As seen on TV: top BBC shows go on the road

Melanie Rickey and Paul Rodgers report on the corporation's plan to cash in with live spectaculars

The BBC will turn Match of the Day and Tomorrow's World into live events next year when it launches a series of nine programme-linked extravaganzas on the back of viewers' insatiable appetite for TV spin-offs.

The corporation, which has already discovered the profitable opportunities to be had from programme- linked magazines, has run The Clothes Show Live with enormous success for eight years. Now a whole series of programmes are being turned into live events bringing in millions of pounds of revenue.

Plans for Match of the Day Live are already advanced. It will be held on April 6-9 and, like The Clothes Show Live, at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. Fans will be able to watch celebrities, former England stars, and youth teams compete on a five-a-side pitch, as well as viewing their favourite bits of football history in a specially constructed theatre. And in the Trophy Room supporters can touch football's 'Holy Grails'. The show, which has won backing from the Football League, will also give fans a chance to meet players and commentators.

Peter Osborne, the Managing Director of BBC Haymarket Exhibitions, the company set up six years ago specifically to 'brand extend' BBC productions like The Clothes Show, said yesterday that he was on to a winning formula. "Quite simply," he said, "the public want to walk inside their TV set, join in and do things they have never done before".

Yesterday up to 50,000 fashion devotees visited The Clothes Show Live at the NEC, and by the time the week-long event closes on Wednesday night it will have attracted nearly 250,000 people, most of them girls aged between 16 and 25, who will spend about pounds 3,000 a minute on clothes, make- overs, haircuts and beauty products. That adds up to pounds 8 million over six days, making it the most lucrative of the BBC's spin-off shows.

The success of The Clothes Show Live taught the BBC a valuable marketing lesson. It proved that it was possible to add a third dimension to TV's success after programmes and spin-off magazines. For those attending such events there is the chance to meet the presenters and get expert advice

Other television shows which have developed the live concept are Top Gear Live, staged for the first time this year at Silverstone motor-racing circuit, and Gardeners' World Live which offers green-fingered enthusiasts the opportunity to take part in Radio Four's Gardeners Question Time and stroll around inspirational gardens.

Top Gear Live attracted 43,500 visitors. It allowed drivers a spin around the famous track, and a chance to meet top racing drivers and celebrities.

Revenue from the shows are ploughed back into BBC Haymarket Exhibitions, the joint venture company formed by the corporation's enterprise arm, BBC Worldwide, and Haymarket Exhibitions, a subsidiary of the Haymarket publishing empire, founded by the deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine. Half the profits from the live con- sumer shows are returned to the BBC whose BBC Worldwide subsidiary made pounds 77 million last year