Five months into 2026 and we’re starting to see a familiar trend re-emerge. A shift back towards virtual delivery, hybrid formats and what I’d simply call broadcasting.
There are several reasons for this: budget pressures are back, travel is becoming more difficult again, security, safety and sustainability are all higher on the agenda. More recently, geopolitical instability is starting to have a very real impact on how organisations plan and deliver their events.
If your plans rely entirely on everyone getting on a plane, they’re probably already under pressure.
Airlines are already cutting thousands of flights. Costs are rising. Decision making is slowing down. We’re seeing programmes being delayed and, in some cases, cancelled altogether.
The events industry is resilient. It always finds a way through. But doing nothing has never been the answer.
In a world of miscommunication, live experiences remain the most trusted and effective way to connect with an audience. Nothing quite replaces being in the room, building belief, alignment and energy in real time.
But for many organisations, delivering every message through face-to-face simply isn’t practical. That doesn’t make the communication any less important. If anything, it makes it more so.
When an organisation postpones a sales conference, leadership event or activation, there are consequences. You lose momentum. You lose engagement. You create uncertainty internally and externally. Over time, that starts to impact performance, culture and reputation.
There may be a short-term saving in cancelling or postponing an event, but the long-term negatives almost always outweigh it.
If that feels like a bold statement, then it’s worth asking why the event existed in the first place. The objective doesn’t disappear just because the format becomes more difficult.
Broadcasting isn’t an event. You can’t take a live experience, put a camera in front of it and expect the same result. It won’t work. This is where the industry sometimes gets it wrong.
Broadcasting is about taking content and designing it specifically for the audience on the other side of the screen. It’s tighter, more controlled, and when it’s done properly, it can be just as engaging and, in some cases, more effective.
It also gives you options.
You can reach more people, more quickly, without the constraints of travel. You can control the message more tightly and build something that lives beyond a single moment, rather than disappearing once the room empties.
And it doesn’t need to feel corporate.
Some of the best work feels closer to major cultural moments than traditional business events. Think scale, pace and energy. Multiple channels working together - live broadcast, streaming and social all aligned around a single idea.
If you want to see how that translates in practice, we've created award winning broadcasts for EE, BT and also PPC. This is where broadcast has been used to extend and, in some cases, replace live experiences without losing impact.
We’ve been producing broadcasts for over 30 years. During periods of disruption, including 2020, that experience became critical. We delivered hundreds of programmes globally from our studio network, helping organisations stay connected when they couldn’t bring people together physically.
That infrastructure and expertise still exists today, and we’ve continued to invest in it.
Our global studio network now includes facilities in London, Germany and the US, alongside our expanded studio complex in Worcestershire. We’ve also invested in mobile production capabilities, which allow us to deliver studio-quality broadcasts within client environments or on location.
The point is simple. We can take a face-to-face event and reformat it into a broadcast that works, or design something entirely new from the ground up.
The organisations that come through periods like this strongest are the ones that keep moving. Pausing might feel like the safe option, but it rarely delivers the right outcome. Momentum matters and communication matters - and the longer you leave it, the harder it is to recover.
Broadcasting isn’t there to replace face-to-face entirely. It’s there to make sure your message still lands when the original plan becomes difficult or impossible.
In some cases, it will be the second-best option. In others, it will prove to be the more effective one. Either way, it keeps you visible and keeps your audience engaged.
If you’re under pressure to rethink your plans, the answer isn’t to step back but rather to approach the problem differently. You can reach out to speak to one of the team, or download our Virtual Experiences brochure.
Who wrote this article? Dale Partmenter is the visionary CEO of DRPG (DRP Group), a leader in integrated communication solutions. With a dynamic career spanning over four decades in the industry, Dale has steered DRPG to international renown through his strategic leadership and commitment to innovation.