For those planning a sporting event, whether it be a charity evening, annual meeting or fund raising event, then the presence of one of the many top quality after dinner speakers that are available on the circuit can provide your event with not only a highlight to the evening, but also it can act as a draw to further potential dinners to bring even more attendees to your planned function. It can also give you a much needed boost to your function and even allow you to increase your ticket price.
To be able to contact most of these ex professional sports stars, you almost certainly will have to first go via their agents or approved after dinner speaker bureaus. It is highly unlikely that these celebrities will accept bookings directly and no doubt tasks such as sorting out the arrangements of travel, accommodation and what time to arrive at the event would certainly be beneath them.
Depending on where your event’s location is and the home of your chosen celebrity, on top of their advertised speaking fees you will be expected to pay additionally for either a car for them to travel to and from the venue, or even a night’s hotel accommodation for after the event. You might be given a choice of these up front or you might be told the celebrity’s preference, which might be dictated by the timing of the event and the speaker’s other appointments in their diary.
Professional sporting after dinner speakers don’t just attend and work with large dinner events where they stand at the front and talk to the audience. Many are also happy to attend a wide variety of dinner events, down to more intimate get to know events, where maybe half a dozen attendees have a lunch with the chosen celebrity. Or another alternative can be a question and answer session with your chosen sporting star answering questions from the audience.
Whilst they are at your function the celebrity may also be happy to compare a charity auction to help boost fund raising. In some cases, the speaker’s agent might even be able to help you to provide suitable signed merchandise on a sale or return basis for the charity auction, it’s well worth checking what is possible when you are negotiating.
Another point to clarify at an early stage when you are negotiating with the star’s agent is how much you can use the speaker’s name when advertising the future event. It is well worth passing the agent copies of press releases, flyers and the likes at an early stage, just so that they don’t turn around later and say that you have mis-represented their client. “An intimate evening with” might seem at first to you to be a perfectly fair way of advertising your quiet dinner for 20 people, but the celebrity involved might not see standing in front of a few dinner tables talking to the attendees in the same light and might want to reserve such descriptions for smaller events.
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