Manchester Programme

Exhibits Open

ALSD & SEICon proudly welcome delegates, partners, and exhibitors to Manchester, one of the world’s great sporting cities and a global hub for live experience, innovative premium hospitality, and continued venue investment.

ALSD bestows its prestigious Global Legend Award to Marie Lindqvist, Senior Vice President of North Europe for Legends Global. Lindqvist has shaped and elevated the premium experience landscape across sports, live entertainment, and venue operations worldwide. A respected leader in venue operations and guest experience, Lindqvist currently oversees operational excellence across a broad Legends Global portfolio of sports and entertainment venues. With three decades of leadership experience spanning tourism, hospitality, sports, and live entertainment, Lindqvist has also held senior roles at organizations for Stockholm Live, AEG, VisitDenmark, and TUI, playing a central role in the development and transformation of some of Europe’s most dynamic venues. Beyond her operational impact, Marie is celebrated for fostering inclusive leadership and collaboration across the international venue community, serving as a mentor and advocate in live entertainment and venue management.

This show-and-tell session explores how premium spaces and partnerships are evolving into fully integrated, immersive brand platforms. Learn how leading venues and clients turn big ideas into bold activations—driven by creativity, collaboration, and results—that redefine what “premium” really means today.

Understanding fandom starts with humanizing it—recognizing the diverse, global ways fans connect with events. This conversation reveals the realities of global spectatorship and the insights shaping the future of premium fan experiences.

Designing AI-assisted premium interactions and experiences can be complex; principally, it can’t feel like AI. Rather automation should be used to anticipate needs, personalize communication without overstepping, and reduce friction through smart defaults and context-aware support. Moreover, automation should inherently take a back seat when complex preferences, high-stakes changes, and sensitive issues require human engagement. This session will illustrate how a blend of modern intelligent automation and intentional human touchpoints creates an ultimate premium experience.

Sports tourism is a $700 billion global industry, and has exploded over the past 10 years as fans clamor - and may be willing to pay handsomely - for events they normally only see on TV. Teams and venues must make targeting this rapidly growing, bucket-list-seeking demographic a priority, lest they forfeit significant revenue opportunities. This session will explore how to build premium benefits packages and outbound sales campaigns to address this demand.

It’s an exciting time in premium seating, with inventory creativity at an all-time max. New products meeting the needs of clients who desire fewer seats here, more exclusivity there. What strategies are at play for creating and pricing these new flexible products and how can we attract a larger universe of buyers by rolling them out in our venues?

Industry feedback expert, Riptide Partners, leads an intimate discussion on the evolving guest experience. Drawing on the latest data shaping how teams understand and enhance premium operations, this session pinpoints the specific experience elements that drive satisfaction, loyalty, and spend. Attendees will gain practical insight into how refining premium spaces can unlock new revenue and sustainable growth.

As premium hospitality evolves, leaders face a defining challenge: how to modernize high-end experiences without diluting the timeless service standards that built their reputations. This panel convenes visionaries who are successfully blending old-world elegance and intuitive, relationship-driven service with next-generation technology and automation. From preserving distinctive brand signatures and individualized guest touchpoints to leveraging innovation in ways that enhance—not replace—the human element, the conversation will explore how to sustain a true “wow” factor in an increasingly digitized world. Join us to discover how to future-proof premium hospitality while safeguarding the craftsmanship, personalization, and emotional resonance that define world-class service.

As venues evolve into smart, connected ecosystems, they’re becoming more than just places to catch a game. Venues and their surrounding districts are platforms for immersive storytelling, using data-driven insights. This panel brings together leaders in creative branding, AI innovation, and public sector growth to explore how the intersection of infrastructure, technology, and narrative is transforming the way we engage fans, build communities, and shape the future of live experiences.

Premium is no longer a place. It’s a living, layered experience. Today’s most successful venues and developments are moving beyond static service models and into experience-led ecosystems — where every touchpoint is intentional, every sense is engaged, and every visit can unfold differently. This session explores how modern hospitality is being reimagined through design, usage, and brand integration to create environments that feel dynamic, inclusive, and deeply personal.