Upcoming Events in the USA in 2021: Leading Demand Indicators as of June 21
At the risk of severe understatement, demand forecasting this past year has been challenging. Everything changed almost overnight, and then lockdowns and restrictions. dominated many states for the rest of the year. While 2021 is looking up it will in many ways be even more challenging as the economic recovery picks up pace across the country, at different rates and with different catalysts in each state and city.
With restrictions disappearing across the US, a key catalyst of economic recovery is the return of major events as well as clusters of events that combine for outsize impact. At PredictHQ, we track 19 categories of events and call these clusters perfect storms of demand.
Let’s take a look at an upcoming perfect storm of demand, in the busiest city rescheduling events this week – New York City. NYC scheduled more events than any other city this week by a long way.
New York’s event scheduling rate is a good example of the sudden surge in events (and demand) that the restriction easing is likely to generate. As of this week, New York businesses should get ready for a boom from July onwards.
We are seeing this pattern across many major cities in the USA. With so many new events being scheduled each week, many of our customers are paying close attention to major cities that prior to the pandemic were major conference and expo hubs. Cities such as New York, San Francisco, Austin and Chicago are being closely tracked using our API as demand planners hope for the return of major recurring events in those cities. But planners should be aware that cities such as Las Vegas are expected to pick up some of the large events that could relocate to avoid the cities that were slower to ease restrictions.
Make sure your PredictHQ subscription is in order so you never miss an impactful event being scheduled, relocated or updated.
High-impact clusters of events will be a major theme of demand planning in the second half of 2021
The cities starting to gather momentum are changing notably every week, and there are clusters of impactful events already appearing. This will be a major theme of the second half of 2021, with many large events planned for earlier this year finally taking place.
For example, here is the aggregate event impact graph – the total number of expected people attending events - in New York from July to December 2021.
There is a notable surge in mid-October is largely driven by New York Advertising Week, which is set to be a major in-person event with online sessions also. PredictHQ checks all major events manually at this stage, to ensure our predicted attendance details are as accurate as possible.
But assuming all the demand impact in late summer will be caused by Advertising Week would be an error. It coincides with several other impactful events, such as the 8th Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo.
Academic events such as Fall Session compound the impact of attended events
Before we get into our core graphs for this weekly report, we want to flag a major upcoming demand catalyst: Fall Session at colleges across the country. It is important to track the more than 20 million students with an estimated spending power of $212 billion in pre-pandemic times for businesses that sell to young people, such as transport, food retailers and delivery groups.
Accommodation and airline groups are also likely to see a sharp rise in their booking curve as students (and often family members) arrive back on campus to get settled in for a long-awaited return to campus study.
If we stay focused on New York, more than 57,000 students will be arriving at identifiable locations for key academic events:
New York City College of Technology Fall Session commences August 25, bringing more than 12,000 students back to campus
Baruch College Fall Session commences August 25, bringing more than 15,000 students back to campus
Borough of Manhattan Community College commences 25 August, bringing more than 10,000 students back to campus
New York University Fall Session commences September 2, bringing more than 20,000 students back to campus
And that’s just a handful of colleges in New York City. There are 2,218 significant academic events occurring across the USA within the next 90 days.
Demand Intelligence API
Improve forecasts, operational platforms, event calendars & more.
Learn More
The states bouncing back the fastest this week
Colleges are national, but the state by state recovery is not uniform. This week, California continues to dominate the most events scheduled list, barely a week after it lifted all major restrictions.
It is important to note that within California, like most states, the event recovery rate varies city to city. For example, Los Angeles saw a boom in events a few weeks ago, with San Francisco and San Jose only recently beginning to reschedule events at scale. For example, San Francisco is booking more events sooner, mostly in the concert and performing arts space, compared to San Jose, which is heading towards a more consistent level of events with significant sports impact.
Upcoming impactful events in San Francisco include:
Dreamforce at Moscone West on September 21 to 23 with 5,000 people expected
Art Market at Fort Mason Center - Festival Pavilion, on September 30 to Oct 3, with 22,400 people expected
Craneway Craft Fair ‑ Summer Edition at Pier 70 on June 26th to June 27th, with 4,800 people expected
Colorado Rockies vs San Francisco Giants, at Oracle park on August 14, with 33,600 expected people
St. Louis Cardinals vs San Francisco Giants, at Oracle park on July 5, with 35,101 people expected
Upcoming impactful events in San Jose include:
San Jose Jazz Summer Fest at Plaza de César Chávez on August 13 -15 with 32,000 people expected
Maluma at SAP Center on September 9 with 14,049 people expected
Silicon Valley Comic Con at San José McEnery Convention Center on August 28 - 29 with 48,000 people expected
MLS - SJ Earthquakes vs Real Salt Lake at PayPal Park on September 15 with 12,508 people expected
Assyrian Food Festival at Assyrian Church of the East on August 22 - 23 with 11,200 people expected
Event return by category across the USA
Finally, here are all the new events across the USA scheduled this week by month and category.
As the event recovery continues, demand anomalies for businesses that aren’t real-world aware will increase in both volume and severity. PredictHQ is supplying our customers with impactful events across the world, both verified and standardized, from 19 categories in one API. To find out how leading companies such as Uber, Domino’s and major hotel chains are using this data, explore our use cases.
We publish fortnightly editions of this Leading Demand Indicators report. Sign up to receive it in your inbox early each week.
