility and a higher quality output. Technicians can test your bandwidth, lighting and audio quality remotely in advance of the event and stream you in or pre-record you more akin to a live TV show, vision mixing between single speakers and channels for a more appealing look and feel.
Virtual and Hybrid events
We refer here to virtual events as wholly online only, all speakers, panellists and the audience are online. We refer to Hybrid events here as a small closed stage set filmed in a studio or a venue with or without a small in-venue audience together with a wider reach online for the digital execution of the event.
Threats to venue economy in venues
Brexit, exasperated by the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that many hospitality staff, those particularly hailing from European countries have returned home and stayed there producing a shortage of staff for venue and event industry as well as rising food and beverage costs.
Clients have recently shown deposit hesitancy, whilst the government is solidifying its guidance. It’s great to see enquiries rising again, but there are fewer confirmed bookings being made.
We know some workshops and meetings, previously run in venues have moved to Teams and Zoom and some events flipped to virtual only permanently, but the real threat to venues is events having been given to production companies not partnered with the venue, with no venue associated branding or input.
Industry observations
Some relevant industry observations we have made are:
Clients have been in ‘distress purchase’ flipped a planned in venue event online without planning for an online event and the digital engagement required to maximise the participant experience.
Whilst digital platform valuations have soared, Hopin raising $400m against a $5.65bn valuation, we know that the virtual event market is set to soar. Estimated as worth $3.1bn in UK and Ireland alone in 2019 but set to grow to $36.1 bn by 2027.
The skills as venues you need to start maximising revenue opportunities have changed, and to enable virtual event sales to be part of venue hire sales requires sales teams to understand and utilise new technology and new processes. The type of events that you run in venue and the outcomes you can help your clients achieve should and will drive the technology you use. There’s different digital executions now for Conferences vs parties or Awards. Overall building a rich engaged community through the event with client and sponsor value is key to your virtual event growth.
So, what can venues do about that?
Build on Venue Foundations
Understand what your venue means to the outside world. What is your history? What is your narrative? What are your roots and the foundations that you can grow from? Our belief is that the digital, virtual and the hybrid event foundations benefit from this story and this relationship because they in turn, inform that the relationship that your clients have with you. They supply the reasons organisations and people want to engage with you as a venue and deliver the outcomes that they're trying to drive. Look at your venue and what it means to the outside world, and why your clients engage and book with you. Because then you can start to look at new opportunities.
The advantage of the venues
People never finish work and tell their partners and friends about the great time they had on Zoom or Hopin. The venue in this case is nothing more than a means to connect.
People instead talk about the people they meet, conversations or ideas. This is materially different from physical venues.
One of the key strengths of your venues is that people tell others about the place they had at your in-person event. You create engagement and involvement in people's lives, which is really relevant because that then in turn, can create opportunities where you can use digital and virtual, leveraging your position and uniqueness, to your clients and the relationships that people have with your narrative and history.
Leveraging digital opportunities
David Guetta, an international DJ, has been running virtual events through lock down. What’s found interesting is that he identified iconic places around the world to stream his live set from. He could have done that in a studio, but he linked it very much to iconic locations and had 25 million plus visitors raising over 750,000 pounds for charity. So once you start to understand your relationship that you have as a venue with your clients, and the people who attend and the reasons for that, you can then start to understand and develop your digital products and look at how you extend your reach and leverage your venue as part of that.
Build new opportunities
And if we get this right, then you start to understand that relationship between your venue, the clients, the exhibitors, and the types of events you run, you can build something from nothing. So UFC was based in Abu Dhabi. They built the stadium in four weeks, it's a custom-built stadium for the UFC fights. It had13,000 people attend, but globally, it was streamed to 120 million people. This was already happening, pre-COVID and COVID has really accelerated that process.
Your new revenue slice
Managing digital event production increases your percentage takings of the overall traditional event pound. Whilst revenue is traditionally made through venue hire and food and beverage with relatively small growth, we’ve seen increases in production budgets and revenues achieved as organisations can justify the spend as they extend their reach beyond the venue.
We're seeing good revenues achieved for venues with virtual and hybrid event management, and with a big turnover of staff and venues trying to make do with less resource and working through cost reductions, they're looking to outsource more of the event management.
We can see great opportunities in developing your digital physical presence, and actually creating the venue as a platform for those digital events and bringing the strengths of your physical venue back into play.
There are also completely new revenue streams around image and content rights using your venue as a location and a base, and useful digital event data. Understanding how people are moving both digitally and physically, and helping clients understand and improve their events through feedback and the results of their events.
Solutions for venue owners
So in summary:
Start with your physical venue and understand what it stands for.
Look to work with the clients and understand that what outcomes they want to achieve from the event.
Understand the best types of digital tools and approaches that can be applied to enhance not just your venue, but also your clients’ events and the outcomes that they are seeking.
Review your commercial models and understand your joint ventures and your partnerships. And are you getting enough commission from partners and referrals? And are you getting enough of the management of the event? Can you bring additional value bring into that relationship?
The last thing, which we think is critical, is to build your venue story into the narrative, both virtual and physical, insert yourselves into their lives. So when they they talk about their day and their experience with you. They reference you because that is something that the Hopins and Zooms will never have and you have such significant commercial advantage over them on that. So I hope that's useful, this whistle stop tour of some ideas and concepts for venue teams.