Paul Astley: Sports Events Planning and Operations (Full Transcript)

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Ronen Ainbinder 0:32

Today's episode features an expert in high-performance sports events, strategy, and venue operations.

Our guest has been involved in sports as an elite athlete, instructor, and strategist throughout his life.

His experience includes advising Adidas, venue management for the Euro of 2020, operations for the FIFA world cup of 2022, and more projects worldwide.

I'm confident this will be a fun and entertaining episode, so grab some snacks and join us.

Ladies and gentlemen– Paul Astley!

Paul Astley 1:05

What an introduction. Thank you very much!

Ronen Ainbinder 1:08

No, Paul, thank you for accepting my invitation to join me in a conversation on the halftime snacks. Let's kick it off with a fun icebreaker. And the one I have for you, Paul, is the following: if you could hang out with any fictional character, who would you choose? And why? Oh, man,

Paul Astley 1:28

I thought you were gonna ask me the easy one about what's your favorite ice cream flavor? And I know the answer to that one right away, a fictional character? I think it will probably be one of the Marvel characters, probably Deadpool. Is that Marvel or DC? I'm not too sure. I think it's my Marvel. I mean, Deadpool is such a funny guy. And the character in the film is so entertaining. So I think that'll be quite, quite a good, quite a good laugh.

Ronen Ainbinder 2:00

Yeah, he's, he's hilarious. And, I think it would be a good one. I didn't. I didn't think about him. But it's good that you chose Paul, let's talk a little more about maybe you and your background. And you've been working in sports planning events or organization, logistics, operations, and everything. I wonder if you can just, in one or two minutes, define exactly the culture of the people and the companies that plan & operate and organize those types of events are? What is the culture? What did people work like? What's the language and the vibe, and the environment? Just tell us about the culture?

Paul Astley 2:44

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I've worked out of the UK more than I have in the UK. So I've worked in the Middle East. And now more recently in Germany back in Europe, and, and certainly the projects that I've been involved with, probably got, I've got one common sort of dump denominator in the people. And that's, that's passion and the energy to get the job done with major events, it's obviously a very defined project with a very defined endpoint, which is obviously the delivery of the event. And certainly, in all the events that I've worked on, the people have been absolutely dedicated to making sure the event runs well and is successful. So I think that that's probably essentially the one common theme throughout all of these events is just the passion and the determination to make the event work and be successful.

Ronen Ainbinder 3:40

How about you take us back to that first moment in your career like you can remember, of course, when you first kind of encountered that culture, and you were 100% sure that that matched your personality in one way or another.

Paul Astley 3:54

I remember that time so well because, in 2005, I joined the Organising Committee for the Asian Games in Qatar. The Asian Games were going to be held in 2006. And for those that watch the Asian Games, many people don't know the Asian things. Still, it's a massive event; it's only second pretty much to the Olympics regarding the number of athletes. And I joined the organizing committee, and from day one, I was just amazed again by the passion of the people that the values, the ability as well in terms of the expertise and the knowledge, and I was just blown away by the energy in the office every single day and going into these planning meetings and with major events. Obviously, you go through planning cycles, where revisions are done at the venues, and the process and the planning manuals, and every single meeting was just high energy. Let's get this thing done. There are very few You conflicts if you want to call them out or arguments; it was, it was, and I know it sounds corny and cliche, but it is real teamwork all the way through. And then, of course, we need the event in a way, that's a bit of an anti-climax because you've been working towards that point for a couple of years, pretty much full time the event comes along, it takes a month to get through, it's all finished. And then you go into the post-event blues. And certainly, I know about that, and my wife knows about that as well, because it hits me every single time.

Ronen Ainbinder 5:36

Yeah, so this is something I wanted to discuss with you. So events, when we are talking about events, most people just think about the time that's happening, the duration of the event, right, for instance, the Olympics is a little bit less than a month or a month. The World Cup is also a month, but from the other side, from your side, from planning it and organizing and operations and everything, it takes a lot more. So probably the event itself is just a very, very tiny piece of the roadmap along what's happening in the plan and anything that's going Yes. So I wonder if you could just give us the roadmap; what does it look like for planning and organizing and major sports competition? From the bird's eye view? From the top? How exactly do you think about what, like, how much time it's needed for each stage? And where do you think you, you, you, you need to put most of your energy or your focus? Where are the most important things that just guide us through the roadmap of what the whole process looks like before, during, and after?

Paul Astley 6:46

Yeah, it's, it's, this is a difficult one to sort of define in a general way because it depends on the country where the event might be taking place, the resources the country has in the, and obviously, the event itself. So I mean, for a major event, the bidding process that goes on for it could be 10 years plus before the event itself. So as you may have seen, Saudi Arabia's just made its intention clear for Expo 2030. So that's nine years out. And they will start to be putting a team together now to get the pre-bid done and the bidding documents written. And then I guess, probably from about what, once they've been, or once the country or city have been confirmed as the host for that event, then it's full speed ahead in terms of getting an operational team together. That sort of ramps up anywhere from six years out, and then sort of gains pace up to sort of to two years, 18 months out of the event itself. And then I guess within, within the last 18 months of the event, that's where you start to get the people on the ground, in the offices doing their planning. And putting the detail into the operational manuals and making sure everything's going right. And then, as you said, Ron is completely true that the event itself is quite a minor part of the whole process. Because the guys in the office have been planning it for so many years, in some cases. And they've rehearsed it, either on through tabletop exercises or actual rehearsals, themselves, they've gone through the planning manuals with a toothpick. And then, all of a sudden, the event comes, and it's okay. Hopefully, it runs fine. And, and we had a few challenges at the euros back in June, July in Munich. But the sort of challenges to come up with, but hopefully, it runs fine. And there's, it sort of goes through and then in that, and that's it, and then all of a sudden the closing ceremony comes along, and it goes from 100 miles an hour to zero overnight. So that's, that's, that's the tricky part.

Ronen Ainbinder 9:19

But I'm very curious to ask you, what do you think or how valuable it is to know how to manage and work with other people and trust other people? I guess that comes to such macro events. It is a lot about delegating and allowing others to do other things you trust will execute. So I wonder if there are specific types of work that you are excellent at doing. You don't go out of that limit to execute it, and I want to know if you can tell us a little bit about that. Element of trusting others to do their job and deliver time and everything like how's that dynamic inside the planning the whole operation behind it?

Paul Astley 10:12

Yeah, I think that's sort of one of the major differences between working in events where there's a definite project end, which is obviously the event. As opposed to working in a large corporation, which I'm doing now, at Addy Das, it's very different. It's a very different atmosphere. And as you said, which is 100% Correct, run-in is the trust you place on your people with major events, the trust has to be there, and the space has to be there for them to do their jobs. And then, of course, the support from the leadership has to be there for the people to do there, to do their work with with the events because you don't have time to manage and to, I guess, develop is the wrong word. Still, you don't have time to go through this sort of developmental stage with staff because they should be pretty much on point as soon as they arrive at the event. So it's, it's, it's a difficult one; I think the organizing committees I've worked for have all had good people within their functional areas. They've had experts within their own right, so they've got the abilities to go out and start planning and operating the event from zero. And the leadership is there to keep an overview of a bird's eye view on the operations and processes. They're there to shake hands with the delegates and the VIPs. And do all the nice sort of entertaining hospitality staff. Yeah, but the people on the ground should have been given the space and the empowerment to go and do their job. With large corporations and, and sort of long term, long term jobs, if you want to call that career jobs. That does happen, but it's a much slower process, and people are given space. Still, it's, it's, it feels different to project work, it feels different to major events, it's nowhere near as exciting.

Ronen Ainbinder 12:30

Definitely not. I don't know if you watched this documentary on Netflix called Fire Festival, which is about a specific event that was supposed to happen in the Bahamas. I believe about this fest EDM festival or something, everything went wrong. Planning was so bad; marketing was great. But planning was so bad. And, of course, it was a disaster. I wonder if you have a similar experience, not that it ended in a disaster, right? That probably is the most extreme example. By the way, if you guys haven't heard of that documentary, I do recommend it. It's super interesting. But Paul, I wonder if there's any specific story you have, or that you can tell us or an experience that kind of like things were not working at all, or we're about to become catastrophic, and in a disaster. And I wonder if you can share with us, like how you react to the other, how the team saved the event from becoming an absolute disaster, or something similar? Is there anything you can think about real quick that reminds you of a similar story?

Paul Astley 13:37

There is. Yeah, I mean, I'll need to be a little bit careful with the details like our giveaway. Still, I was involved with a bad launch event in Saudi Arabia a couple of years ago and was in Riyadh. And it was one of these events that hadn't been posted before by the Saudis. And for those listeners that have been to Saudi Arabia, you can sort of appreciate what I'm going to say because 10 years ago, Saudi was very closed. Yeah, I guess close control society is opening up hugely; there are still a lot of improvements to be done in terms of human rights and all this sort of stuff. But it is. It is heading in the right direction. And I was involved in the event there, where we just didn't expect the number of people to come. And we had, we're hosting many concerts, music concerts, and sporting events. And the music concerts had stars like Pitfall, Little Wayne, and these sort of hardcore artists if you want to call them that. And we had 60,000 Young Saudis, youth, young people, we want to call those innocent 20 to 30-year-olds, and they descended on us. We just weren't prepared for the arrival profile of these ticket holders. And we came to a point where the entrance is where we do the security checks; we're getting overrun. So luckily, we have some well-experienced crowd control guys on our team. And we came up with a contingency plan very quickly. The local authorities were ultra cooperative, which again was a surprise to me, but the local security services were fantastic. And we all work together. And luckily, no one was hurt or injured. And probably the spectators didn't even notice that we were scrambling behind the scenes; they had a little bit of a delay getting in, but we got everyone in and out very quickly. But that was a hairy moment, we're

Ronen Ainbinder 15:51

It's interesting how the team behind the event probably thinks they don't get enough credit, right? Because they're doing an awesome job. And even making this not look like it was something that came out of nowhere or happened out of a sudden, they still manage; I mean, you guys still manage to figure it out. And I feel like, I feel like it happens more times than we even imagine and events that we attend, like games that we go and, and concerts and stuff, but we don't even realize it because of the event planning and the operations behind it are just so good at reacting and having contingency plans and everything. So and that takes me to the next topic that I want to discuss with you, Paul, which is COVID COVID-19, the pandemic; this one was totally unexpected, and of course, brought challenges to events that we weren't expecting right, like, like social distancing, and to keep the facilities clean and everything. I wonder if you can share with us the inside look of how that went on for, for the people organizing, and the operations and logistics behind events? Are there any things, two or three challenges that you can share with us that maybe fans or x or spectators may not think existed in live events during the pandemic? And if you can think of those, maybe you also share with us how you guys went about and solved those challenges?

Paul Astley 17:28

Yeah, COVID, that's the subject of the last couple of years. I think for all of us. I think all of us are now near experts on this. It's a good question. And, a lot of planning goes on behind the scenes. I was involved with a project in Qatar writing a manual for the World Cup for Canada 2022 in terms of reintroducing spectators to events in not only the World Cup but also other events within Qatar. So, the company has contracted with, we wrote, we called it a playbook, which was a manual, an operational manual, a planning manual. And it documented how they should be integrating COVID measures within their planning. So it's not the most exciting of subjects, but it's very relevant. And the few of the challenges that we came across were, we finished the project. When was it in December, December 2020? We handed over the manual to the client. We were then due to do some online courses and seminars. And that was due to happen in February, March time, by the time we got to March, the manual was out of date. So that's one challenge. Because the situation was changing so quickly. We pretty much had to update the manual on the spot and make it relevant for the time that we were talking about. So that's a challenge in terms of the changing situation. The other one that maybe spectators or attendees at events don't realize is that a lot of planning goes on not only at the event itself but also in the customer journey. So how they get from their house, on public transport, where they walk, where the physical distancing might take place, where possible touchpoints on all that is planned out from pretty much where they are when they leave their house. So, for example, in Qatar, we were talking to the Metro provider and the bus provider taxi Uber. It has other names and Qatar as well. Uber is one of them. And we were talking to them about reducing capacities, reducing train times, and all this sort of stuff that people don't realize is going on. In conjunction, there was a lot of nudging going on in messaging subliminal messages. For the spectators, and that was Do that was anything from obvious stuff like remember to wash your hands, keep physical distance, all the rest of it, but also more sort of subtle messaging, which would, in effect, stretch out the people walking into the stadium, the ingress and the egress of the venue keeping entertainment going on after for example, a football match, instead of everyone standing up and going, having entertainment going on. So to slow the egress down. So there's a lot of this sort of subtleties going on behind the scenes that non-event people wouldn't even realize. They're just saying, Hey, this is part of the show, this is great, they got entertainment, they got films going on, and big giant screens will, as a tactic, just slow the egress down. But amongst us who worked on events before, people would spot that from a mile off. So yeah,

Ronen Ainbinder 21:02

so I'm going to go out and, and put out a bold statement; you correct me if I'm wrong, but it feels like event planners and operational managers like yourself are also kind of like brand developers and people that through the customer journey, build a specific association in the customer or the fan's brain that will relate it to the brand eventually. Probably you can share with us maybe a little bit more about your experience with Adidas, which I feel might be relevant for the specific point, like how closely do you work with like brand managers with added as for your work there, maybe share also a little bit of what you do there with them? And how you think about this customer journey experience, I understand that probably, you are with them, assessing them on the journey on the stores, and everything that happens on stores worldwide. So maybe share with us what you do with it, guys, how that relates? Or how do you work with brand managers for that specific case? And yeah, just share with us? Maybe extra points that come to mind?

Paul Astley 22:16

Oh, yeah, the but my, my role that he does now is gone off a bit of a tangent, I must admit, I'm now with what we call access protection, which is we take care of obviously the physical security of the premises, but also we take care of events security, travel management, crisis management, and these sort of aspects. So, I'm the first one to admit, I'm not a brand specialist. I'm not a marketing specialist. I'm very much an operational event specialist. But

Ronen Ainbinder 22:53

Do you see commercial brand marketing?

Paul Astley 23:00

Yeah. I mean, you weren't wrong. There's a huge connection. And I think someone in my position needs to know, certainly the basics. Still, we also need to appreciate that the brand or the event or the brand of the product is number one, and that has to be protected all the way through the process. If you don't, if you don't have a good brand standing within the market, then obviously, customers will go elsewhere. And that's to say exactly the same for the event as well. So as an operational planners, we're always looking at what the customer would see, what the spectator would see, and what the retail customer would see. And that's the face of the community that's the face of the world. What happens behind the scenes they shouldn't even be seeing or have knowledge of so so my role with Addy Das is to to help the other departments that which including the brand management department as well and all the other markets, to make sure that what they portray is backed up by a safe process in terms of the staff being safe, the visitors being safe and obviously the customers as well and they and coming out with a decent experience. But the siren and I'm not. I'm not a brand person. As you probably realize

Ronen Ainbinder 24:27

maybe you are in very specific ways. Meaning that the site property added to the US wants to be a safe place. That's probably also related to the rent. So you are part of like you're responsible for building that for them if that makes sense. So I would associate that with

Paul Astley 24:45

Yeah, for sure. I think everyone who works added asked, which I think is probably about between 50 and 60,000 people worldwide. We are all brand ambassadors we all represent right And, and that's what, what every day we need to remember, whether we like the corporate machine or not, or whether we like the hype of NT Das, or Hive or Nike or hypercube, whatever it might be that's, that's part of our role. And, when we step out, I'm wearing Adidas clothing. When we step out in the worldwide world, we need to be an ambassador for the brand. And that's nice.

Ronen Ainbinder 25:26

Yeah, I just, I feel like probably you are, since you're like on the experiential side of the brand, or of the event itself, going back also on your work on the euro, and everything. For us a FIFA, like, since you're in the experiential side, like those subtleties that you were mentioning, those are like kind of like key to creating impressions, because they're just so vivid, on the eyes of the fan and on the customer, that I think that it creates an interesting impact. And I want to jump maybe a little bit on the technology side of operations and logistics behind sporting events. You've mentioned you started operations in 2005. When you mentioned that that story at the beginning, have you seen how have you seen technology evolve the operations and logistics sides of sporting events,

Paul Astley 26:22

you wouldn't believe how it's progressed in the last 15 years. It's unbelievable. I mean, what came after the Asian Games in 2005-2006. One of the things I remember is the planning meetings with, I don't know, maybe 2030 People from each functional area. So you'd have transport security protocols, ceremonies, or whatever it might be on a table, and we'd have these, these zero paper cats of the venue, on the table of each level. So maybe you have, I know, eight or nine cats on the table, and everyone will be poring over them and making adjustments and pencil marks. The venue manager, who is sort of the overall coordinator, would take notes like crazy a week or two to play the adjustments; you come back and review them again. So now what's happening nowadays, and what happened at the euros is they have some great electronic tools, where that pad processed, whether on your laptop, or on your iPad, or on your phone, even where you could have the plans for the venue on your laptop. You could change them while certain people could change those who have rights. But you could change the location of a barricade; you could change the location of a traffic cone or signage element or a marketing element or whatever it might be. And you do it electronically, and one sees it in real-time. So that's a simple example of how it's progressed. We didn't look at the Euros, Munich we I don't think we printed out well, we didn't print out any cards nowadays it's all done electronically, or online, on the cloud. So that's one big step up from when I first went into the industry, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners would be able to appreciate that. They would have examples like that as well.

Ronen Ainbinder 28:23

No, I feel like the elements of collaboration and all the technology that helps us work with other people and align other people in like the goals and things you are currently working on. I mean because event planning is just work that involves just so many people and everyone has to like to be aligned, like keeping everyone aligned on on on like the same ideas and, and concepts that you guys are planning. I guess that that is a big leap that you probably appreciate more than anyone else out there.

Paul Astley 28:54

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the biggest challenge is keeping the event team, as you say, aligned and updated constantly, and now we can do it electronically in real-time. It's just such a leap forward. I believe it's fantastic. And I could walk around the Allianz Arena in Munich with my phone and look at the cards on my phone and look to see where each of the elements was placed. And rather than going around the stadium with a huge piece of paper in my hands, and obviously, it's more than one environmentally friendly as well, right?

Ronen Ainbinder 29:34

Yeah. Millennials will appreciate it. Man, it's been such a fun time with you. We've learned so much about event planning developments operation the whole thing going on behind how it relates to brands, how to how you guys prevent catastrophically is like Fyre festival and like how it may happen. Still, people don't realize it, which takes A lot of credit, and I'm sure you deserve it. I can't live without asking you, Paul, a probably more personal question, just to get to know you a little bit closer. Okay, so what won't be the first thing you do if you are elected president, or I guess you're in Germany? That's Prime Minister tomorrow? Is there? What is the first thing that you do?

Paul Astley 30:30

Oh, man. I could be very controversial, or I could play it safe. If I'm going to be controversial, I'll get everyone vaccinated. But if I was gonna play safe. How did I, I think, I think I mean, I'm not German, but I think the Germans have overall done quite a good job over the last 10 or 15 years or so. I'm not into politics. Live and let live. That's my motto. So. But I think I think, yeah, I think with this COVID, It needs to be tackled differently. When I was in Qatar, they did it straightforwardly because they could because people had to adhere to the government's rules. In Europe and Germany, it's different; it's a different case altogether. And it's like, treading on eggshells, as you call it here with people's rights, which is still very important. However, I feel with COVID that it just needs to be tackled slightly differently.