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 In the real estate and retail business one often hears it’s about “location, location, location” and for stadia it can be somewhat true. Forsyth Barr Stadium, Dunedin, New Zealand sure has the best location in the city, but is in a city of only 125,000 people. Venues, I would suggest, are about “content, content and content” So although the stadium is brand new and just hosted Rugby World Cup, there is now pressure to expand its content beyond its tenants of 12 rugby and 7 soccer matches per year.

 This raises the question should venues actively peruse content or should they wait for it to come to them. In Australasia where most stadiums are owned by either City Councils or Federal States risk to the taxpayer is an important consideration in the attraction of events.

 Most stadiums in this part of the world are pretty active in the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) market but the real risk is in either waiting for bowl events to come to your part of the world or to actively marketing to promoters to bring events to the stadiums. The biggest risk in waiting for events to come is that they might not to come to a new unproven venue in that particular area of entertainment or that they won’t come because other venues are actively seeking content and prepared with the city to take some risk in the event.

 The next question we need to ask ourselves is should we take any booking for any event and what effect does a failed event have on our venue. What influence do we have over the event if we are not a partner and simply a “hall for hirer”? I know where all the complaints come when the event does not live up to crowd expectations; even free community events attract criticism if they are not up to standard.

 I believe that a middle ground where we can actively promote our venues to promoters and on occasion take some risk in the venture lies in having a deeper understanding of ones market and the passion points of the people in the area in which we live.

 Here are a few examples of how knowing the market has led to successful events. The first step in in choosing a great partner. We used a Australian based research company with offices in New Zealand called The Gemba Group who have excellent credentials having undertaken a great deal of market research and specializing in the entertainment industry.

 What we learnt surprised us “so called” seasoned venue professionals. We learnt for example that our region placed music events as the number one passion point for entertainment attendance even above sport. The second learning was that the experience of going to a live concert was more important to the audience than who the artist was (this might be because we have not had a international music act in the area for a very long time). This piece of research allowed us to persuade a promoter to bring Elton John to play live as the first music event in the new stadium to a sold out audience of 35,500, leaving both the venue and the promoter very happy and with no risk to the venue or city.

 The next learning was around professional soccer, which had never been played in the deep south of New Zealand. The research showed that bringing New Zealand’s only professional soccer team (who play in the Australian professional league) to play against Australian opposition would be supported. The biggest recorded soccer crowd in Dunedin was 4000.  Event viability was around 5500 spectators at the right ticket yield. We went with the research and over 15,000 soccer fans from the region showed up to break not only Dunedin’s record but also the Australian record for a pre season game. This has led to an opportunity to continue to host games at the stadium.

 I have no doubt that the research carried out on our behalf by Gemba contributed to us being able to persuade promoters and teams to come to the stadium and region because we could back our assertions with data, given that we had no events of a similar nature to show. We are now developing a track record and a proven market researched position as to what events are most likely to be a success.

 All venues who need to drive content take risks, risk is part and parcel of our business and we all know the adage “The greater the risk, the greater the reward” but in these times no one wants to bring a dud show or event to a city or expose the taxpayer to further risk with promoting unsuccessful events. I believe that a fuller understanding of the market in which we operate and knowledge of the passion points of our catchment area will mitigate some of the risk and allow us to make better decisions.

Content is important to the viability of venues and great content is what adds to the bottom line.