This week saw UK venue management company VMS Live appoint Bert Van Horck as its new chief executive.
Van Horck (pictured) previously served as chief executive of event crowd management specialist ICMS, which trades as Showsec in the UK. He also worked as managing director of de Boer Structures UK and headed the safety and security department during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Kate Forster, widow of VMS founder and chief executive Steve Forster, has also joined the board as non-executive director. Steve Forster passed away earlier this year.
Kate Forster said: “I am focusing on the opportunity to preserve and continue to grow the legacy of my late husband. This is the appropriate time to extend a huge thank you all the staff, suppliers, clients and other stakeholders who all contributed to keeping VMS Live running in the difficult past five months.
“Bert has a unique track record in the event industry, including promoting and producing live entertainment and starting up venues and I am looking forward to working with him to take the company forward.”
Liverpool and Fenway Sports Management (FSM) have announced that Kate Pratt has joined FSM as the Premier League football club’s head of sales for the Americas.
In the newly-created role, Pratt will lead the club’s sales efforts and commercial activities in North and South America and oversee revenue growth and commercial presence in the regions. FSM is the global sponsorship sales arm for Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool.
Pratt will work in FSM’s newly-opened New York offices and becomes Liverpool’s first senior executive liaison in the Americas. She most recently served as director of marketing partnerships and team sales for Madison Square Garden Company, overseeing corporate marketing, media and rights partners across the group’s portfolio of sports, live entertainment, venues and media properties.
London-based live events, hospitality and ticketing start-up Seat Unique has named Sir Clive Woodward as a board advisor.
Woodward, who coached England to Rugby World Cup glory in 2003, will offer strategic input to Seat Unique’s management team. He brings with him 18 years of experience in the technology sector having founded a computer leasing company.
Read the full story on our sister site TheTicketingBusiness.com.
Sebastian Coe has been re-elected as president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) for a second term.
Coe stood unopposed for re-election during the IAAF Congress in Doha, where the IAAF World Championships got underway today (Friday). Ximena Restrepo, Sergey Bubka, Geoffrey Gardner and Nawaf Bin Mohammed Al Saud were elected as vice-presidents, with Restrepo becoming the first woman to hold the role.
International Tennis Federation (ITF) president David Haggerty has also been re-elected for a second four-year term after seeing off competition from Anil Khanna, David Miley and Ivo Kaderka.
Haggerty received 259 votes during the ITF’s annual general meeting in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon today, with Khanna his closest challenger with 93 votes. Miley and Kaderka received 46 and 30, respectively.
Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which operates the 10,000-seat EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia, has announced that long-serving general manager Barry Geisler will retire from the role at the end of the year.
Geisler began working at the Oakland Coliseum in 1982 before becoming an event coordinator at Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center. In 1985, he became director of arena administration at the then-Patriot Center, which is now known as EagleBank Arena.
Geisler became general manager of the arena in 1987 and has seen the venue host an array of events including NCAA basketball games and concerts from Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Sting and One Direction. The search for his replacement will begin immediately.
Do you have news of an appointment that we should know about? Get in touch by emailing news.editor@thestadiumbusiness.com and we’ll include it in our next round-up.
Image: VMS Live
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