In a fantastic celebration of the Australian events industry, event venue Sydney Showground was awarded Best Venue Team at the 2022 Exhibitions & Events Association of Australasia (EEAA) Awards for Excellence for their work on the 2021 Sydney Royal Easter Show.

Announced as a finalist in both the Best Venue Team and Best Sustainability Initiative categories, the team were delighted to be recognised for their ground-breaking work on the iconic event.

“The Show was an incredibly challenging event for our team, it ran at a time when no other large-scale events had occurred since the pandemic began, and as a venue and organiser, there was no roadmap to follow,” said Sydney Showground General Manager, Darryl Jeffrey.

“A limited timeframe combined with navigating a covid event overlay and the expectation to run an event that maintained the integrity of the almost 200-year Show was significant.

“Despite these challenges, we felt a responsibility, alongside our parent company the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW, to lead the charge for other large-scale events. If you could run the largest ticketed event in the Southern Hemisphere under the 2021 event restrictions, what couldn’t you run?”

The 2021 Sydney Royal Easter Show welcomed over 800,000 patrons, exhibitors, staff, and volunteers to the event over the 12 days of Show. It was the largest ticketed event to occur globally since the pandemic began in 2020.

The event broke five attendance records since its relocation to Sydney Olympic Park, and the organisation successfully delivered a COVIDSafe event with daily limits, a new ticketing system, and innovative COVIDSafe measures, which brought the community together for the first time since the lockdown.

“We put everything we had into bringing this event to life, so to be recognised for that hard work and innovation is extremely rewarding for our team. The Show is what it is due to the hundreds of staff that go the extra mile to make it happen, and this award is for them,” said Darryl Jeffrey

The Exhibitions & Events Association of Australasia recognises those at the forefront of the event industry, providing a benchmark for excellence and recognising those who make a difference through their work.