Few industries around the globe have taken a hit due to the Covid-19 pandemic because the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions) sector.
Restrictions on both travel and the numbers of people able to attend live events have remaining organisers scrambling for brand new ways to host and monetise their events.
While many have moved online, sponsors and partners in many cases are reluctant to put up the kind of amounts they'd previously did for live events, although the upside continues to be that events streamed online often command a much larger audience than traditional, offline events.
How firms may change the new reality of event organisation – having a desire not to travel prone to persist post-Covid – is going to be among the issues discussed in Emerging Europe's forthcoming Way forward for Travel report, to be published later this year.
One possible solution to the big event monetisation riddle is a new, white-label B2B solution from JMind, part of TECHIIA, the international holding company, that allows large companies to get their own platform for broadcasting and posting video content in a short time.
Called Infinite, it consists of a mobile application and an admin panel, allowing users to manage live streams and videos, configure monetisation, receive detailed analytics, and provide user support.
Through Infinite, businesses are able to create live broadcasts, share video content, engage new audiences, and communicate with them through live chats and reactions.
The microservice architecture allows companies to create unique products or integrate with existing ones. The ability to release the merchandise under their own brand creates additional marketing and PR tools.
Depending on the industry, different monetisation tools are provided, with events a key component.
For example, for ecommerce there is the capability to buy goods during live streams, as well as for esports – donations by means of paid animated stickers, which may be bought with virtual currency.
Elena Shostak, CEO of JMind, says that Asia, namely Columbia and Japan, have been chosen as Inifinite's pilot market.
“Having analysed the present situation and forecasts for live streaming and video services on the planet, we defined a step-by-step strategy for entering these markets,” she says.
“In our opinion, the ecommerce market in the Asian region happens to be the most promising. It is believed at 37 billion US dollars in South Korea and 79 billion $ $ $ $ in Japan. eCommerce in Europe and the United States has become in the recovery stage and can go back to pre-Covid indicators in 2022 and 2023, respectively. That’s why we are starting with Asia after which expanding with other markets and industries.”
WePlay Esports, an international esports media holding company, was Infinite’s first client.
“We desired to create our very own product with esports events for that Chinese market so we could spread the information around the globe. After researching the businesses that offer live streaming services, we ended up with the Infinite solution and have never regretted it,” says Oleh Humeniuk, CEO of WePlay Esports.