How The Events Industry Is Impacted By The COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly changed the way businesses will operate in the future once the world recovers from the aftermath of the virus.  The demand across various sectors went haywire and in some cases has completely dried up, which means these are the industries which are the worst affected.  These are industries which rely on mass gatherings of people and in the current scenario governments across the world are cracking down heavily on large gatherings.  Aviation, Tourism, Movies, Malls, Hospitality, Transportation, sports and events are the worst hit amongst all the sectors.  Events industry in particular falls under the bracket of Meetings-Incentives-Conventions-Exhibitions (MICE) and is a Trillion dollar industry worldwide.  The COVID-19 pandemic is responsible for impacting almost 25 millions jobs across the world.  This is just the tip of the iceberg and the actual impact could be much higher when we consider indirect jobs and sporting events.

Multiple large scale events across the globe have been cancelled or deferred until further notice.  The cancellations began in February when the world is waking up to the fact that the virus is highly contagious and is spreading across borders with ease.  The first major cancellation was the Mobile World Congress 2020 edition, which takes place in Barcelona and is an event to exhibit mobile communication technologies.  This was just a premise for what was to follow in the coming months.  

In a survey done by Events and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) and which was shared with Ernst & Young the events and exhibitions sector in India is expected to take a one trillion rupees hit.  According to the report, in India alone it is estimated that 60 million people are unemployed and another 10 million directly affected by the crisis.

Business events like Annual General Meets (AGM,) corporate retreats, product launches, partner meets, conferences and seminars have been cancelled and have instead shifted online to Zoom, Google Meets, Skype and YouTube.  The best example would be the much anticipated OnePlus product launch of their OnePlus 8 series of smartphones.  The event was live telecasted on YouTube and the smartphone is now available for purchasing on e-commerce platform Amazon.

Exhibitions and trade fairs have been cancelled all over the world.  One of the biggest trade fairs which is the Dubai Expo 2020, has cancelled in light of the pandemic.  Some of the largest sporting events in the world like Tokyo Olympics, Football’s Premier League, National Basketball Association (NBA) and the much anticipated Indian Premier League in India stands cancelled at the moment.  

Corporates have been using video conference facilities for conducting internal meetings already, mostly with the intention of trying to run the operations effectively with due consideration to the ‘work from home’ initiative.  Video conferencing solutions by Go-to-Webinar, Kaltura and Zoom have seen an unprecedented surge in demand.  In India Event and Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) have urged the government to extend processes such as tax refunds, loan facilities for the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector and artistes to help reduce the negative impact on the livelihood of people involved in the entertainment and event space.  The Indian Government has responded with initiatives for the MSME sector with its Atma Nirbhar Package.

At present, technology applications such as video-conferences, webinars, virtual (events, meetings) and others are playing their individual parts to try and keep the operations running, especially for the corporate segment.  In the future however, we can see a hybrid approach to hosting events by integrating both virtual and physical components.  However, we will have a better understanding once the industry resumes its operations in three to four months down the line.