Concordia UNIVERSITY chicago
GIP - Masters Program
Certification of Authorship: I certify that I am the author of this paper and that any assistance I received in its preparation is fully acknowledged and disclosed in the paper. I also have cited any sources from which I used data, ideas, or words, either quoted directly or paraphrased. I certify that this paper was prepared by me specifically for the purpose of this assignment, as directed.
Event Management
Evan Gerhardt
Concordia University Chicago
SPML-6110-1
Assignment # 4
Event Management
Introduction
The events manager for a sporting event has many different facets involved in creating a successful event. Sports event requires development of strategy, game day considerations, and post event analysis (Danzey, Greenwell, and Shonk 2013). The steps for a sports event are best visualized as a circle because they are continuous. An event starts with development of strategy, which leads to event execution, and then to post event analysis. Post event analysis gives direction for development of strategy and the cycle continues.
Strategy Introduction The first step for an event is development of strategy. This encompasses all of the preparation for an event. The most work typically goes into this step and is a very crucial process for the success of the event. There are three types of planning and they are leadership, logistics, and marketing (Danzey, Greenwell, and Shonk 2013).
Leadership
Leadership is important because the leaders motivate the staff and make crucial decisions impacting the outcome of the event. The leaders must be the right people at the right time. They must hire and motivate the right staff to execute during the event. It is good for the event manager to create an organizational chart so that each leader knows who reports to them and each staff member know who to report to. At Pebble beach golf events they do not have a chart (Pebble Beach Events and Golf tournaments 2014). I am a staff member for their events and it is difficult because I do not know who the managers are and things are usually much disorganized. Leaders need to be recognize by the staff. The leaders’ first step in the planning process is to brainstorm and create a mission statement, goals, and objectives. Goals and objectives provide direction and without direction it is very difficult to succeed. The mission statement is no more than three sentences and sums up the whole expectation of the event. The goal is a brief statement declaring a topic. The objectives are specific measurable that are easy to calculate at the end of the event. An example of a goal is “Increase attendance.” An objective under this goal is, “Retain 80% of the attendees last year. Another objective is, “Gain 200 first time attendees.” It is very important to make the objectives measurable because during post event analysis they will be easy to judge.
Logistics
Logistics planning takes the most amount of time. This is where the leadership team asks who, what, when, and where. This step requires finding a venue, deciding what date and time to have the event, hiring people, planning the food drinks needed, getting vendors to work the event, figuring out transportation and hospitality, etc. This step includes planning for contingencies which means having backup plans in case something goes wrong (Danzey, Greenwell, and Shonk 2013). At the car show at Pebble Beach the cars are displayed on the fairway of the 18th hole. A part of their contingency plan is the steps to take if it rains at the event. They have large tents ready in case it rains. That way the cars will not get wet and the owners will continue to come back each year (Pebble Beach Events and Golf tournaments 2014).
Marketing
Marketing is connected with logistics because it asks the question who.
