CIES Conference – 9th May, 2026 -“From Concept to Sold Outs: How to Build High Impact Sport Events”
Mr. Martin Kaswurm, CEO & Founder, CHAKA2 conducted the CIES Conference on 9th May, 2026 for the participants of the 7th edition of the PILLAI/FIFA/CIES International Programme in Sports Management. The topic of the conference was “From concept to sold outs: How to build high impact sport events”. The session started with the focus on the operating part of a sport event. It gave insight on the importance of coordination and communication. The speaker connected how discipline, clear roles and responsibilities and structured command systems would help to organize an event successfully with real life examples. Later the session discussed the audience segmentation and ticket selling curve, this session helped the participants to understand the pattern of ticket purchasing by the audience and how it can be used in pricing strategies for tickets.
Later the speaker focused on how modern sponsorship differs from traditional sponsorship. It was understood from the session that modern sponsorship is more data driven and engagement oriented while traditional sponsorship was focused on Logos, Jerseys, Boards and Media exposure. Modern sponsorship focuses on Audience data, Fan engagement, Digital activations, Brand experiences and Business outcomes. The presentation also highlighted different sponsorship levels and sponsorship cycles. Even though the Sponsorship levels were a familiar area to the participants, sponsorship cycles was a new domain of learning. Mr. Kaswurm also threw light on Monetization of Sports events which was covered at length with topics such as Profitability from hospitality, broadcasting, merchandise amd digital assets. The session also touched the aspects of crisis management. Various experiences were discussed on crisis management from the professional experience of the speaker. The sessions concluded with real life examples from Formula 1 hospitality, UEFA Champions League operations, Red Bull branded events among others. Overall, the session on sports event management was highly insightful and provided a clear understanding of the processes involved in organizing mega sporting events.
