Events Strategy

Turn live experiences into lasting value

In a fragmented landscape where audience attention and brand loyalty are hard-won, live experiences have become a powerful lever for engagement, growth and revenue.

At FT Strategies, we partner with media organisations to design and scale event strategies that do more than just fill seats. They deepen audience relationships, unlock new monetisation opportunities and strengthen brand equity. Drawing on the Financial Times’ own success with FT Live, we bring the insight, rigour and operational know-how needed to build events that deliver lasting value.

Whether you're launching your first event or evolving a mature portfolio, we’ll help you create a strategy that is commercially robust, editorially aligned and ready to thrive in a dynamic media environment.

1. Customer and Market Research

We provide you with a clear view of the competitor and market landscape as well as your event audience needs.

Solutions

Competitor analysis: Analysing competitors to stay competitive and adapt your strategies.
Audience needs research and feedback: Soliciting and analysing reader needs and feedback to make data-informed decisions.
Regulatory assessment: Assessing the regulatory landscape and any considerations/ implications of launching events e.g. GDPR, health & safety, risk assessments
Feasibility analysis: Analyse your business capabilities, audience needs and market trends to understand whether events is the right strategy.

2. Event Content Strategy Design

We analyse your audience and commercial partners needs to create a premium content strategy for your events.

Solutions

Content analysis: Review your content to identify strongest performing verticals and map this to events market.
Newsroom synergy: Through interviews with editorial staff, identify how experiential content can be used to enhance journalistic output.
Advertising Content Strategy: Collaborate with your advertising team to identify opportunities for new advertising inventory within live content.
Content roadmap: Create a clear content strategy identifying which topic areas will provide financial and audience growth, which segments to target and which content to avoid.

3. Commercial Strategy Design

We take the learnings from market research and audience data analysis to create a commercial roadmap to plot a path to profitability.

Solutions

Access model design: Conducting audience and business model analysis to understand which model, such as membership or sponsorship, best fits your audience and business.
Advertising commercial strategy: Create a robust pricing and sales GTM strategy for advertising partners looking to use events as brand activation.
First Party Data strategy: Assess existing FPD strategy and create recommendations on how to utilise events to bolster data quality.
Financial modelling: Build a model to inform commercial decisions such as pricing, attendees and cost optimisation.

4. Operational Infrastructure Build

We support you in building the operational infrastructure needed to power a successful events business.

Solutions

Event launch: Support your team across all areas of planning, selling, delivering your inaugural event including the creation of a holistic post-event report for internal and external use.
KPIs: Create a clear metrics that matter framework bespoke to an events business.
Tech support: Work with you to design a robust tech strategy that integrates seamlessly into your existing tech stack.
Org structure design: map a ‘best in class’ event’s organisational structure and Identify the skill gaps that exist within the current team.

Going Live: How events are powering growth for media companies

A decline in global advertising spending and stagnating subscriptions are bringing about significant changes in the news ecosystem. Consequently, publishers are rediscovering the value of live experiences to connect with communities and increase revenue.

Read this article to learn how media companies such as the Financial Times and Semafor are using live events to enhance revenue and engage their audiences.

Read article