Harvey Lister feels that every live event “has the potential to deliver something truly extraordinary”.
Ready to entertain again
Recognised for lifetime career achievements, ASM Global’s Harvey Lister explains his ongoing commitment to the live experience
W
hen he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2020 Australian Event Awards, Harvey Lister stated “former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is quoted as saying ‘everybody has a plan - until they get punched in the face’. A punch can happen in very many ways in this industry and it’s about adapting and working with great teams to make the most of any situation.” Speaking to Australasian Leisure Management about the ‘Coronavirus punch’, Lister explained “this has clearly been one of those one in a hundred year events, that no company factored into their forward projections or their cashflow budgeting.” As for how abruptly ASM Global’s operations came to a halt, Lister recalls “I was in Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards that our company produces at the AEG Staples Center on what was the Australia Day weekend and we were hearing about the emergence of another virus and so Bob Newman, the Chief Executive of ASM Global, called together the global senior leadership team. “It was a mammoth weekend given that Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter accident and he was an LA Lakers player who a lot of the ASM management had known. “It was also a huge emotional weekend for the company, and then this … we started planning for what could happen, right back then. “By the time I came back to Australia later that week, we were starting to see the first shoots of it potentially affecting our market.
24 Australasian Leisure Management Issue 142
Harvey Lister receives the Australian Tourism Legend Award.
“And I was fortunate enough to be able to sit on a global leadership call every morning all the way through until October when we wound that back to once a week.” Through these Zoom calls, Lister notes “we were hearing in real time what was happening in every region of the world and how people were reacting to that. We had our government
