So much industry insights were covered in the last Strength in Number Session. See the highlights below:
- Events in UK have been coming back and catching up to lost events in the past months – they have had 78 events (135k participants across all events) since August – which they normally would have run in June and July. Still, there were some challenges like low registrations, cancelled events due to non-availability of medical support teams and shortage on toilets.
- Due to months in lockdown, organisers are only able to run about 75% of events this year compared to 2019 and previous years. In previous years, they were getting about 500k partipants for events throughout the year but will probably only get about 60% of what they normally get.
- Also interesting to know that since events in UK have started, participant turn-ups are noticeably much higher for night time events compared to day time ones.
- It is optimistic in Dubai as organisers are getting a lot of support from government, which was very different compared to 2 years ago (pre-COVID). Events are not hard to get approved, and they get sufficient resources like police, marshalls, and key team leaders. Also instead of getting volunteers, they partner with schools where they can have more experienced people in the team like PE teachers and former athletes. Also a good policy that 60% of staff are experienced and have done at least 10 events with them.
- The challenge at the moment is getting available participants as there seem to be too many events. Still there is a call for citizens to go out and get moving.
- In Bucharest, as events, continue, new policies are set where only those who have been vaccinated and have gotten the disease are allowed to register for events. Organisers continue to prepare for the October 30-31 event and they have since switched suppliers from China to Europe-based businesses like Italy, the Netherlands, Greece or local suppliers as it made more logistical sense and no negative effect on P&L.
- Also similar to Dubai, there is support from companies and employers to get their employees moving as about 50% of registrations are sponsored by companies for their employees.
- Situation has improved in Ireland as there were some changes in policies where max number of participants have been increased (didn’t catch the first portion too much).
- Things in Canada are improving as they have reached 88% vaccination rate for first dose and 81% for fully vaccinated people. Policies are getting more clear as indoor events require registrants to show proof of vaccination while outdoor event regulations are a bit more relaxed. Interesting insight that organisers of one of the bigger events in Canada announced that they will require proof of vaccination and registrations have significantly increased after.
- Things are still not improving in Malaysia as events were cancelled in 2019, 2020 and again in 2021 and organisers were advised that it’s best to plan to move their events to 2022. So far the only sport events that their government allowed their people to participate in were the Olympics and Para-Olympics. Event the Sukma Malaysia that was supposed to be hosted in Johor in 2020, then postponed to 2021, will now be postponed to 2022.
- Things in New Zealand have been moving slowly since their last lockdown in August. They currently have low vaccination rate (65% for first dose and 40% for second dose) and most of their events were postponsed to January 2022.
- Lockdowns in Australia have been widespread as cases continue to increase. At the moment, they have reached an 80% vaccination rate for first dose and 70% for fully vaccinated.
Strength in Numbers sessions are now once a month on the first Mon/Tues of the month.
1 November Monday
9am London
1pm Dubai
5pm Singapore
8pm Sydney
8pm Sydney
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2 November
Monday
6pm Los Angeles
9pm New York
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