12 minute read
RECOVERY
The 2010 Winter Olympics put Vancouver on the global sport-hosting map • CHUNG CHOW
CHUCK CHIANG
It has been quite the year for Vancouver’s profile as a host city of major international sporting events.
Within months of each other, the city – which made its debut on the global sporting stage with the 2010 Winter Olympics, to be followed five years later with the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup title game – was able to secure a trio of high-profile events: the 2025 Invictus Games, the 2023 Laver Cup tennis tournament and matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
For one of the top officials working behind the scenes to bring these major events and others to Metro Vancouver, the trio of announcements was a sign that the team’s dedicated hard work has successfully pushed the city’s profile as a global sporting host to a new echelon. “We’re excited to share our story,” says Michelle Collens, senior manager of Sport Hosting Vancouver – a municipal group tasked since the mid-2010s to execute the city’s strategy on drawing and hosting large-scale sporting events. “These conversations haven’t just been going on for three or four months; it’s been five years in the making for both [the Laver Cup and FIFA World Cup], and for something like this to fall in place, it takes some time to court the relationship, to understand the logistics, to understand your city’s ability to respond and to be entrusted by the event rights-holders to bring their events. So I would say there’s almost a sense of relief and happiness that the effort was rewarded.”
Collens notes that the 2010 Winter Games and the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup did do wonders for raising the profile of Vancouver and its ability to host big sports events. However, Sport Hosting Vancouver was founded to create a more holistic vision of creating a plan for what future events to pursue, how to do so and how to make bringing such events to the city as attractive and seamless to event rights-holders as possible.
That involves a multitude of conversations – internally within the City of Vancouver, with stakeholders such as the city’s Hotel Destination Association, Destination Vancouver and others and externally with sporting event organizers – to create a cohesive network that facilitates major games in the Lower Mainland.
“I feel so privileged that many events [after 2015] contacted us to say they would like us to host their events,” Collens says. “But we didn’t have a process to evaluate what’s a good fit that will be mutually beneficial to both the destination and the event.… This partnership [with Destination Vancouver and the hotel association] allows us to identify what events we could host based on our capacity and the needs of community.
“Some events are turn-key, when they approach us and there’s a fit for us to respond right away. Then there are others that we identify – and those relationships take two, three years. For the Laver Cup, for example, it’s never been to Vancouver before – and it was a proactive call from us to say, ‘Hi, we are interested and would we be able to get into a conversation to understand what your needs are?’”
Prior to the Laver Cup, Invictus Games and FIFA World Cup announcements, the city had successfully built steady event momentum, hosting a number of HSBC World Rugby Sevens tournaments at BC Place over the years, as well as the 2019 NHL Entry Draft and the 2019 IIHF World Juniors tournament.
A key component to recognize, Collens says, is that most events – in fact, every one except the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup – happened or are scheduled for late fall, winter and early spring, time periods that are usually considered “shoulder seasons” for Vancouver’s tourism industry, which is driven by cruises and conferences in the summer.
“There are not a lot of business conferences booking in November, December, January, February and March,” Collens says. “So we are trying to complement that, because there’s a totally different market that will travel for sports when business won’t travel. This allows us to bring in events in order to build out an entire portfolio of year-round offerings.”
Vancouver sports journalist Scott Rintoul, who has been a veteran of the city’s sports scene for two decades, says the city’s global sporting profile can best be seen in the Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) decision to bring its World Cup games to Vancouver, despite Edmonton once being considered as a host city shoo-in.
“As we know, Vancouver and B.C. in general opted out of hosting the World Cup many years ago, but there was a change in attitude with government,” Rintoul says. “FIFA had something to do with that, them wanting to come to Vancouver. But it does speak to where Vancouver is located, the events we’ve put on in the past that have been world-class and – unfortunately for Edmonton – also says something about the state of their facility relative to the one in Vancouver.”
Rintoul does note that Vancouver’s reputation as a sports town isn’t as strong as some others – but that isn’t as much of a factor when it comes to events that happen once in a blue moon.
“I have believed for a very long time that Vancouver is an events city, which is different than just being a sports city,” he says. “When the city believes it has a big event, people in Vancouver turn out. Now, we can argue the pros and cons of that, but we’ve seen it dating back to David Beckham and the LA Galaxy coming to Vancouver when the Whitecaps weren’t even an MLS (Major League Soccer) team. We had 50,000 packed into BC Place for a friendly, and that’s just one example.”
The timing of this rise in Vancouver’s sport-hosting profile (after years of slow and steady build) comes at a crucial time for the tourism sector – especially economically, says Royce Chwin, president and CEO at Destination Vancouver.
“These big events give us a level of attention that you’d never be able to afford if you tried to do a media buy,” Chwin says. “There’s a real opportunity to jump-start the visitors economy here in Vancouver.… It’s important because of all the baseline economic reasons. It’s the ability to rebuild confidence in the visitor economy and in tourism. It’s the ability to showcase Vancouver as not a follower city, but a leading city in areas like reconciliation and sustainability.
“It’s a proven fact in our experience in talking to people who have relocated to Vancouver,” he adds. “Whenever we ask how many of them once visited here for a sporting or business event, invariably at least half of the hands in the room go up. And it’s exactly these events that allow for a broader application of the Vancouver brand – to showcase it as a great place to set up shop, to live, to invest.”
Hosting big events gives Vancouver the ability to showcase its leadership in areas like reconciliation and sustainability, says Royce Chwin, president and CEO of Destination
Vancouver • CHUNG CHOW
THERE’S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT MARKET THAT WILL TRAVEL FOR SPORTS WHEN BUSINESS WON’T TRAVEL. THIS ALLOWS US TO BRING IN EVENTS IN ORDER TO BUILD OUT AN ENTIRE PORTFOLIO OF YEAR-ROUND OFFERINGS Michelle Collens Senior manager Sport Hosting Vancouver
RECOVERY
Companies continue to tap tech to reinvent events in pandemic era
TYLER ORTON
Handshakes, elbow-rubbing and overall schmoozing at events and corporate conferences went out the window at the outset of the pandemic, and the industry quickly transitioned to virtual meet-ups.
“We had a lot of contracts signed and our customers were just cancelling their events,” Jeff Sinclair, CEO of Eventbase Technology, recalls of the first few weeks after COVID-19 paralyzed much of the global economy.
Prior to the pandemic, his Vancouver company cut its teeth tailor-making mobile apps for large events, such as the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver or the South By Southwest (SXSW) festival. For SXSW, the firm at one point deployed 1,000 beacons – wireless devices that detect when a smartphone running an appropriate app is in close proximity – to help festivalgoers connect to each other.
“We were on a really good path. And COVID just really stopped that in its tracks for a long period of time,” Sinclair says.
Schedules, maps and speaker profiles are all mainstays of the apps Eventbase develops. Even as the company transitioned to developing apps for virtual events, Sinclair says that particular market did not remain as lucrative since people were sitting in front of their desktop computers at all times.
But with COVID-19 restrictions loosening across the globe, renewed demand for event technology is re-energizing the industry.
A January 2022 report from events marketing platform SplashThat acknowledged that an expected return-to-form for the industry never quite materialized in the prior year.
But the latest outlook found 59 per cent of respondent event professionals planned to invest more in technology in the coming year. “As event restrictions ease, interest in large-scale, traditionally in-person events like trade shows and industry expos is rising,” the SplashThat report concludes, noting 60 per cent of respondents plan to hold conferences this year and 51 per cent plan to hold networking events. “Companies participating in these events will benefit from hosting smaller, more targeted ancillary events that are revenue-generating machines.”
But virtual and hybrid events are not going away. The report notes 46 per cent of respondents plan to host more virtual events this year than they did last year.
Amid the pandemic, some West Coast companies are even turning to the metaverse to facilitate those types of events.
Matt Burns, founder and chief innovation officer of BentoHR, organized the Global HR Summit that saw all 60 speakers don Oculus Quest headsets to engage with audiences in an artificially rendered environment. “It’s going to take some time for SMBs (small- and medium-sized businesses) to wrap their heads around it, but inside of three years, I would say a significant portion of organizations are going to have some abilities,” Burns says about the potential for more widespread metaverse adoption.
Jeff Sinclair, CEO of Eventbase, says his company is on track to be profitable again this year • CHUNG CHOW
390 guest rooms & suites 26 flexible meeting rooms spanning over 40,000 sq. ft 10,000 sq. ft. Britannia Ballroom (up to 1,000 guests)
Sheraton Vancouver Airport Hotel
7551 Westminster Highway, Richmond, BC V6X 1A3 Marriott.com/YVRVS | T 1 866 663 3881 sales@sheratonvancouverairport.com
Images from the 2020 Global HR Summit, which was organized by BentoHR and allowed attendees to experience the conference in a virtually rendered environment • SUBMITTED
Attendees at the Global HR Summit had the option of putting on their own headgear to watch speakers, who appeared as cartoon-like avatars they created for themselves, or attendees could plug in using the less-immersive environment of a 2D computer monitor. Ultimately, about 25 per cent of the 800-plus attendees opted for the VR environment, while the remainder watched the 2D livestream.
Burns says there are still notable barriers to entry for businesses getting on board with the metaverse, such as the perceived high cost of the hardware involved. A top-of-the-line headset such as Meta Platforms’ Oculus Quest 2 goes for US$300.
Meanwhile, the return of in-person events is being driven mostly by large enterprise, according to Sinclair.
Eventbase spent a sizeable chunk of the pandemic diversifying its offerings, creating apps for universities and partnering with other companies on a COVID-19-related project facilitated by the Digital Technology Supercluster.
Sinclair describes it as 18 months of “walking through the wilderness” after laying off one-third of its staff in the early-goings of COVID-19.
But a big push for a return to in-person events began in September 2021 when Silicon Valley giant Salesforce tapped Eventbase for its annual Dreamforce conference, which normally attracts 170,000 or so attendees in San Francisco.
Salesforces reports that around 1,000 attendees made it to Dreamforce 2021, but Sinclair says “that one broke the ground for other events to follow.” “Salesforce was so adamant about going back to the in-person event at that time, dealing with some of the restrictions and health checks on-site, and all the hoops you had to jump through to host a safe event,” he says. “They did that and that gave all their customers confidence that they could do that as well.”
Since then, Eventbase has hired another 50 workers to keep up with increasing demand and revenue is close to where it was pre-COVID-19. “But we expect to blow past that this fall and be profitable this year,” Sinclair says. “It’s a return to normal, but all of our customers are open to reinventing the way events work.”
IT’S A RETURN TO NORMAL, BUT ALL OF OUR CUSTOMERS ARE OPEN TO REINVENTING THE WAY EVENTS WORK Jeff Sinclair CEO Eventbase
Tech conference provides multimillion-dollar bump to downtown Vancouver economy Event was the city’s largest conference since the pandemic began
Glen Korstrom
Downtown Vancouver got an $15.7-million economic bump in August from the 5,000-delegate Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Technologies (SIGGRAPH) conference.
The Vancouver Convention Centre calculated the $15.7-million figure by including direct spending by organizers and delegates during the conference – held August 8-11 – and on two extra days of sightseeing.
The economic bump could be larger, if delegates brought along family members or extended their trips to visit the Okanagan or other places in B.C.
This is the fourth time that the computer graphics and interactive techniques convention has visited Vancouver since its inaugural visit in 2011, when it set the record as the largest convention held at the Vancouver Convention Centre, drawing 16,000 delegates from 74 countries.
SIGGRAPH rotates its annual conference between cities.
“We love coming to Vancouver,” conference chair Munkhtsetseg Nandigjav tells BIV.
“The computer graphics industry in Vancouver has certainly made a global impact, and it’s a privilege to hold our annual conference in one of the world’s most beautiful cities.”
The Vancouver Convention Centre has hosted other large events recently, such as the Anime Revolution conference held July 29-31, and the TED2022 conference back in April.
Earlier this year, the Vancouver Convention Centre hosted its largest in-person conference since the pandemic began • SUBMITTED
MEET GREEN, MEET SUSTAINABLY
Planning a meeting or event? Victoria Conference Centre (VCC) is an ideal place to host eco-friendly meetings and events. From energy-efficiency to water conservation and waste management, the VCC will help ensure your event is as sustainable as possible. Since 2009, the VCC has been working with Synergy Enterprises to measurably reduce environmental impacts. Book Today! tourismvictoria.com/meetingss
