As this elite event is part of the World Cup circuit, Treble had to prepare a bid document that was submitted to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). This document contained support information from the City, Provincial Government, Department of Sport & Recreation as well as the National Federation. It outlined the event rationale, how the event would be staged, who would be responsible for the different elements and what the financial arrangements would be.
Treble was awarded the bid after beating the other potential host cities.

 

Once the event was secured, all that was outlined in the bid document had to be implemented such as, preparation of the event area, the building of the courses, the identification of where the various event elements would be positioned including the technical areas, the team areas, the uplift routes, food and beverage zones, sponsor paddocks etc.

 

Without securing sponsors an event of this nature could not be staged. Treble had to firstly create a marketing and PR  plan to for the event including website design, sourcing of magazine, newspaper and radio partners, African footprint television packages, etc. Once the marketing plan was finalized, Treble structured the sponsorship rights packages and approached the corporate market.

 

Treble then confirmed all other commercial and event logistics including event catering rights, merchandising rights, corporate hospitality rights, parking, ticketing, team area sales, tech area sales, accommodation and tours, VIP packages and the like.

 

With all marketing and commercial plans in place, the final logistical build up began a month prior to the event: laying temporary water connections to all team areas, securing additional power supplies to start areas, grading of uplift roads, cutting of trees in TV camera line of site, building scaffold structures such as seating stands, TV camera positions, medical points etc. Once the UCI had signed off the course, the tech and team area facilities were put in place and all temporary offices were erected including anti doping, registration, media centre etc. City and regional wide branding was erected to promote the event and encourage local support. 

 

With all infrastructure and planning in place, and all athletes registered, the actual staging of the event could go ahead. The UCI and Cycling South Africa were responsible for all the technical elements of the event and Treble was responsible for all of the event elements. This included media support, park and ride facilities, security, ticketing, catering etc. Treble’s other important role was to ensure that the media were constantly up to date with developments and results and able to get onto the courses to take footage and pictures, to maximise publicity during and post the event.

 

Once the winners had been crowned and the crowds had gone home, another important phase of the operation took place: the clean up. Treble ensured that all supplier and temporary infrastructure was dismantled and that the facility was left in pre-event condition.

 

Treble then started compiling the final media reports, broken up into immediate reports (e.g. live TV coverage, next day newspaper, radio interviews and the like), medium term reporting (eg. website statistics, video on demand downloads, print media back searches and “thunk book” collation etc) and longer term results (e.g. Total international tv coverage: 939 hours for the event in 188 countries to 2.134 Billion people); the individual sponsor reports (including all pertinent pictures, news clippings etc) and the regional and local government reports (including socio – economic impact results, hotel bed nights etc). Final technical meetings were held with the UCI and CSA to discuss the event roll out and recommendations going forward.

 

Finally all monies were collected from the various income sources, all suppliers were paid and Treble started strategizing of how to make the 2010 event even more successful!