Hosting a major event is one of the fastest ways a city turns public commitment into visitors, room nights, and jobs. Living Lab shows what it will cost, what it will return, and where the walk-away point is, before the bid, on the same numbers.
One model of the event and the city that would host it: the routes and seat capacity in the event week, the hotel supply and rate, the venue, the calendar around the dates, and the demand from each fan market with its search interest and sentiment. Signal137 measures what a hosted event delivered against the case that funded it. Demand137 builds the pre-bid case: what the city will receive, at what public commitment, and where the offer stops paying back. The city enters the negotiation with its own number to set against the rights holder’s.
What the hosted event delivered against the business case: visitor spend, room nights, GVA, tax and jobs. All net of displacement and of what the city would have seen that week anyway. Where the value landed by district and sector. Which parts of the case held and which did not. Every line marked observed, derived, or inferred, so the post-event report survives the audit office.
Whether to bid at all, at what level of public commitment, and where the walk-away point is. The access ceiling in the event week: seats, rooms, transport, the last mile. The hosting fee and the incentive package priced against the return, position by position, with the rival bid modelled. The cost of not hosting priced alongside the cost of hosting. A refusal, with the reason, when the data cannot support the number.
| Product | Your question | You get | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Demand137 | Whether to bid at all, and at what level of public commitment | A modelled range against a stated counterfactual, not a single comparator figure | A bid position, and a walk-away point, set before the deadline forces one |
| Demand137 | What funding structure and risk-sharing to propose | Attributable value split by funding partner, net of displacement, leakage, and deadweight | Terms negotiated from a shared evidence base, not a headline pitch |
| Demand137 | What does declining cost us? | The decline position as the reference point, stated rather than assumed | Declining priced next to bidding |
| Demand137 | What if we bid and lose? | Bid costs incurred, no hosting benefit, as an explicit downside case | The downside stated as its own case |
| Demand137 | Can this recommend against bidding? | Yes. A bid that only produces value under optimistic assumptions is reported as that | A business case that can recommend either way |
| Demand137 | Will the supply chain cope with the fans? | Absorptive capacity by supply chain: beds, drivers, caterers, airlift | The kegs and the beds sized before the weekend, not counted after |
| Signal137 | What did the fee actually buy? | Attributed value against the case that funded it, net of displacement and deadweight | The finance director's question answered at audit |
| Signal137 | How does the outturn compare with the business case? | Ex-ante and ex-post on one method | The next bid is priced on what the last one delivered |
| Both | How is this different from the feasibility study our bid team commissioned? | That tests whether the bid is deliverable; this tests whether it is worth doing | Operational and economic cases run side by side |
| 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 return modelled against the cost: venue subsidy, infrastructure, public funding, and opportunity cost. The conditions under which the event delivers a positive return identified, and the conditions under which it does not.
The minimum return threshold set against the maximum public commitment. The negotiating team knows the floor before the talks start.
Post-hosting attribution on the same method as the original business case. The overrun set against the actual economic return. The treasury sees whether the investment paid off once the overrun is counted.
Each funding structure modelled against the return profile. A levy-funded event that generates enough tax to repay the levy is a different proposition from one that requires general revenue.
The new event modelled against the existing calendar. Where it complements and where it cannibalises. A mega-event that displaces ten smaller events may deliver less net value than the calendar it replaced.
A hotel, a resort, or a mixed-use scheme fails underwriting when a single route, a single annual event, or a single source market turns out to be carrying more of the demand case than the committee realised. The dependency is the risk, and it can be measured before signature.
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.
International arrivals to the United States fell 4.2% in 2025 while worldwide travel grew about 4%. Living Lab’s displacement model puts the forgone spending at roughly US$50bn, and about US$10.6bn of it within reach of five economies. Each is limited by a different constraint.
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.
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.
