The Business Climate for the Event Industry

The event industry has a big significance for the German economy overall. According to Zanger and Klaus (2021), the industry generated sales of 81 billion euros in 2019 (before the Covid-19 pandemic), and this is without accounting for any effects that events may have on other industries, such as accommodation and gastronomy. To give a comparative figure, the automotive industry generated 436 billion euros in the same year.

The event industry includes businesses from a wide range of industries, mainly in the service sector, including event agencies, catering, public relations, rental and leasing of equipment, temporary employment agencies, security, organizers of trade fairs, cinemas, discotheques, theaters, and so on. However, because of this heterogeneity there is no aggregate for the event industry in the official statistics (Federal Statistical Office 2009). Neither were any economic indicators calculated for this aggregate in the ifo Business Survey, until this gap was closed in 2021. In cooperation with the Federal Association of the Concert and Event Industry (BDKV), all industries that are part of the event industry were identified and an extensive acquisition of new survey participants from these industries was started. Furthermore, among the companies from the service sector that had already been participating in the survey, information was collected to determine whether they are part of the event industry. The total number of participants that were identified as part of the event industry exceeded 300. By considering these companies, aggregate indicators for the event industry can be calculated. Therefore, since May 2021, a business climate, as well as results for all other variables surveyed in the ifo Business Survey, have been reported monthly for the event industry (Sauer and Wohlrabe 2021). These indicators are calculated using the standard methodology for the ifo Business Climate Index for Germany (Sauer and Wohlrabe 2018b). However, not all indicators for the event industry have yet been seasonally adjusted, as this first requires longer time series over several years (Sauer and Wohlrabe 2015).