Resuming Live Events?
Interested in hearing from folks who have been able to resume with live events in some capacity - thoughts, feedback, learnings, experiences... The large conferences we produce aren't expected to return live until August (fingers crossed).
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Taylor Moschcau It's just flat out weird. We had Saints games for about 3k people and are now doing Pelicans with about 1k. The lack of energy and atmosphere that we're so accustomed to is sometimes deflating. But...the show must go on!
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Kyle Campbell Thanks for sharing! I'll be curious to see who feels comfortable coming to a corporate conference anytime in 2021. I have a feeling our ballrooms usually filled with thousands will feel a lot like stadiums for tens of thousands filled with only 3k fans. Deflated is right!
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Out in Berlin, hopes are not high for a return to live events this year for our show. Of course, we're moving forward with planning them in the event that things take at turn for the better, but always with virtual-only shows as contingency.
I guess a benefit on our end of having a virtual sport to broadcast is that virtual shows and viewing experiences are familiar to our core audience!
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John Depa having loyal viewership is everything. Virtual conferences are a struggle, people just don't watch the virtual content like they would in a live event environment. I think the hardest part has been how hard we've worked to move to virtual, only for a small fraction of people to actually view the content.
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i expect to hear very soon if if our Q4 large corp show is on - my sense is slim to none, especially since the hotel deposits are all coming do soon - and no one one has any clarity on what the global scene will be that far out
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Chris Torella The waiting game is awful. We've started to put work towards live events again and it's such a breath of fresh air, but there's also so much apprehension in actually confirming details as it's still so fluid.
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We had the opportunity to do Hybrid Galas for awhile when gatherings of 50 people were allowed in our jurisdiction. It actually went well for smaller events where we had 6-8 hubs 'live' and then had a central studio that the hubs and the at home guests could watch. Sadly, we are now back in a position where we can have no gatherings at all.
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Nik von Schulmann glad to hear the hub and spoke idea worked for you!
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I've just come back home from 15 days in Dubai working on a PubG Esports production that tried to run with 64 players flying into the arena to compete in the world finals. Safe to say, COVID got the better of the event and it was played under hotel quarantine conditions, the event stadium saw 1 day of use in total (with no players inside it!).
I would urge anyone who's planning a physical broadcast with a high headcount / international travel to think twice, even with the best planning and COVID protocols in place, you're foolish to think you can control it to the level required to guarantee everyone's safety. Esports is lucky that we can port shows to an online/remote presentation relatively easily at the moment. That option should remain Plan A for at least another year in my opinion, from seeing a fair chunk of events fall apart over the last few months.-
Sam Deans thanks for that Sam, sobering...
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Sam Deans Wow....incredible...This must've been incredibly stressful. It does sound quite bold to pursue an international event right now - kudos to you for taking the plunge, even though it didn't quite work out... Even expecting attendees to travel domestically feels like a stretch (I also operate in the corporate world where many companies still have corporate travel bans in place).
On another note, I live in Phoenix, and my area just broke ground on a massive sports and entertainment park with an esports arena: https://www.legacysportsusa.com/ Perhaps you'll produce an event there at some point in the future :-)
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We're holding our games in our practice facility. No fans. No videoboard. Just music and PA. The fact that we're playing is saving our jobs so no complaints here.
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