More than 700 events · 14m room nights · US$12bn GVA · 49 countries · 180 cities · in the past 12 months

A calendar that fills the venue, lifts the city, and earns its next investment

Living Lab separates the demand a venue created from the demand it hosted, event by event across the whole calendar. Occupancy and value then read as two different things.

Test a booking, a rights-fee renewal, a pricing policy, or a capital case before it is committed. Then account for what each event delivered on the same evidence base, so the next negotiation starts from a number.

A tenth of the world's output and employment depends on the visitor economy

A venue turns dates into room nights, spend, and jobs for the city around it. Living Lab shows what each event on the calendar delivered to the venue and the destination, and which dates to fight for next, on the same numbers.

In the last 12 months our OECD and UN SDG aligned model has been deployed at more than 700 events, 49 nations and 180 cities. They delivered 14 million room nights and over US$12bn in gross value added

What a venue operator, owner, or commercial director gets

One model of the venue and its catchment: the drive-time bands and routes that bring the audience, the hotel supply and rate on event nights, the calendar around each date, and the search interest and sentiment in each audience market. Signal137 measures what each event delivered to the venue and the city. Demand137 ranks the next season’s calendar, dates, and rights by expected demand and exposure.

What each event on the calendar delivered: attendance by origin and drive-time band, spend in the venue and in the city, room nights, GVA, tax, and jobs, net of displacement. Which events sold through and where the premium held. Which nights the city gained most from and which it barely noticed. Sentiment in the audience markets. Event over event, on one method.

Which events, dates, and rights to hold, add, move, or drop across next season’s calendar. Every slot scored on calendar collisions, holidays, paydays, weather exposure, and the access ceiling for the catchment, with the binding constraint named. Sales pacing on the venue’s own ticketing feed, with the break-even gap and forecast finish. Expected sell-through by tier, so prices are set before release. The cost of a dark night priced alongside the cost of filling it.

Product	Your question	You get	What it changes
Demand137	Whether to bid for or renew a promoter or rights-holder relationship	Incremental demand the event creates once displacement of other bookings is counted	Bid, renew, or walk away with a defensible incremental-value case
Demand137	How to price and allocate capacity across the calendar	Which dates carry pricing power and which fill through discounting	A calendar-wide pricing strategy, not a date-by-date guess
Demand137	Where to target capital, from refurbishment to expansion	Demand trajectory by event type and source market, not utilisation alone	Capital prioritised against durable demand, not borrowed demand
Demand137	Are two events competing for the same weekend or the same audience?	The whole calendar tested as one portfolio	Dates sequenced so events lift each other rather than cannibalise
Demand137	What happens if we do nothing?	Base, downside, and supported scenarios with a stated counterfactual	The cost of the status quo is priced alongside the cost of change
Signal137	Did that event create new demand, or reshuffle what was already there?	Gross attendance through counterfactual and displacement to attributable local value	Attendance and attributable value treated as two different numbers
Signal137	Which events in the calendar earned their rights fee?	Every event ranked on attributable value, on one method	The renewal conversation starts from evidence
Signal137	How do we defend the subsidy or public-funding case?	A traceable path from public investment to attributable local value	One evidence base the venue board and its funder can both stand behind
Signal137	What did the visitors do, and where did they stay?	Origin, stay length, spend, and movement around the venue, event by event	The catchment is measured
Both	Who holds this, and where?	Model, data, and a trained team inside your jurisdiction	The evidence survives the change of operator or board

Five questions this answers

Which events in our calendar create new demand for the destination, and how do we book more of them?

Each event attributed by net visitor contribution. That separates events that generate new hotel nights and visitor spend from those that redistribute existing activity.

What is our venue worth to the city in GVA, tax, and jobs, and how do we make that number grow?

The venue’s annual economic contribution to the destination, stated in terms the city council reads. The number that justifies the planning consent, the infrastructure investment, or the rate relief.

How do we grow the audience the venue draws, and the nights the city gains from it?

Attendance by origin and drive-time band for every event, with the room nights and spend each one brought to the city. The catchment the venue reaches today, and the markets a route, a package, or a calendar move would add.

A concert series or a trade show for the open dates? Which one lifts the venue and the city most?

Each option modelled against the destination’s demand profile, hotel availability, and economic return. The comparison shows which option adds most to the venue’s commercial case, as well as which fills the venue.

The city is reviewing our lease. How do we show that the venue earns its place and more?

Annual GVA, tax, jobs and visitor spend attributed to the venue’s calendar, as evidence for the lease review.

Calendar optimisation example

Q: Which events in our calendar create new demand for the destination, and how do we book more of them?

Each event attributed by net visitor contribution. That separates events that generate new hotel nights and visitor spend from those that redistribute existing activity.

Q: What is our venue worth to the city in GVA, tax, and jobs, and how do we make that number grow?

The venue’s annual economic contribution to the destination, stated in terms the city council reads. The number that justifies the planning consent, the infrastructure investment, or the rate relief.

Q: How do we grow the audience the venue draws, and the nights the city gains from it?

Attendance by origin and drive-time band for every event, with the room nights and spend each one brought to the city. The catchment the venue reaches today, and the markets a route, a package, or a calendar move would add.

Q: A concert series or a trade show for the open dates? Which one lifts the venue and the city most?

Each option modelled against the destination’s demand profile, hotel availability, and economic return. The event that fills the venue is not always the one that delivers the most to the venue’s commercial case.

Q: The city is reviewing our lease. How do we show that the venue earns its place and more?

Economic contribution stated annually: GVA, tax, jobs, and visitor spend attributed to the venue’s calendar. The evidence that the venue earns its place in the city’s infrastructure.

USE CASES

BY SECTOR

BY USE CASE

La Sagra

The us olympic team on a boat on the river seine during the paris 2024 opening ceremony

Seven countries bid for 2036: what a Games delivers to its host

October 10, 2026

Hamburg, Rome and Budapest pulled out of the 2024 race. This time the field is full, and each bidder can build its case on what it has already hosted.

A 100,000-seat stadium: build one fewer seat than you can sell, and the district around it

August 24, 2026

Manchester United’s proposed stadium is a £2bn, 100,000-seat ground by Foster + Partners, with a target opening of 2030-31. The club and the regeneration case cite £7.3bn a year for the economy and 92,000 jobs. Those are the promoters’ projections. Here is what to test before believing them.

Monza pays for the race. Milan keeps the guests. The host that follows the money keeps more of it.

August 14, 2026

At the Italian Grand Prix, the fleet of guest vehicles arrives on German plates with German drivers. The hospitality guests do not sleep in Monza, which hosts the race. They sleep in Milan, which does not. The town that pays captures a fraction of what the event generates.

Boston sold out of beer. The next host will see it coming, and stock the bar.

August 12, 2026

On 13 June 2026 Scotland played Haiti at Gillette Stadium. Around 50,000 Scottish supporters travelled. Boston’s bars sold beer at roughly four times the volume of a Fourth of July weekend, and some ran dry. Every signal that would have warned them was visible weeks ahead.

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