The inaugural European Championships in 2018 were a voyage of discovery for organisers. 

Here is why Glasgow and Scotland wanted the event, and what we gained from hosting it alongside Berlin.

When Paul Bristow and Marc Joerg, founders of the European Championships, first approached us about hosting the combined European Championships of several sports at the same time and in the same place for the first time, part of the appeal was the the fact that it was a brand new event.

Instead of individual sports federations following the traditional model of holding their own European Championships in isolation, Paul and Marc's vision was that they would combine forces with a broadcast partner to form a new multi-sports event, taking place every four years.

This was new because, unlike, say, Asia (the Asian Games) or the Americas (the Pan American Games), Europe had never had its own continental multi-sports championships. 

It made sense to us and we quickly decided we wanted to be part of it.

We had faith and trust in Paul and Marc in terms of their vision. 

Hosting a new event also meant that we didn’t have to go through a long bidding process. 

They were mutual negotiations. 

That saves you a lot of time and money.

Crucially, that vision was also enthusiastically supported by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the umbrella body of the continent’s free-to-air public-service broadcasters.

In 2018, Berlin hosted athletics, while in Glasgow we hosted aquatics, cycling, golf, gymnastics, rowing, and triathlon. 

For us, the aim was always to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts.

We believe that there is now a very strong indicator - and the EBU agrees - that aggregating sports from a consumer perspective is much stronger than having them as single sports. 

Very few people will probably watch rowing and triathlon at nine o’clock in the morning. 

But if you aggregate it as part of a daily programme, consumers change their habits in terms of what they watch.

In Glasgow and Scotland, we had been building up a major sports event hosting portfolio that included the Commonwealth Games and golf's Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in 2014 and the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 2015. 

So, moving on to host the European Championships in 2018 seemed like a natural step.

The Commonwealth Games had led to the regeneration of the east end of Glasgow, and new facilities like the Emirates Arena, the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and the OVO Hydro had been built. 

The Emirates Arena and the OVO Hydro are both multi-purpose indoor arenas that are now used for a wide variety of sporting, cultural and community events.

We felt that the European Championships were right for us for a number of other reasons. 

In particular, they had secured the EBU platform and because of that and the nature of the event, the European Championships were guaranteed to get the best athletes.

Of course, we knew that explaining to the people of Glasgow and Scotland, and sports fans in general, the exact nature of the new aggregated championships wouldn’t be easy.

The normal person in society understood what the Olympic Games in London were and what the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow were, and they clamoured to get a ticket. 

It was much more difficult to get the message across as to what seven sports coming together in a European Championships format was.

Without the BBC as our broadcast partner in the UK, we might have struggled. 

But ultimately, it became our biggest framing and selling tool, with wall-to-wall coverage on BBC1 and BBC2. 

They had a studio in George Square, in the centre of Glasgow, so people suddenly thought: ‘This is a big event!’

TV was our ally in the end and people got excited by the event, whereas when you go back to London 2012 and Glasgow 2014, we didn't need to excite the population because people knew what it was.

Now that the concept is established, I believe that Munich, which is hosting the 2022 edition, will have a much easier challenge to manage that, with people both in the city and in the country.

Costs and benefits

It’s important to be able to demonstrate the benefits which events can bring. 

The sporting benefits included the opportunity for British and Scottish athletes to compete on home soil, which I think is always important.

There’s also a cultural benefit - it gives something back to the city in terms of an event that people can take part in and get involved in. 

And it encourages people to lead healthier and more active lives.

Then there are the tourism benefits of hosting the event, deriving from the pictures of Glasgow and Scotland that were relayed around the world by championships broadcasters. 

It was on terrestrial platforms across key markets in Europe, like Germany, France, and Italy, and they’re important markets for us from a tourism destination point of view.

The number-one tourism market for Scotland outside England is Germany, and to get the amount of coverage which was similar to an Olympic platform for the European Championships in Germany was huge!

The Scottish Government and Glasgow City Council provided public investment to support the delivery of the event, with spectators (of ticketed and free events) generating £37.8 million (4$7.5 million/ €45.07 million) of expenditure, of which £27.3 million ($22.8 million/€32.5 million) represented additional (new) spending. 

This in turn created £16.5 million ($20.07 million/€19.6 million) of Gross Value Added (the net additional benefit going back into the economy).

Public investment in major events like the Championships is important because of the wider benefits they bring. 

It’s about getting across to politicians and society that this is an investment comparable to investing in other services like health and education because it will give health benefits, societal benefits, and educational benefits.

We reinvested in facilities that we'd spent capital funds on from 2009 to 2012, reinvested in our sports performance pathway programme, and reinvested in the people of Glasgow in terms of giving them something back for their taxes. 

And then there were the educational, social, and cultural programmes. 

Five of the 12 Championship disciplines could be seen free of charge, which had an estimated audience of 178,000.

I believe we’ve now turned the hosting model on its head. 

Most Governments and even the United Nations have a strategic framework for life. 

What we’re saying is that we have a responsibility to demonstrate that this is not just about people winning medals. 

This is about how it can impact on young people, diversity, and inclusivity. 

It’s about how we engage with society, how we engage with women, and that’s front and centre in everything we do in Scotland now - not just around 2018. 

We have to be able to report back on that.

Unless you have these cross-cutting societal benefits, you’ll find it much harder to gain the funding for these events. 

Most major sports event bids took place from a tourism-positioning and world-positioning perspective 10 or 20 years ago. 

But we’ve got to be a bit cleverer and a bit smarter than that now.

Volunteering is probably a classic example. 

There was not a volunteering culture in Glasgow before 2014. 

There is now a database of several thousands of people who want to continue to be volunteers at future events. 

That’s a societal, cultural change, and the fact they’ve been retained is a positive outcome of those events in 2014 and 2018.

The total TV audience for the 2018 European Championships in Glasgow and Berlin was 1.4 billion, while its public relations value from broadcast, online and social media was £256 million ($321 million,€305 million) and it offered £197 ($247 million/€234 million) in brand exposure.

Those are really powerful figures for future hosts. 

If we look back retrospectively, I don’t think we really knew how big this was going to be from a platform perspective. 

If you’d told us beforehand we were going to get these figures out of it, we’d have said 'No way!' 

They blew us away.

My own fondest memory of the 2018 European Championships is of the men’s road cycling race on the last day. 

It rained terribly - like it did at the Commonwealth Games, ironically. 

But the fact was that the people of Glasgow still stood on the streets during the race. 

They didn’t mind getting wet and were quite happy to watch something that was special.

If you asked me, 'Would you host it again?', I’d say 'yes'. 

It’s a strong brand, it’s got a great platform and I think it can only grow and get better and be one of the stronger propositions from a continental perspective moving forward.

It took some time for people to understand what it was, but I think the outcome, both in terms of TV ratings but also the delivery of sport - the city came alive again - showed that it was the right thing to do and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens this summer in Germany!