34 Live Blog Friendly Events to Increase Your Traffic this Summer

Summer is just around the corner and with it a plethora of festivals, conferences, championships, and elections. These events provide a great opportunity to grow your traffic by live blogging updates, key events, and on-site nuances that other news outlets might miss.

To help you sift through the large range of events, we’ve created a list of what we believe are some of the most live blog friendly events this summer. Some are short one-day spurts of activity requiring careful planning to ensure your live blog captures key events, others are multi-day championships or conferences where you can have a move flexible live blogging schedule (read our blog posts with 4 steps for live blogging a conference successfully to help you prepare).

But before we dive into the list, How do you choose which events to cover? Choosing your battles of Which events live blog is as important as How you live blog them.

Some things to consider:

• Size of event – How many people will attend the event? Much many people will follow it online and through traditional media
• Duration – How long will the event last? A one-day event requires less work to blog, but might also not have the same impact as a well-executed multi-day live blog coverage. Begin by deciding how much time you have available and work your way backwards
• Fit with you brand and audience – If you’re a daily newspaper, most events might be relevant for one or more of your sections. However, if you’re a niche tech news website maybe the Wimbledon Championships is not the right fit for you. Start by looking at the profile of your readers and their interests and start excluding events which they, and potential new readers with the same profile, might not find relevant
• Competition – Tour de France will be covered and live blogged by hundreds of media outlets and publishers from all around the globe, while the Oslo Ginfestival on June 8th might not have a single live blog. Finding these Blue Ocean events allows you to be the #1 source of updates from the event, or better yet, the only source.
• Social media buzz – Is the event likely to receive a lot of social media mentions, comments, etc.? If so, they are great candidates for live blogging since you’ll be able to find content from other sources, and event live blog without being physically present at the event, but instead acting as a collator of information for your audience.

With no further adieu, here’s our list of some of the most live-blog friendly events this summer.

Culture, Arts, and Festivals

Oktoberfest Sep 22 – Oct 7

The world famous Oktoberfest is a beer drinker and party-goers heaven. It has now spread to all over Germany, it’s epicenter lies in Munich where it was first celebrated in the 19th century.

La Tomatina Aug 29th

Held the last Wednesday each August in the town of Buñol Latomatina is a world famous festival where groups of festival goers throw tomatoes at each other. The event dates back to 1945 and has not missed a year since!

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tatoo Aug 3 – 25th

An annual military orchestral performance at the Edinburgh Castle in the capital of Scotland.

Comic-Con 19-22 July 

Originating in San Diego, but now has similar events and fans all over the world, Comic-Con is a geek, comic and pop culture fans heaven. Often frequented by attendees dressed up in their favorite characters apparel, it’s a great event with lots of fun and a supportive atmosphere which has lifted geek culture into the spotlight.

Eurovision Young Musicians 18-19, 23 Aug

The Young Musicians even consists of musicians from 18 European countries in a format similar to the Eurovision song contest.

Venice Film Festival  Aug 29 – 8 Sept 

One of the most famous and influential film festivals in the world, it celebrates its 75th edition this year.

Stockholm Pride Jul 27 – Aug 19

Annual Gay and LBTQ festival in Stockholm attended by hundreds of thousands of participants and attendees. Besides the famous parade, the week festival also includes lectures and exhibitions across the city.

Sports

FIFA World Cup Jun 14 – July 25

Held every 4th year the FIFA World Cup takes place in Russia and will be one of the most anticipated events of the summer. Live Center comes prepared with Scoreboard and Scorecard functionality to help you cover and comment on any in-game event. As always, Live Center also allows you to create interactive charts and graphs directly in the editor to make your coverage more engaging and visually appealing.

World University American Football Championship 14-24 June

An international college American Football competition organized by the International University Sports Federation to promote American football internationally

Tour de France 7 – July 29 

The place to be for bicycle fans from all over the world. First organized in 1903, the Tour lets views from home follow along a multi-staged course across the French landscape.

2018 Wimbledon Championships 2 – July 15

Prestigious annual tennis championship which takes place over the course of two weeks at the beginning of July. This event is on-par with the FIFA World Cup in terms of viewers and online coverage, an estimated 24.1 million stream requests were made last year according to BBC.

Formula One, British Grand Prix 5 – July 8

First race took place in 1927 and today the Silverstone race celebrates its 70th year. Considered by many as one of the premier races of the formula 1 class.

Athletics World Cup 5 – July  8

Held in London with over 100 individuals representing eight nations from around the world, the Athletics World Cup comes with a prize pool of $2 million. In celebration of 100 years since women were given the right to vote in the UK, each team’s captain will be female.

European Rowing Championships 2-5 August

Annual European rowing championship will take place in Glasgow and is open for all athletes in the European member federation + Isreal.

European Championships 2 – Aug 12 The inaugural edition which will bring together multi-sport representation from the European continents leading sport nations. The potential television audience sits at a cool 1 billion + with a similar audience available online. This could be a great event missed by more traditional media outlets.

18th Asian Games  18 Aug – 2 Sept

The Asian Games is the second largest multi-sport competition after the Olympics. A great new addition this year is the introduction of eSports for the first time. Esports is one of the most popular sports in the world with a large reach to young audiences.

Political Events

Summits

44th G7 Summit 8 – 9 June 

G7 Summit brings together world leaders from Germany, France, Japan, Italy, the UK, the US and Canada to discuss important issues currently at play in the world.

US – North Korea Summit in Singapore 12 June
After som back-and-forth it seems that the meeting between President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, are set to take place in Singapore for a historic summit on 12 June. This historical meeting will be a gold-rush for media coverage.

Elections

Live blogs are an ideal medium for covering elections. Both the days leading up to elections, and the actual vote count are great nail-biters which will attract huge amounts of readers.

Pulling in content from Social Media, and from other sources, live blogs can provide you with an edge in these types of coverage.

For a case study on how to live blog an election, have a read of how Dagens Næringsliv covered the 2017 Norwegian General Election using Live Center.

Some of the elections taking place this year includes:

·         South Korean local Elections (13 June)

·         Colombia’s Presidential Election (17 June)

·         Turkish general election (24 June)

·         Indonesian local Elections(27 June)

·         Mexico’s General Election (1 July)

·         Pakistan’s General Election (25 July)

·         Zimbabwe General Election (30 July)

·         Sweden’s General Election (9 September)

·         US 2018 Midterms (6 November)

Conferences

Even in a digital world, conferences remain hugely popular. They combine work by being informative and educational, with fun by being a great way to network and meet like- and different-minded people. However, with the large number of great conferences out there, most people find it impossible to attend all of them, especially the far-away or expensive ones. This is where live blogs comes in, the allow people who are unable to attend a way to get some of the benefits of attending.

The GEN Summit 2018 (30 May –  1 June)This year the GEN summit will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, focusing on Disruption, Personalisation, and Monitisation in the media industry. This is one of the most anticipated media and technology summits in the world with a wealth of speakers from all over the world.

NOAH Conference (6-7 June)

With the aim of “Connecting European Champions and Challengers” the NOAH conference is a start up summit with over 3500 attendees from 1500 startups and 200+ presentations. A real smorgasbord for techies and investors!

World News Media Conference (6 – 8 June)

TheWorld News Media Conference is held annually to discuss media freedom and how to create and maintain a sustainable news industry. This year’s conference will be held in Estoril, Cascais, Portugal.

Global Media Forum (11 – 13 June)

With this years theme being‘Global inequalities’ the Global Media Forum brings together a wide range of fields including journalism, politics and academia to discuss issues and opportunities facing journalism today. The conference will be held in Bonn, Germany.

Science

World Science Festival (29 May – 3 June)

The 11th World Science Festival aims to make science more accessible by taking it out of the lab and by “Cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.”

NASA (Launch Window: 31 July – 19 August)

Humanity’s first visit to a star, the Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to be launched this summer. The launch will take place from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will be covered by many media outlets and social media channels.

Space X Crew Dragon launch (Est. August)

After several delays, Space X will launch their Crew Dragon test rocket to demonstrate its feasibility to transport crew to an from the International Space station in the future.