Additional information for applicants, suppliers and vendors

Eligibility criteria

If you are planning an event with over 5,000 ticketed attendees, you may be eligible for support under the Events Transition Support Payment Scheme (ETSP). Review the criteria below to see if your event would be eligible.

If you are planning a business event from 4 April 2022 to 31 January 2023 with over 200 people, you may be eligible under the ETSP for business events. Review the criteria below for business events, to determine if your business event would be eligible.

You should make sure your organisation and event meet the eligibility criteria before spending time on an application. If you are unable to confidently confirm your eligibility, please contact nz.eventsupport@aon.com before progressing with your application.

Criteria for events scheduled between 17 December 2021 and 3 April 2022

Criteria for events scheduled between 4 April 2022 and 31 January 2023

Non-eligible events

If your event doesn't meet the eligibility criteria for the ETSP scheme, you may be eligible for support through Ministry for Culture and Heritage. You will need to contact to them directly as we are unable to provide advice on their funding.

Further information about their support can be found here:

Arts and Culture Event Support Scheme(external link) — Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Business events

From 4 April 2022, business events are also included in the ETSP scheme.  

A business event is an event that is hosted by an organisation (such as an association, corporate organisation, or government organisation) and is either an incentive, conference, convention, exhibition, or trade show. It must have at least 200 attendees, and has to be held at a venue which is external to your normal place of business.

To be eligible as a business event under the ETSP you will need to meet all of the criteria for business events.

Business event eligibility and criteria

Events Transition Support Payment (ETSP) eligibility form [PDF, 226 KB]

Ticket sales and attendee numbers

Evidence requirement

You can demonstrate that your event is expecting over 5,000 in-person attendees by:

• Providing evidence of tickets or registrations already sold, or
• Providing evidence that the event reached an average of at least 5,000 attendees over the last 3 iterations of the event.

These last 3 events must have been held at the same location as the event you are applying for. For example, an event due to be held in Wellington cannot use evidence of reaching over 5,000 attendees for previous iterations of the event held in Auckland or any location other than Wellington.

For business events which may not be selling tickets, if you can show that there is a financial commitment to suppliers for an event of at least 200 people (such as for catering or a venue hire) this will be sufficient to meet this criterion.

Verifying an event was open for ticket sales/registrations

An event is actively in the market if you can point to:

• A public announcement of the event for the scheduled date, or
• Tickets or registrations publicly on sale, or
• Financial commitments have been made to key suppliers for the date of the event, such as the venue or artists bookings.

Non-eligible events with less than the required number of attendees

Unfortunately, not all events will be eligible under the ETSP scheme. ETSP eligibility criteria was set and approved by Cabinet. If there are changes to the eligibility criteria, we’ll be sure to communicate this as soon as possible. Other support may be available for your event, such as through the Ministry for Culture and Heritage Arts and Culture Event Support Scheme (ACESS).

Arts and Culture Event Support Scheme(external link) — Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Free events

Free events are not eligible for support under the ETSP.

To be eligible for the ETSP, events must be paid, ticketed in-person events. Online attendees do not count towards the attendee threshold.

Touring events, multi-day events or multiple performances

Touring events are included under the ETSP from 4 April 2022. Touring events must still have at least 5,000 in-person ticketed attendees (or at least 200 for touring business events), but this can be spread across all of the events being held as a part of the tour.  Some examples include a concert series being held at different venues around the country, a touring artist or band playing different venues around the country, or an expo or exhibition being held in main city locations on different dates.

Partial cancellation of a tour

If some of the events in your tour must be cancelled, then you may be eligible to claim up to 90% of costs for the cancelled portion of the tour only. The cancellations must still be made under the defined triggers for the scheme for it to be eligible for a claim.

If an event is a season of performances or a tour that needs to be cancelled mid-way through delivery, the level of financial support provided will be calculated based on the income received against the non-recoverable costs, across all the registered performances/shows.

Multi-day events

Multi-day events must be at a single location and be on consecutive days (with no more than 2 rest days per 7 days). The number of in-person attendees (based on tickets sold or the average attendance over the past 3 iterations of the event) must reach at least the minimum threshold of 5,000 people across the whole of the event.

Multi-day events still need to meet all other ETSP criteria.

If you have multiple events scheduled at the same venue on weekends, with no performances on the weekdays in between, these would be considered separate events and the ETSP criteria would need to be applied to each event individually.

Events with performer income based on event ticket sales

Payment of organisations or people involved in the delivery of an event, which are reliant on the event’s income from ticket sales, are not considered an obligation and are not an unrecoverable cost so cannot be claimed under the ETSP.

Costs excluded from the ETSP

Examples of costs which are excluded from the ETSP are included below:

• any deposits for which credits are received or that can be transferred forward (for example, credits for flights or accommodation that can be used by the registrant for future activity) are considered recoverable and are not eligible
• shortfalls due to the withdrawal of local government or public authority funding
• the purchase of goods for sale at the event, such as merchandise or food and drink and in particular alcohol, and any anticipated losses arising from the inability to sell merchandise or bar products or retail losses
• cancellation or performance fees for artists due to border issues or restrictions
• revenue or profit
• any costs related to the purchase of assets/items which might be used to set up an event, that could be used for future events or on-sold
• any costs not already incurred by the event organiser and for which there is no legal obligation for them to pay in the event of postponement or cancellation
• any costs already incurred but which are able to be recouped in the event of postponement or cancellation
• any costs covered by other central and local government support, such as funding grants, Wage Subsidy payments, Resurgence Support payments, etc
• shareholder dividends and salaries.

Proportion of costs covered

The ETSP will cover up to 90% of eligible, unrecoverable costs associated with a cancelled or postponed eligible event. The remaining 10% of costs are not covered by the scheme. This is designed to act in a similar way to an insurance premium and ensures some risk-sharing under the scheme, which will encourage appropriate decision-making by event organisers and planners.

While profit is not covered by the ETSP, the event organiser should be left no worse off than 10% of their total unrecoverable costs. This does mean that some event organisers that incur most of their costs in advance (e.g. events that need to be cancelled close to the scheduled date) will be liable for up to 10% of those costs. Some suppliers will have already been paid in full, some will only receive a deposit or partial payment, and some suppliers may receive nothing, depending on the agreement they have with the event organiser/promoter.

Outstanding costs after ETSP support has been provided

The ETSP will cover up to 90% of eligible, unrecoverable costs associated with a cancelled or postponed eligible event. The remaining 10% is not covered under the scheme and event organisers may be liable to pay this portion of any obligations they have to their suppliers or vendors.

COVID-19 Protection Framework Settings

Impact

To make a claim under the ETSP, events scheduled to take place between 4 April 20-22 and 31 January 2023 must meet one of the following triggers:

1. the event is in an area that is operating under COVID-19 Protection Framework restrictions, which explicitly prohibit the event from occurring; or
2. the event is in an area that is operating under COVID-19 Protection Framework restrictions which explicitly prohibit the event from occurring at any point within the 6-week period prior to the start of the event and there has been no explicit announcement yet regarding the settings for the specific date/s of the event; or
3. the lead artist/subject is required by the Ministry of Health to self-isolate over the period of the event and there is no available alternative artist.

Under Red settings, there are no capacity limits on outdoor events and physical distancing is not required. Outdoor events are unlikely to meet triggers 1 or 2 as they are not explicitly prohibited from occurring. Indoor events are limited to a maximum of 200 people (or the capacity determined by 1-metre physical distancing, whichever is lower). Events which are unable to take place as a result of the capacity limits for indoor events may be able to submit a claim under triggers 1 and 2.

Under Orange settings, there are no capacity limits for either indoor or outdoor events and physical distancing is not required. This means that most events will not be able to meet cancellation triggers 1 or 2 under the Orange setting as the events are not explicitly prohibited from occurring.

The most up-to-date information on physical distancing and attendance limit requirements for indoor and outdoor events can be found here:

COVID-19 Protection Framework: Events and gatherings guidelines(external link) — business.govt.nz

Making a claim

Cancelling or postponing events under an ETSP trigger

If you have to cancel or postpone your event as a result of an ETSP trigger, email Aon nz.eventsupport@aon.com and they will provide you with the necessary claim documentation. Claim processing may take up to 3 weeks, due to the amount of time required to review, and the number of claims being processed at the time.

Postponed and cancelled events

If you have to postpone and cancel your event as a result of an ETSP trigger for payment, you can claim once for postponement and once for cancellation.

Please note, if you postpone your event to a new date outside of the ETSP timeframe and then you have to cancel the postponed event, you will be able to claim any unrecoverable costs relating to postponement, but you will not be able to claim unrecoverable costs for cancellation. Whatever the scenario, the event must meet all ETSP eligibility criteria and be affected by an ETSP trigger payment to be able to make a claim.

Examples of unrecoverable costs (which apply to both postponement and cancellation) can be found on the general events page.

General events: Unrecoverable costs

Payment timeframes

We aim to pay claims within 20 working days of receiving all required information. However more complex claims may take longer to process.

Responsibility for paying suppliers and vendors

As the event organiser or planner applying for eligibility under the ETSP, you are responsible for the disbursement of any funds owing to suppliers that you receive through a claim. This forms a part of the ETSP Terms and Conditions.

Read the full terms and conditions

Auditing

Under the terms and conditions of the ETSP you may be audited or have your claim or payment reviewed by MBIE or its authorised representative. If any ineligible costs are identified during an audit or review process you may be required to repay any funding received illegitimately.

Read the full terms and conditions

Information for suppliers and vendors

Eligibility

Third party suppliers to an event are unable to directly apply to the Events Transition Support Payment (ETSP) scheme, and will need to reach out to the event organiser to check if their costs can be covered by the scheme.

If you are unsure if the event is eligible, please ask the event organiser. The ETSP will cover 90% of the costs that an event organiser is legally obliged to pay to a supplier.

Event organisers that are eligible to claim under the ETSP scheme, and subsequently claim unrecoverable costs related to third party suppliers, must pass these unrecoverable costs onto the relevant third party suppliers.

Read the full terms and conditions

Details of the payments made to event organisers will be published on the MBIE website.

More information