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Showtime: Patrick Roberge’s events- production business was seeded in the fertile ground of Expo 86 and has followed the big-top circus of Olympic Games and other global entertainment spectacles ever since
Mission: To expand Patrick Roberge Productions Inc. by creating more proprietary content that he can launch in multiple cities Assets: Deep inventories of customer loyalty and experience organizing entertainment at four Olympiads and other high-profile events Yield: An eight-employee company that generates $2 million annually
 By Glen Korstrom Patrick Roberge is happy that the global TV audience for his 2010 Paralympic Games opening and closing ceremonies will be a fraction of what it will be for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games ceremonies. The event producer knows Olympic ceremonies well. He was the stage manager at Calgary’s Winter Olympic Games in 1988. Roberge produced events at the B.C/Canada pavilion at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and he was part of the team that stage-managed (but did not create) the controversial Canadian portion of the closing ceremonies at Torino’s 2006 Winter Olympic Games. So why didn’t the Vancouver-born Roberge bid on the contract to produce the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2010 Olympic Games, which have a $40 million budget and will be in his hometown? “We would have had to shut down all of our other operations to work on the Olympic ceremonies,” Roberge said. “We did not want to abandon our regular bread-and-butter clients just because the Olympics are here, because we want them to be there when the Olympics are over.” He sits back in a chair at his Patrick Roberge Productions Inc. office in space that he rents at the Pacific National Exhibition’s administration building. A far wall has a large Mickey Mouse drawing and photos of his two children. Married to Sandra, Roberge has two daughters aged six and two years old. He stressed that keeping long-term clients, such as the PNE, is vital for his eight-employee company if it’s to continue generating $2 million in annual revenue. Roberge has been the PNE’s creative director for the past 13 years. Next summer, when the PNE turns 100 years old, Roberge plans to produce the biggest fair in PNE history. There’s a second reason why he prefers to produce the Paralympic Games’ ceremonies, which have a combined budget of $4.2 million, instead of its big brother Olympics. Roberge doesn’t want to risk facing the wrath directed at Montreal-based Mark Godden, who produced the Canadian component of the Torino closing ceremonies. Critics, including Premier Gordon Campbell, lambasted that show for containing stereotypes, such as a snowmobiling voyageur and an ice fisherman, that don’t reflect British Columbia. “The good news is that nobody cares about the Paralympic Games, and the bad news is that nobody cares about the Paralympic Games,” Roberge joked. “David Atkins is producing the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2010 Games. He has hundreds of people working for him. The nice thing is that, good or bad, he gets to go home to Australia. I have to stay here in our community. It’s a big risk [to produce an Olympic Games opening or closing ceremony].” Roberge’s biggest business lesson for aspiring event organizers is that when a major event like the Olympics comes to town, it’s better to look for revenue-generating opportunities peripheral to the 17-day extravaganza rather than focus exclusively on the event itself. The key, he said, is to engage with organizers early. Roberge won contracts that pre-date the July 2, 2003, announcement of Vancouver’s successful bid to host the 2010 Olympic Games. He organized entertainment at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre for International Olympic Committee (IOC) representatives who were evaluating Vancouver in 2002. He then organized the big party at General Motors Place, where a near-capacity crowd watched a live feed of IOC president Jacques Rogge announcing in Prague, Czech Republic, that Vancouver had won the bid. “That was nerve-wracking,” Roberge said. “What were we going to do if they said ‘No?’ GM Place was either going to be the coolest place to be or the worst place to be.” Since then, his Olympic involvement has included organizing entertainment and events such as: •the April 23, 2005, launch of the Games’ Inukshuk emblem; •the November 27, 2007, unveiling of mascots Quatchi, Sumi and Miga; and •Rogge’s general assembly a few days before the Olympics start February 12. He is also producing Games-time entertainment at the B.C. headquarters for the Games at Robson Square. Roberge’s company has a broad range of projects and clients, but, given his Olympic involvement, he’s trying to capitalize on his sports connection with Creative Sport Productions Inc., which he launched in 2006. “It’s the same staff, same everything,” Roberge said. “We just built a sister company primarily to make people pay attention to the fact that we do sports entertainment.” Why not simply rebrand PRP Inc.? “We have a lot of customer loyalty to me and my company. We didn’t want to lose that over the years. We also wanted to really let people know that our company is incredibly diverse.” Clients, such as VANOC Paralympic Games director Dena Coward, praised Roberge’s abilities. She said that, because of his longstanding involvement with VANOC, the executives who evaluated his proposal to produce the Paralympic ceremonies were confident that he would deliver. She would not reveal which companies he beat in his bid for the job, but said global competition was stiff. “He’s a pleasure to work with,” Coward said. After graduating from Vancouver’s Magee high school, Roberge, who’s now 45, cut his teeth in the stage-managing and event-organizing business at Vancouver’s Expo 86 world’s fair. “Expo 86 was my university education,” Roberge said. “I worked in the entertainment department [on contract for the fair itself] with 400 people from around the world. I was co-ordinating and managing 3,000 performing groups.” When that gig ended, Roberge joined what he calls the “gypsy circuit.” After Calgary’s 1988 Olympics, the single and mobile Roberge organized the opening and closing ceremonies for Saskatoon’s 1989 Canada Winter Games. He then followed projects to Ohio, Florida and Washington state before returning home to start a family and establish roots. His goal is to produce more proprietary events such as the Halloween-themed Great Big Boo, which he created for the PNE. He’s negotiating with people in U.S. and Asia who might want to bring the Great Big Boo to their cities. “I’ve spent most of my career building other people’s intellectual property. In the next five years, we’re going to be less reliant on – even though we love them – our clients and more reliant on things that we own outright.” •
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This article from Business in Vancouver December 15-21, 2009; issue 1051 Photograph: Dominic Schaefer |
