The second edition of the City Events was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, between November 16 and 18, 2011. The event represents an annual conference and a networking platform that connects ambitious sports cities from around the world with international sports federations and private event owners, and is organised by GL Events and FISU.

The conference was opened by Mr Leonz Eder, FISU Vice-President, who welcomed all participants and made a brief introduction to the purpose of the event, and FISU values.

At the first day of the conference the topic discussed at the Plenary Session was ‘How to create an Economic Impact with a Sport Event’. The session focused on the tangible and measurable effects and how to maximize this impact. After the break two parallel break-out sessions were held were a panel of experts discusses case studies:‘Creating Partnerships for Economic Impact’ and ‘Measuring Economic Impact’.

At the parallel break-out sessions experts discussed the following topics: ‘Leveraging programs for better social impact’ and ‘From online to offline’, looking at practical new ways to link online based social media/sport games to offline ‘real’ practice of sport on the pitch and how cities could benefit from this new mix.

The second day's plenary session was focused on ‘Creating Branding Impact’. During this session answers were searched what an event can do to a city so that its brand is changed and improved.

The 2nd edition of the Conference ended with two more parallel break-out sessions: ‘Sports events as destination marketing tool’ and Sports events as a nation branding tool’.

City Events 2011 featured distinguised speakers from well-established companies, institutions and organisations like Chicago Sports Commission, ASO/Tour de France, International Academy for Sports Studies, Samsung Electronics, Rtter & Partners, TSE Consulting, Upsolut, German Football Association, World Sport Group Singapore, University of Westminster, Lagardère Unlimited Stadium Solutions, etc.

For more information, please see the official website www.cityevents-sport.com.

(Photos by C. Pierre, FISU)