La Liga Special Event Participation

La Liga the eponymous Spanish Football League, has set its base in India in New Delhi. They hosted their first Live Screening of Real Madrid vs Barcelona clubs in JLN Stadium. The event was marked by presence of huge screens, fan engagements, food and beverage stalls on the evening of 3^rd December, 2016. The event was managed by DNA Networks, and our students were invited to be volunteers at their various stalls.

“Students got an amazing experience of crowd management, brand activation & artist management. They even got to work at the ticketing counter, which quite a challenging work," said Ms. Sakshi Vig, Faculty, INLEAD. 

At the venue there was a huge set- up of stage, activity area, VVIP zone, ticketing centre, food stalls and many more. DNA team people picked randomly from amongst the students & assigned them different duties around 12:00 PM. Some were sent to manage the electricity set up, some for masking and some to manage the food court, the VVIP zone and Logistics. Students while volunteering got to learn some new technical terminologies like Masking, Mojo ,Knop etc Those incharge of food court were busy setting up food stalls, others got to do ticketing at the cash counter and some were working on the stage.

One of the students was made in charge of the store room in the stadium and was asked to work on the logistics of thousands of glasses and other stuff, from store to venue. A  team of 20 volunteers was assigned to him for this extremely critical task. It was around 6:30 PM when Viewers started to enter the stadium and that’s when majority of INLEADers got to work, maximum on the cash counter and the coupon counter where it was rather challenging to handle thousands of people. 

The event ended around 10:30 PM and post which there was tallying done, cash was counted, venue cleaned and a very long day came to a closure. La Liga brought the big screen viewing of an El Classico match to India in a big way, and INLEADERs got the opportunity to be a part of it.

Frenzy at Skrillex event in Gurgaon- What were the lapses?

For most of us, the word ‘event’ is synonymous with music, artists, drinks, food and lots and lots of fun. But, what remains unnoticed is the amount of hard work that goes into making a particular event possible. For an event to be successful there are multiple minute critical aspects that need to be looked into.  An event not planned properly can turn a high profile event into an unpleasant memory in the minds of people, forever. One example of such an event was the Skrillex event in Gurgaon.

For the uninitiated: Sonny John "Skrillex" Moore aka Skrillex, is an American electronic music producer, DJ, singer and songwriter. All of 27 years of age, he is currently the latest craze amongst the young generation and they love his music compositions.

Skrillex was recently on a 4 city tour of India. His last show in India was on the 11^th of October, 2015 in HUDA Grounds, Gurgaon. The event was a huge success with a mammoth attendance of close to 15,000. The online ticketing for the event was managed by meraevents.com.

The event since then has been marred by massive controversies. Headlines in next day newspapers screamed “23 year old woman dies while dancing at crowded Skrillex gig”. The deceased while dancing vigorously collapsed due to cardiac arrest for lack of oxygen and could not be revived. Why was there oxygen shortage? The venue was overcrowded. Capacity of Leisure Valley, HUDA Grounds is between 5000 and 6000, whereas towards the first hour of the event there were about 15,000 people packed into the venue. Apparently, the deceased’s friend too collapsed due to suffocation and is still in a critical condition.

Where were the lapses?

•   Poorly organized event with very little emphasis on safety norms;
•  Inadequate security that could have prevented people who barged in without tickets from doing so;
•   No control over liquor which was being served to underaged audience;
•    Organisers who had taken an NOC for 5000 people didn’t anticipate or even share their apprehension about more numbers turning up for the event;
•   There were brawls amongst drunken youth which could hardly be contained;
•   Number of police personnel deployed for an event of such a mega scale was just about 90;
•     Inadequate parking space which had resulted in massive traffic jam around the venue.

The organizer, Mumbai’s Clockwork Events, is now facing charges of negligence (filed by deceased girl’s parents) as well as for allegedly violating excise norms. In fact, in future, any organizer of events will have to deposit a bank guarantee if liquor is to be served during the course of the event. But most importantly, Event organisers need to themselves be more particular about size and location of venue, number of attendees, as well as other amenities for the attendees. Memories from this gig which could have been all about Skrillex’s mind-blowing music has unfortunately been marred by the death of a young attendee due to overcrowding.

- Ms. Monica Mor

  Senior Faculty, INLEAD

Images Courtesy: Google Images 

Crisis Management during an Event

Arranging an event is like being on a constant battle. You have no idea what new challenge or problem would be thrown in front of you and from where. That’s why, just like a prepared soldier, an event manager has to be well prepared at all the times and have a back-up of things which he/she considers can go wrong during the course of the event.

An event manager is the captain of the ship called “Event”.  He/she has to make sure that the people on board have a fabulous evening/morning as promised according to the schedule.

Here, we present to you an easy crisis management plan that all the event managers out there can follow in order to make sure that they’re never stuck in such a crisis situation.

 1)  Clarity on Chain of Communication- “Too many cooks spoil the dish.” Just like the saying, having too many people speaking on behalf of the event organizer can lead to a lot of speculation and confusion. It’s always better to appoint a media spokesperson in order to insure that streamlined information is communicated to the audience and the press.

 2)   Timely Responses- Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. In case of a crisis, this silence can have a huge impact on the reputation of your company. So, make sure, that you timely respond to all the messages, queries or media questions that come your way. Keeping the audience in oblivion is not a smart move. Social Media can become a great communication tool during the times of crisis.

 3)  Keep the Media informed- In case you had already called journalists, photojournalists and
photographers to cover the event, keep them updated about the status of the event. Keeping them in dark about the developments can have a huge negative impact on the event.

 4) Keep your Events Insured- Better be prepared than sorry. Cancellation of an event can cause huge monetary losses to the event organizer and manager. In order to insure that you don’t end up with a negative bank balance after an event blunder, make sure you get your events insured in advance. Though their premiums are high, but, they really come in handy at the time of crisis.

 5)  Plan well- Anything can happen at any time, even towards the end of a particular event. So, till the event is over, keep your ears and eyes open. In order to make sure that nothing goes wrong, plan your event in a systematic manner and have a back-up plan ready.

Further, what has happened, has happened and “The secret of crisis management is not good vs. bad, it’s preventing the bad from getting worse.” 

Images Courtesy- Google Images 

Venue Management and Operations in Event Management

The first thing that we inquire about whenever someone asks us to accompany him/her on a particular event is about the venue, the place where the event is scheduled to take place. Venue is of prime importance to the attendees for a lot of reasons. Firstly, they make their decision of attending or not attending a particular event based on the venue’s location and distance from their homes. Secondly, an event happening at a particular location speaks volumes about the scale of the event and the type of crowd that one can expect.

Venue of an event is not only important to attendees but it is equally if not more important to Event Managers. An event manager has to take into account a lot of factors before locking in a particular venue for an event as his duty does not end there. In order to get our students acquainted with this dimension of event management, INLEAD recently facilitated an industry expert workshop on Venue Management & Operations.

The workshop conducted by Mr. Ankush Roy Choudhury, Assistant Vice President - Twenty First Century Media Pvt. Ltd. offered great insights into the nitigrities involved in the process of Venue Management and Operations, right from the selection of the venue to the final culmination of the event.  The session which primarily focused on Sports Events Venue Management and operations, started with a brief introduction on Sports Management & Marketing. The extremely interactive session dwelled deep into the various elements of venue management like maintenance, housekeeping, filed of play, permissions, facilities, hospitality and many more.

The workshop proved to be a great learning experience for the Event Management and Public Relations students and added another feather in their knowledge cap.