Live Events Support Sector - Surviving in Tough Times.

The live events industry has been one of the most severely hit sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic and none more so than the crucial businesses that support the entire industry. Governments and other agencies have drummed up and promised financial support but this may be a case of too little too late for many businesses.

In previous articles we have covered the plight of support businesses including light and sound engineers, equipment rental, stage design, stage construction and event ticketing companies but there many other businesses that also support and rely on an active live events industry for revenue.

Think of those unsung heroes and backroom staff that are the backbone of many businesses, there are plenty of smaller businesses that help make the entire events infrastructure operate. These support businesses include the small number of software specialist companies that focus purely on servicing the live events industry, without which many event organisers would have to resort to manual processes. Live events have become too large and complex without some kind of event management software to help streamline the management of so many elements.

In the music festival sector, there are about ten key providers that the majority of organisers rely on with probably the most widely used being Marcato, a Canadian festival software company acquired by Patron Technology in October 2018. Sadly, this week it looks like Marcato will cease trading in October this year. This is worrying as Marcato was one of the most prominent music festival software management companies with the financial backing of a parent company.

This demonstrates how vulnerable support companies are to complete closure of the music festival scene. However, event organisers should not despair as there are plenty of well-run robust software management businesses that are smart and have had good contingency plans in place to ride out this crisis. Rather than panicking about the effect on current revenues this period should be used to plan for the future and make business improvements. Music festival event organisers should be asking their software suppliers about their plans for 2021 and it may make sense to carry out some due diligence to ensure their supplier will still be around next year to avoid getting caught short. As with many businesses in the live events industry there will be some consolidation with mergers and acquisitions likely to take place in the next 6 months. 

For music festival event organisers looking for one of the most robust festival events management software solutions they need look no further than FestivalPro, one of the leading companies in this support business sector. The guys at FestivalPro have taken the current lull in festival activity to make improvements to their software platform and implement all the features customers have been asking for. The team who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The FestivalPro platform will be better and fully ready for recommencement of the music festivals in the summer of 2021 and now is a good time to get in touch and see how they can streamline music festivals saving time, costs and increasing revenue. 

Photo by Harrison Haines from Pexels

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