An event turns a date into spend, room nights, and jobs. Living Lab shows what each one actually added, net of what would have happened anyway, on numbers an auditor can trace.
One model of the event and its host: ticketing, accommodation, transport, spend, and sentiment, set against the calendar, the routes, and the hotel market that week. Signal137 attributes what the event added to the host economy, with displacement, leakage, and the counterfactual stated rather than assumed. Demand137 shows what the next edition or the next bid would deliver under the same method. The treasury, the auditor, and the rights holder can each test the report.
What would have happened without the event, and what the event moved. That covers visitor spend, room nights, GVA, tax, and jobs, net of displaced local activity and of spend that left the jurisdiction. Which visitors came because of the event and which would have come anyway. Where the value landed by district and by sector. Every input marked observed, derived, or inferred, so each line can be traced to its source.
What the next edition, a date move, or a new host would deliver, on the same model that measured the last one. The access ceiling in the event week: seats on the routes, rooms in the market, the last mile. Sales pacing against the archetype with the break-even gap stated in time to act. Candidate dates scored on collisions, holidays, and weather exposure. The cost of not hosting priced alongside the cost of hosting.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signal137 | What did the event actually change, net of what would have happened anyway? | Gross activity through counterfactual, displacement, and leakage to attributable retained value | The legacy figure is built to survive the first hard question |
| Signal137 | How much of the spend left the local economy? | Leakage through non-local suppliers and contractors, traced and stated | The share the local-benefit test asks for is stated |
| Signal137 | Did the event grow the economy or rearrange it? | Displacement against known local spending patterns | Growth and reshuffling are reported as two numbers |
| Signal137 | How do we report the legacy to funders, council, or the public? | A result stated as attributable, with the counterfactual made explicit | A claim an auditor or journalist can trace line by line |
| Signal137 | Can this be done for a first edition with no baseline? | Comparable events, markets, and destinations, with a wider uncertainty range stated | The result states its wider range |
| Signal137 | How does this event compare with others in the calendar? | Attribution on one consistent method across every event | Events compared on a shared basis, feeding the portfolio decision |
| Signal137 | What if the attributable result differs from the figure already announced? | The result reported as found | A bounded result, with its range stated, carries weight in a funding decision |
| Demand137 | Whether to host again, or renew the agreement | The next edition modelled on the last one's attributed result, with the counterfactual stated | The renewal negotiated from evidence, not precedent |
| Demand137 | What would the next bid deliver? | Base, downside, and legacy-backed cases, net of displacement | The funding position set before the announcement |
| Both | Who holds this, and where? | Model, data, and a trained team inside your jurisdiction | The capability survives the change of official or consultant |
The counterfactual and displacement come off gross activity. What remains is the event's net contribution.
GVA, tax, and jobs stated per pound or dollar of public support. The event earns its funding on the same basis as any other public expenditure decision.
Every edition runs on the same model and coefficient vintage. Because the method stays fixed, a change in the trend is a change in the event.
The demand case models the new event against the existing calendar. An event that displaces activity from another event in the same week delivers less than one that fills an empty date.
The full attribution: counterfactual, displacement, leakage, multiplier assumptions, and coefficient vintage. Published, so an auditor can reproduce the result.
None of the three states what it includes, what period it covers, or whether the money stayed. A footprint figure is only useful when it carries its own definitions, and it is only defensible when it is kept separate from impact.
A major event is a rallying point for civic pride, and just as easily a rallying point for protest. The difference is usually whether residents can see what the event does for their street, in terms they recognise, before the road closures start.
During the 2026 World Cup, host-city hotel rates rose 13% on average. Miami rose 30.3%. New York fell 4.5%. The average was true and useless: it would have told all 16 cities the same thing, and been wrong for most of them.
We turn messy event and tourism data into decisions that help communities grow. Bring curiosity and rigour. We will hand you questions nobody has answered yet.
