Latest / Best of Business / Brent Eccles and Steve Armitage: Eccles Entertainment founder and Hospitality NZ chief executive on how we can bring more major events to NZ

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Brent Eccles and Steve Armitage: Eccles Entertainment founder and Hospitality NZ chief executive on how we can bring more major events to NZ · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks'd be follow
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  Speaker 1: this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
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  Speaker 2: Now onto other matters. The Prime Minister is calling for
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  Speaker 2: a change to how we fund major events. He told
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  Speaker 2: Ryan Bridge this morning that sporting events and concerts are
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  Speaker 2: key to getting the economy back up and running.
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  Speaker 3: I really want us to rethink what we do with
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  Speaker 3: the Major Events Fund because it takes a while for
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  Speaker 3: events and activity to come to a country. You've actually
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  Speaker 3: got to stuff it as a pipeline.
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  Speaker 2: Brent Eccles is the founder of Eccles Entertainment and a
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  Speaker 2: representative for Frontier Touring New Zealand. And Steve Armitag is
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  Speaker 2: the CEO of Hospitality New Zealand. We got both of
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  Speaker 2: them with us, High lads, Good Monday, Brent is what
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  Speaker 2: do we need to rethink about?
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  Speaker 4: This?
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  Speaker 2: Isn't isn't the problem that actually the fund was working
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  Speaker 2: perfectly then we stopped the fund working perfectly well.
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  Speaker 4: From a contemporary music perspective, it all sounds good, but
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  Speaker 4: they never ever found it anything out of the major events.
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  Speaker 4: Silent's only sport.
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  Speaker 2: Oh really, we never did any concerts or anything like that.
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  Speaker 4: No, no, never.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, have you got a problem with us just doing
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  Speaker 2: sport out of it?
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  Speaker 4: No, I don't. There's quite a long lead time to
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  Speaker 4: access the fund and with contemporary music you don't have
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  Speaker 4: that lead time. It's pretty it's pretty hard and fast,
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  Speaker 4: so you'll never quite be able to qualify. And as
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  Speaker 4: I say, the major events fun has been focused on sport,
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  Speaker 4: not rock and roll.
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  Speaker 2: Do you think that we need to just get it
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  Speaker 2: moving faster? Is that the problem?
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  Speaker 4: Absolutely? Yeah, Absolutely, it's not that hard to do if
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  Speaker 4: they have relationships. There's only ready two or three promoters
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  Speaker 4: who work in that realm, and it's it's pretty easy
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  Speaker 4: to get into the pipeline. Actually, they're able to pin
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  Speaker 4: points and funds. But the sooner the better. I love
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  Speaker 4: the sound of it.
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  Speaker 2: How long was it taking break to get the money
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  Speaker 2: out of it?
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  Speaker 4: Well, I think it was like a three month lead time.
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  Speaker 4: It doesn't work for rock and roll. You guys need
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  Speaker 4: it within a month, just by the time, just by
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  Speaker 4: the time the show comes on and by the time
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  Speaker 4: it goes on sales three quick yeah, So you've got
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  Speaker 4: to get those things sorted out with budgets of all
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  Speaker 4: kinds of agents and managers and all down the chain
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  Speaker 4: around the world. You've got to take across the life.
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  Speaker 4: So it needs to be the need to put some
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  Speaker 4: sort of reserves and money for contemporary music and then
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  Speaker 4: it can just air the access with a good relationship.
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  Speaker 4: That's the way to do that.
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  Speaker 2: Now, Steve, what's gone wrong here? Because I'm just from
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  Speaker 2: an all clump perspective. We haven't got anything on the
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  Speaker 2: calendar and haven't had anything on the calendar since, like
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  Speaker 2: seriously since Coldplay, So why.
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  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, can I just say when I
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  Speaker 3: heard this this morning, my first reaction was about time.
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  Speaker 3: We've been highlighting the importance of a consistent five events
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  Speaker 3: for years and an actual fact, I think this speaks
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  Speaker 3: directly to the government's own ambition to double the value
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  Speaker 3: of tourism. You need strong demand drivers and events have
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  Speaker 3: proven winners in that regard. So this is a really
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  Speaker 3: interesting mindset shift. The argument that the Prime Minster made
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  Speaker 3: this morning in support of events was nowhere to be
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  Speaker 3: seen earlier this year when we get the America's Cup
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  Speaker 3: as the potential option. So it's really interesting to see that. Well,
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  Speaker 3: we were in with a chance to secure the America's
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  Speaker 3: Cup here in New Zealand, the same argument that the
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  Speaker 3: Prime Minister was making this morning around the fund that
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  Speaker 3: generates the importance of having a consistent pipeline of major events,
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  Speaker 3: and the Melbourne comparison was really interesting because he's talking
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  Speaker 3: about really large, global scale of events being hosted every quarter.
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  Speaker 3: That's a great aim, but we know we're near having
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  Speaker 3: the funding in place to be able to deliver that.
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  Speaker 2: What is tell me, Steve if I'm imagining it? But
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  Speaker 2: it felt to me as if we had a bunch
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  Speaker 2: of stuff on the calendar and then the Major Events
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  Speaker 2: Fund stopped funding things or did I just imagine that.
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  Speaker 3: There's a couple of layers to this that a lot
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  Speaker 3: of funding used to come through from Auckland Council through
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  Speaker 3: its council controlled organization. Yes, and of course the councils
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  Speaker 3: had to pull back a significant amount of funding. So
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  Speaker 3: the approach to major events sort of prior to COVID
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  Speaker 3: was usually it was co funded between the council and
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  Speaker 3: central government through the New Zealand Major Events Fund. With
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  Speaker 3: the city under pressure, they haven't been able to put
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  Speaker 3: together a fund fighting fund for large scale major events.
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  Speaker 2: So that's the money that there was money that dried
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  Speaker 2: up and That's what it was.
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  Speaker 3: Hen's the argument for the accommodation Levy.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, now, Steve, have you got a better example than
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  Speaker 2: the America's Cup, because that's a distinct example. I'm tired
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  Speaker 2: of talking here.
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  Speaker 3: Well, if you go back to your recent history, you
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  Speaker 3: know we had the fief for Women's World Cup here,
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  Speaker 3: We've had we've co hosted a Cricket World Cup. I
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  Speaker 3: know Brent's talking about music being different to sport, but
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  Speaker 3: Auckland and New Zealand in particular was a customed every
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  Speaker 3: year to having a global event here. Yes, and Brent's
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  Speaker 3: absolutely right. Sometimes for an event like FIFA, that's sixty
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  Speaker 3: seven years of hard work to get that over the
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  Speaker 3: line before it's delivered here. And at the moment we'd
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  Speaker 3: be starting largely from scratch, but we need some certainty
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  Speaker 3: of funding to be able to get ourselves to front
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  Speaker 3: of the queue.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, Brient, if you could pick, if you could pick
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  Speaker 2: just one event that you would like to bring here,
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  Speaker 2: what would it be? Taylor Swift?
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  Speaker 4: Ah? Well, you know we can dream about that. I
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  Speaker 4: don't think that's ever going to work yet actually, but
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  Speaker 4: you know that's been banned around a lot. There are
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  Speaker 4: a lot of other artists I think will be great
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  Speaker 4: to bring here.
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  Speaker 3: You know who.
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  Speaker 4: Paul McCartney, how's that? Yeah? Yeah, how about Bruce Bringsteen?
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  Speaker 4: How about that?
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  Speaker 2: Ye been there, done that though, haven't we?
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  Speaker 4: How about the Eagles? Always great though. I mean, you know,
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  Speaker 4: first class international entertainment and it works well in the stadium. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: there's not a lot, there's not a lot around, but
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  Speaker 4: the stuff around is good.
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  Speaker 2: So you know what, you don't say the America's Cup again.
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  Speaker 3: Uh, large scale mass participation events really good. We're the
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  Speaker 3: World Masters Games here not so long ago. And the
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  Speaker 3: good thing about that is that people stay for longer too.
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  Speaker 3: They come and they compete in their in their particular discipline,
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  Speaker 3: and then on average they were staying up to two
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  Speaker 3: weeks either side. So you know, the more that we
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  Speaker 3: can see that spend the Steen Dow across a period
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  Speaker 3: of time, the better. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, guys, thank you very much. I think we're all
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  Speaker 2: on board with the same idea. It's good to see
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  Speaker 2: the prime ministers as well. Brent Eccles, Steve Armitage. Brent's
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  Speaker 2: obviously with Eccles Entertainment, the founder and Frontier Touring now
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  Speaker 2: and then Steve Armatage is with Hospitality in New Zealand.
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