The brand new City Events conference was launched yesterday in the main lobby of the Maison du Sport International in Lausanne.

City Events is scheduled for November 17 to 18 at Square – Brussels Meeting Center in Brussels, Belgium.

City Events is the first international conference that brings together cities interested in hosting international sporting events and sports events owners looking for ambitious hosts for their events.

In addition, event suppliers and private event owners will be able to make valuable connections.

This year’s conference theme, ‘From sport event to citywide experience,’ will focus on identifying what the events of the future will look like, and when they will move from a traditional format to one that uses an entire city as its ‘venue,’ mobilising and attracting a much larger audience that can benefit both the sport and the host city.

To answer these questions, the programme is broken down into four half-day sections : ‘The Venue,’ ‘The People,’ ‘The Funds’ and ‘The Brand.’

Eric Saintrond, general secretary of FISU, the International University Sports Federation, explained the genesis of the project: “With more and more events in the international calendar, it makes it always more difficult for events owners to find host to organise their events. So there is a need for an event that would allow sports organisations to approach cities. FISU, as a multi-sport organisation, maintains relationships with a lot of sports organisations so we thought we would have some legitimacy in setting up such an event.”

Jacques Danger, president of Package/GL Events, which is organising the conference, added: “GL Events benefit from a long experience as a supplier of temporary structures for major sports events from the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville France to the 2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa. Consequently, it was normal that we partnered with FISU to organise this conference. As organisations FISU and GL Events have a complementary nature: we both maintain close relationships with cities and the sporting world.”

Finally, Greg Curchod, Director, Operations, at TSE Consulting, stressed what this event could bring to the sports community, saying: “City Events will be the unique platform that only focuses on the relationships between cities and sports owners. The conference will be a networking tool, which will allow better relationships between sports organisations and cities in order to generate more commercial opportunities for both sides, as well as a learning tool where you will be able to hear insightful speeches and presentation on the future of sports events and their links to the city, how you can make a sports event more than just a competition and how you can make the entire city a venue in itself.”

Sportcal is the exclusive media partner of City Events.

For more information on the conference, please visit www.cityevents-sport.com