Mipcom consolidates Palais offering

Cannes’ Palais des Festivals

Mipcom organiser Reed Midem is making a raft of changes to the event, integrating it with MipJunior and reprofiling the available exhibition space offering, including closing ‘The Bunker’ for 2021.

Lucy Smith

Lucy Smith, director of Mipcom and MipTV for Reed Midem, told C21: “What we’ve made clear from the beginning is that we want to support the industry to get back together for an in-person event in Cannes in October. But in order to make that happen we’ve decided to make some changes.

“There are 150 exhibiting companies signed up and delegates registering every day, so we do believe that together we can make it happen. But this is a challenging climate, and we need to ensure the space and offering is profiled correctly to make the best of it.”

Those changes are mainly focused on the exhibition space layout and on bringing MipJunior, normally a standalone two-day event running over the weekend prior to Mipcom at the JW Marriott hotel, into the four-day Mipcom event.

The heart of the exhibition will be in Riviera 7 and the upper floors of the Palais des Festivals, which are “more airy,” with the -1 level of the Palais, affectionately known as The Bunker, closed for this year’s event.

“This gives us the opportunity to transform the Riviera 8 Hall, (the big round hall) into a multi-purpose event and networking area,” said Smith.

Plans to use the Marriott beach space for an outdoor networking space throughout Mipcom evaporated with the cancellation of MipJunior at the venue, a decision that was made this week.

There will be one single registration process across the combined events.

“We do understand that some clients put plans in place several months ago, and they will now have to alter them. So we are trying to provide the flexibility to do that,” added Smith. “Exhibitors will have the opportunity to change the size of their stand and also offer stand pack decorations to make it easier.”

With rules and regulations changing regularly, Smith believes things will settle down within the next few months to provide more certainty, confirming that all participants will need to be double-jabbed or provide a negative PCR test taken within the previous 48 hours to get in.

“We do expect the rapid roll-out of the vaccination programme around the world to move things forward,” she said.

Mipcom is planning a full conference programme alongside the exhibition and a range of dedicated networking spaces throughout the Palais.

Cannes Series is planned to run alongside the event.