April 6, 2017: N.H.L. Backing Out Is One of Many Recent Winter Olympics Woes, Why Food Has Become the Main Event at Goldenvoice Festivals, Event Shuttle Service Raises $5 Million and Rebrands

1. N.H.L. BACKING OUT IS ONE OF MANY RECENT WINTER OLYMPICS WOES: The National Hockey League recently announced it won't participate in next year's Winter Olympics in South Korea, adding to the blows the Summer Olympics counterpart has experienced in recent years—which include expenses and fraud in Sochi in 2014. The New York Times: "'For a very long time, there’s always been this race to get the Olympics, and that race might have ended,' said Johann Olav Koss, a former International Olympic Committee member and a four-time Olympic gold medalist in speed skating for Norway. 'The I.O.C. needs to figure out new ways to engage cities, and I think the Winter Olympics seems to be the one suffering the most.' It does not help that figure skating, once a pillar of the Winter Olympics, has seen its popularity slump significantly outside Japan, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Now comes the N.H.L.’s announcement. There were plenty of transcendent Olympic hockey moments before the N.H.L. players arrived in 1998, including, from an American perspective, the “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid in 1980 when an underdog United States team upset the Soviet Union and went on to win the gold medal. But once you have seen the best in the world at work and on the medal stand, it is no easy maneuver to be satisfied with lesser talent. The Winter Games never have been a truly global event. The classic winter sports inspire little interest and participation in big swaths of the world, particularly in Africa, southern Asia and much of South America. Only 45 nations have won a medal in the Winter Olympics, compared with 150 nations in the Summer Games. Only 32 nations have won more than one gold medal in the Winter Olympics, compared with 85 in the summer version. Of the record 88 national Olympic committees that sent delegations to Sochi, only 60 had more than two athletes." http://nyti.ms/2p4zYwD

2. WHY FOOD HAS BECOME THE MAIN EVENT AT GOLDENVOICE FESTIVALS: While Coachella festivalgoers buy tickets for the music lineup, many leave being just as impressed by the food and beverage offerings, which are curated by Goldenvoice's Nic Adler. LA Weekly: "But Coachella isn't the only music festival with a stellar food lineup. Arroyo Seco Weekend, Goldenvoice’s newest event slated for June 24th and 25th at The Rose Bowl, bills the chef and restaurant lineup on the same flyer as Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. High-end L.A. restaurants like Broken Spanish, Redbird and Union will make a showing, alongside trendy casual spots like Beer Belly, Fat Dragon and Petty Cash. Basically, it's a collection of restaurants your friends have been Instagramming. Goldenvoice plans the food as carefully as the bands. Culinary director of Goldenvoice, Nic Adler, has been curating Coachella’s food program for the past four years, and is also at the helm of Arroyo Seco’s chef and restaurant lineup. 'It goes back to that conversation, that, say, if grunge or EDM is going to be the next big thing, it’s our job to look at food that way,' Adler says. 'For example, if I didn’t have matcha this year I would be missing it. That would be me misunderstanding the trends. Someone having matcha for the first time at Coachella 100 percent will happen. And then they can always remember, oh I had that at Coachella. Just like they saw a band for the first time that nobody knew. Four years later, that artist is headlining.' Adler says that for Arroyo Seco, there was a conscious effort to make sure the food line up aligned strategically with the musical acts. ... Given their sheer size, music festivals are gradually becoming as influential to the culinary world as social media and television, and chefs are using them as test markets." http://bit.ly/2oE4ocw

3. EVENT SHUTTLE SERVICE RAISES $5 MILLION AND REBRANDS: Event shuttle-bus service Sharethebus has rebranded as Bus.com after raising $5 million in Series A funding. TechCrunch: "Bus.com is the destination you’d expect to head to for what the company does, which is organize charter bus trips for festivals, sporting events and shows by teaming up with bus companies with unused inventory. The Bus.com model includes online rental, GPS tracking of buses so passengers know exactly when they’re arriving, and online ticketing. The founding team, which was a Y Combinator Winter 2016 class graduate, saw an opportunity to update the process of chartering buses for mass transit to one-off events and occasions, including festivals like the Way Home music festival north of Toronto, in Canada, and Sasquatch. Perviously, charter bus services for this market, which accounts for around $4 billion in annual revenue according to Bus.com, has relied heavily on a network of small operators with around 10 or fewer buses each. These charter operators had no common standards or platform in terms of pricing, service or booking process, leading to a lot of confusion and complexity on the user end of the process, and also for festival operators. … The team created a basic software platform that brought together a lot of the missing elements in one place, and have been iterating on it very since. Their focus is increasingly on making sure festival and event organizers can more easily offer charter travel as an integrated component of what they provide their customers." http://tcrn.ch/2p25QBR

* LOCAL NEWS *

BOSTON:  The third edition of the Mediterranean Diet Roundtable, which focuses Mediterranean food's health benefits, will take place May 15-16 at U-Mass Club.

LOS ANGELES:  We Day California—which is part of a series of stadium-size events from the We organization that brings people together and provides resources for social change—will take place April 27 at the Forum. The event, which is sponsored by the Allstate Foundation and Unilever, will bring together 16,000 youth to celebrate taking action on social issues. The event will be hosted by Selena Gomez, and feature a musical performance by Alicia Keys and appearances by Demi Lovato, "Magic" Johnson, Miss Piggy, and more.

U.C.L.A. Mattel Children's Hospital will host its fifth annual gala Kaleidoscope 5 on May 6 at 3Labs in Culver City. The event, which has a "Light: A Celebration of Discovery and Innovation" theme, will honor philanthropists Alexandra and Sean Parker, and actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

For information on upcoming events in Los Angeles, visit Masterplanner: http://www.masterplanneronline.com/losangeles

NEW YORK:  Spires on the Empire State Building, One World Trade Center, Four TImes Square, and One Bryant Park shone blue on Wednesday evening to mark the second annual Global Meetings Industry Day today. The event was supported by NYC & Company, which is hosting its NYC Talks: Improving Security, Ensuring Success panel at Manhattan Center today.

The Women's Lifestyle Expo will take place May 20 at Metropolitan West.

Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation's 18th annual Art for Life event will take place July 15 at Fairview Farm at Mecox in Bridgehampton.

The James Beard Foundation's annual Chefs & Champagne fund-raiser and tasting party will take place July 29 at the Wölffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack. The event will honor chef Marcus Samuelsson.

For information on upcoming events in New York, visit Masterplanner: http://www.masterplanneronline.com/newyork

ORLANDO/CENTRAL FLORIDA:  The Polite Pig opens at Disney Springs April 10. The restaurant is a new fast-casual concept from husband-and-wife chefs James and Julie Petrakis, who also operate the Ravenous Pig and Cask & Larder. The 5,000-square-foot restaurant will have seating for 200 people and be open daily from 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

TORONTO:  A new light festival called the Lights Fest may be headed to Toronto. BlogTO: http://bit.ly/2oymug7

WASHINGTON, D.C.:  The 11th annual National Harbor Wine & Food festival will take place April 29-30. The event will offer more than 150 international wines, spirits, and beers, along with cooking demonstrations from talent including chef Scott Drewno of the Source by Wolfgang Puck and Marjorie Meeks-Bradley of Smoke and Stacked.

MCON, a millennial-impact focused conference, will take place in Washington for the second year on June 5-6 at the Newseum. Girls and Get Out actress Allison Williams will keynote the event, which also will feature speakers including Voto Latino's Maria Teresa Kumar and photographer Robin Hammond.

YOUR NEWS: What are you doing? Tell us: [email protected]. 

JOB BOARD: Post a job or find a job: http://jobs.bizbash.com

With contributions from Alesandra Dubin and Claire Hoffman in Los Angeles, Mitra Sorrells in Orlando, and Beth Kormanik, Michele Laufik, Jill Menze, and Ian Zelaya in New York.

BizBash Daily is the must-read digest of event industry news from BizBash.com.

Feed the Sheet: [email protected]

Subscribe: www.bizbash.com/bizbashdaily

Advertise with BizBash: [email protected]