For host city directors and major event organisers

Turn a major event opportunity into a decision, a case and a bid your city can stand behind.

Ready-to-adapt playbooks, calculators and project tools built from experience across more than 25 major event bids.

Use them to test the opportunity, estimate its value, build the case and organise the bid without starting from a blank page.

No generic templates.

No hidden logic.

No need to hire a consultant for every step.

Explore the tools → See the 14-step Winning Blueprint

Built from major event work including the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, MXGP Finland and the Winter World Masters Games.

The problem

A major event opportunity lands on your desk. The deadline is real. The facts are not.

A rights holder makes contact. A federation sees an opportunity. A local organiser gets excited. Political interest starts to grow.

And suddenly your team is expected to answer some very big questions.

Is this event right for our city?
What will it cost?
What could it bring?
Do we have the venues, partners and people to deliver it?
Is the economic impact realistic?
Can we win?
And should we even try?

These decisions often need to be made before the team has complete information.

So people open an old bid.

Start another spreadsheet.

Search through shared folders.

Ask five people for five different versions of the truth.

Or commission outside support before they even know whether the opportunity deserves it.

The city may be moving quickly. But that does not always mean it is moving clearly.

The gap

The problem is not a lack of information. It is the lack of a clear way to turn that information into a decision.

Most host city teams already have smart people. They know their city. They know their venues. They understand local politics, tourism, finance and event delivery.

What they often do not have is a shared structure for bringing all that knowledge together.

The process sits inside old documents.

Inside personal spreadsheets.

Inside the heads of people who worked on the last bid.

Or inside a consultant’s model that the team cannot easily reuse when the next opportunity arrives.

That is how good teams end up rebuilding the same work again and again.

And it is how weak assumptions can slowly turn into promises the city is expected to keep.

The transformation

Move from early excitement to a decision your city can stand behind.

Host City Strategy helps your team:

Decide whether the opportunity is worth pursuing
Expose the gaps before they become expensive
Build a stronger case for the event
Estimate its potential economic impact
Keep the logic behind every important number visible
Align the people who need to support the bid
Organise the work that has to happen next
And build a bid based on evidence, not momentum alone

The goal is not to chase more events. The goal is to choose the right events, build stronger bids and win events that are genuinely worth hosting.

The belief behind Host City Strategy

Winning starts with the courage to filter.

A major event can create tourism, investment, pride, visibility and long-term value.

It can also consume years of work, public money and political capital.

That is why the first question should not be: “Can we win this?”

It should be: “Should we pursue this at all?”

Sometimes the right answer is Go.

Sometimes it is Conditional Go.

Sometimes it is Defer.

And sometimes the strongest decision is No-Go.

A city that filters opportunities well has more time, money and energy for the bids that truly fit.

That is not a lack of ambition. That is strategy.

The toolkit

Practical tools for the work between “This looks interesting” and “We are ready to bid.”

Host City Strategy turns real major event experience into focused digital tools. Each tool is built for one important job.

You do not have to buy a huge system. You do not have to change how your entire organisation works.

Start with the task in front of you. Adapt the tool to your city, event and team. Replace early assumptions with better information as the work moves forward. Then add the next tool when the project reaches the next decision.

The tools

Choose the job you need to solve today.

Learn the method

The Host City Bid Readiness Guide

Before your city chases the wrong event, read this first.

A practical guide to the decision that comes before the bid. Learn how to test strategic fit, readiness, organiser credibility, venues, value and risk before serious time and money are committed.

The guide helps you move from loose interest to a clear Go, Conditional Go, Defer or No-Go recommendation.

95 pages
Eight focused chapters
A seven-day decision process
The ten early mistakes that cost cities most
A clear structure for presenting your recommendation to leadership

Best for: host city directors who want to understand the full pre-bid method before applying it.

Get the guide for €49 → See the Bid Readiness Guide

Before the Bid — The Host City Bid Readiness Guide

Run the decision

The PreBid Playbook

Turn a live event opportunity into a serious recommendation in seven days.

The PreBid Playbook gives your team a structured online workspace for assessing a potential major event.

Work through the opportunity step by step. Test the fit. Expose the gaps. Record the evidence. Challenge the early assumptions. Then produce a clear Go, Conditional Go, Defer or No-Go recommendation.

The process stays visible, so the final recommendation is not based on one person’s opinion or a collection of disconnected documents.

Best for: teams with a real opportunity on the table and a decision to make.

Start a Pre-Bid Assessment → Explore the PreBid Playbook

The PreBid Playbook — a structured pre-bid decision workspace

Build the numbers

The Event Economic Impact Calculator

Estimate the economic impact of your event and know exactly how you got there.

Build an early estimate before the event. Improve it as ticket sales, budgets and visitor forecasts become clearer. Complete the impact picture after the event without starting again.

The calculator helps your team move through the full logic: who is expected to attend, where they will come from, how long they will stay, what they may spend, where organiser and stakeholder money will flow, what must be filtered out, how much new money may enter the host economy — and how much could remain with local people and businesses.

It produces three different views of value:

Gross Economic Footprint
Net Direct Economic Impact
Real Local Retention

Not one headline number you simply hope is right. An estimate you can explain, update and stand behind.

Best for: host cities, event organisers and finance teams that need a transparent economic case before, during and after the event.

Build an Economic Impact Estimate → See the Impact Calculator

The Event Economic Impact Calculator — summary of the three views of value

One job. One tool.

You do not need another folder full of templates. You need a tool that helps you finish the job.

Each Host City Strategy tool has a clear purpose:

Make the pre-bid decision
Estimate the economic value
Organise the bid project
Map stakeholder commitments
Study competing cities
Plan how key decision-makers will be engaged
Track what has been agreed
Build a case leadership can understand

The tools give you a strong starting structure. Your team supplies the local knowledge, evidence and judgement.

That is what makes them adaptable. And useful.

Before and after

Stop rebuilding the process every time a new opportunity appears.

Without a shared method

Every opportunity creates a new rush
The team starts with a blank document
The assumptions sit in different files
One person understands the spreadsheet
Another person owns the stakeholder relationships
Important decisions get lost inside meetings
Outside support has to recreate work the city has already paid for before
The logic becomes difficult to trace when leadership starts asking questions

With Host City Strategy

Your team starts with a clear process
The right questions are asked early
Assumptions are recorded
Gaps become visible
The numbers can be explained
Responsibilities are easier to assign
The work can be updated as the event develops
The knowledge stays with your organisation for the next opportunity

The 14-step model

One toolkit. One complete way of thinking about major event bidding.

Every Host City Strategy tool fits inside the 14-step Winning Blueprint for Major Event Bidding. The blueprint covers the full journey:

1 Finding the right opportunities
2 Qualifying the event before committing
3 Testing fit and feasibility
4 Researching what the event really requires
5 Estimating costs, benefits and impact
6 Building the bid strategy
7 Securing stakeholder commitment
8 Organising the bid project
9 Shaping the concept and bid documents
10 Building trust with the rights holder
11 Preparing the final presentation
12 Negotiating
13 Closing the decision
14 Learning from the outcome and moving into delivery

Filter early. Focus the effort. Build promises that hold up. Win only what fits. Then deliver it well.

Why these tools are different

Built for the way host city work actually happens.

One important job at a time

You do not need a giant system with hundreds of features. You need to solve the decision in front of you.

Ready to adapt

These are not empty templates that leave you wondering what to write. The structure, questions and logic are already there.

Your team owns the thinking

The method does not disappear inside a consultant’s report. Your team can see it, challenge it and reuse it.

Useful before everything is known

Major event decisions rarely wait for perfect information. The tools help you work clearly with the information available today, then improve the answer as new evidence arrives.

Built from the field

The tools come from real host city, bidding, planning and event work. Not from a software company guessing what event teams might need.

Founder

The experience is personal. The tools are built to work without me.

Jesse KiuruMajor event strategist and creator of Host City Strategy

I have worked across more than 25 major event bids. I have seen strong cities win. I have seen promising bids lose. And I have seen capable teams spend too much time rebuilding work that should already have had a structure.

The same questions appear again and again. Is this event worth pursuing? What does the rights holder truly need? Can the city deliver what it is promising? Will the stakeholders support it? What is the economic case? Who owns the next decision? And how do we keep the whole bid moving?

I built Host City Strategy to turn the repeatable parts of that work into tools your team can use. You should not need me sitting in every meeting to benefit from what I have learned. You should be able to open the tool, adapt the method and move the work forward yourselves.

And when the opportunity is complex, political or especially important, direct advisory support is still available.

Experience includes successful projects connected with the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships in 2017 and 2029, MXGP Finland in 2022 and the IMGA Winter World Masters Games in 2028.

Learn more about Jesse Explore advisory support

Growing toolkit

More tools are coming for the work that begins after the Go decision.

The first Host City Strategy tools focus on early decision-making and economic impact. The next tools will help teams run the bid itself.

Planned tools include:

Bid project planning
Stakeholder commitment tracking
Bid budget control
Competitor bid analysis
Decision-maker influence mapping
Research and due-diligence tools
Bid milestone and responsibility tracking

Each will follow the same rule: one serious job, one clear tool, ready for your team to adapt.

Notify me when new tools launch →

Tools or direct support

Use the tools yourself. Bring in direct support when the stakes demand it.

Host City Strategy is the digital toolkit. You can buy the tools, adapt them and use them without hiring me.

JesseKiuru.com is where you can find direct advisory and consulting support. That may include: event opportunity assessment, bid strategy, bid project setup, economic impact advice, stakeholder alignment, rights-holder engagement, bid review and challenge, and final presentation and negotiation support.

The tools help your team move independently. Consulting is there when experience, facilitation or an outside view can materially improve the outcome.

Explore the digital tools → Work directly with Jesse

FAQ

Questions before you start

Are these consulting services?

No. These are ready-to-adapt digital guides, tools and workspaces your team can use independently. Direct consulting is available separately through JesseKiuru.com.

Which tool should I start with?

Start with the decision currently in front of you.

Read the Bid Readiness Guide when you want to understand the method. Use the PreBid Playbook when your team has a live event opportunity to assess. Use the Economic Impact Calculator when you need to estimate and update the event’s potential economic value.

Are the tools only for sports events?

No. The underlying questions apply across many types of major events. You should still adapt the assumptions, terminology and requirements to the event and rights holder involved.

Do the tools make the decision for us?

No. They make the logic clearer. Your team still brings the evidence, local understanding and professional judgement.

The purpose is not to replace judgement. It is to give that judgement a stronger structure.

Can we use the tools before all the data is available?

Yes. That is one of their main purposes. Start with visible assumptions. Record what is known and unknown. Then update the work as better information becomes available.

Can Jesse help us apply the tools?

Yes. The products are designed for independent use, but advisory support can be added when your team needs facilitation, challenge or direct strategic input.

Will more tools be added?

Yes. New tools are planned for bid project control, stakeholder commitment, competitor analysis, decision-maker engagement and other parts of the 14-step blueprint.