The IAEH General Assembly heard a landmark guest presentation from Hugh Brasher, CEO of London Marathon Events, on a genuinely new approach to organising major sporting events, and one that is already delivering results and challenging long-held assumptions about how events should be run.

• The presentation introduced Athletic Ventures, a unique partnership model bringing together UK Athletics, London Marathon Events and The Great Run Company to deliver events at scale, including the upcoming European Athletics Championships in Birmingham and a bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships in London.
• The model was presented as a direct challenge to the traditional Local Organising Committee (LOC) structure, with a compelling case made for why partnerships between entrepreneurial organisations can outperform LOCs on every key measure.
• Speed was identified as a critical differentiator; with a striking real-world example of how the same task that would take an LOC three months to even begin was completed, end to end, in six weeks.
• Cost effectiveness was the second pillar. Specific figures were shared illustrating how existing organisational infrastructure and established supplier relationships are delivering substantial savings compared to equivalent publicly-funded operations.
• Dynamism completed the trio: the argument being that entrepreneurial organisations, unconstrained by certain governance structures, can respond to opportunities and make decisions that LOCs and governing bodies simply cannot.
• The presentation included revealing detail on how the 2029 World Athletics Championships bid was structured to unlock government support in a climate of fiscal constraint: a model with lessons for event hosts anywhere.
• Discussion ranged across major themes facing event hosts globally: competing for attention against football and social media; the limits of creating new IP versus building on existing assets; and the role of non-traditional partnerships in growing audiences and revenues.
• The conversation touched on legacy, diversity and grassroots participation, including some remarkable data on how the London Marathon has transformed its own audience demographics since 1981.

You must be logged in to access webinars. Please click here to login