By SportsEvents Magazine Publisher Talty O’Conner. This year’s S.P.O.R.T.S – The Relationship Conference convenes October 5-8 in Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana
Long-term success in the sports events industry is built around meaningful relationships. For event owners and rights holders, real relationships mean we work with destination and venue people that we know, like and trust to follow through on the promises they made in order to book our events. On the destination side, it means having confidence that the event organizer will deliver (and over-deliver) on their own promises and that they will run events we are proud to host in our community. For both sides, great relationships give us the peace in knowing we can count on the other side to come through when we need them.
It’s All About The Relationship
Relationships grow when people have time to get to know each other and when we share meaningful experiences together. Our annual conference is built around building meaningful relationships. Our program has worked so well through the years that attendees frequently referred to S.P.O.R.T.S. as “the relationship conference.” We latched onto the name.
Our formula for genuine relationship building starts with the necessity of having a manageable audience. We’ve closed registration and had a waiting list of attendees for the past four years. We maintain a ratio of about 2.5 destination/venue attendees to one event organizer. Next, we only schedule meaningful 15-minute appointments that must be pre-approved by both sides of the table. We also have intimate group sessions like town hall meetings where attendees share concerns, ideas and solutions with each other. Finally, S.P.O.R.T.S. attendees have fun together. They enjoy entertaining events that are designed to pair event owners and destination executives together with fun shared experiences that they talk and laugh about for years to come.
In October 2015, S.P.O.R.T.S. The Relationship Conference will exceed expectations. Last year we had more than 7,000 pre-arranged 15-minute appointments. We’ll exceed that this year. Attendees will also benefit from educational sessions on important topics like networking and growing sponsorship revenues, they’ll talk and share at town hall sessions, mingle with sports industry greats like Tim Brando (FOX Sports) and David Toms (PGA golfer) and live it up together at great parties, scavenger hunts, ghosts tours and other networking events that only a magical community like Shreveport-Bossier City, LA can pull off.
More information on S.P.O.R.T.S. 2015 is available on our website, www.sportseventsmagazine.com.
Regardless of whether you can join us or not, spending your time building great relationships in this industry will always lead to greater success and often in ways you may not have ever imagined.
