Soccerex scores £5m from Manchester

MANCHESTER City Counci’s executive has approved a £3m payment to the people behind the Soccerex forum to bring its Global Convention to the city for a four-year run from 2014-2017.

The city council is paying a £1.4m upfront fee to Soccerex to host the Soccerex Global Convention in the four years preceding the 2008 World Cup in Russia. An annual royalty fee of £395,000 is also payable for each of the four years.

City chiefs have already paid out £2m – £1.2m from Manchester City Council and £800,000 from the NWDA – for the right to host Soccerex’s European Forum over the past three years. The event switched from London in 2009 to the Manchester Central Complex. The Global Convention is currently held in Rio de Janeiro, but will switch to Europe after the 2014 World Cup.

Soccerex was founded and is owned by Duncan Revie – son of former Leeds United and Manchester City manager, Don Revie. He had the idea for a business-to-business conference on the football industry after attending Manchester’s In The City conference aimed at executives in the music business. The first event was held at Wembley Stadium in 1996.

Manchester City Council estimates that the impact of hosting Soccerex’s Global Convention will be much more significant than the European Forum. The latter attracted around 1,200 delegates in April, whereas the Global Convention brings in an average of 3,300.

A report recommending the decision to councillors last month argued that by using industry-standard models on conference spend, the Soccerex Global Convention should bring in £23m in direct economic benefit to the city. It also argued that the conference should generate a media profile with an advertising value equivalent of £6.4m over the four-year period.

Moreover, the Manchester Central complex – ultimately owned by the city council – will receive around £1.1m over the four years for hosting the convention.

When announcing the deal to move the Global Convention to Manchester in March, Marketing Manchester chief executive Andrew Stokes said the event “commands significant international media attention and will further strengthen Manchester’s position as the spiritual home of football in the UK”.

Manchester was named by Sports Business magazine as the World’s Best Sports City with a population of under one million people.