Leisure & Events Management

4-year professional bachelor’s programme | English-taught

Bachelor
4 years
Dutch
English

The stage is yours!

As a manager or an entrepreneur in the leisure sector, it is up to you to give people an experience that enriches their lives. In this study programme you will learn how to create memorable experiences.

Quality of life is becoming increasingly important in the way we spend our leisure time. You will learn how to put this to use. After graduating, you will be able to think up and organise meaningful and succesfull leisure products. You will learn it all in practice and start building your network straight away.

Why choose BUas?

  • A great international network for placements and exchanges
  • Working on real-life assignments, coaching by experienced lecturers
  • BUas is one of the seven World Leisure Centres of Excellence

Zoom in on Leisure & Event Management

Programme content

Study trips and work placements

Student city Breda

'Visiting events is a way of escaping the ordinary life and the daily routine.'

Isabella, student Social Innovation specialisation.

Campus favourites

Smile,
you're on stage!

 

Introduction event

The right choice?

Do you want to know if the professional bachelor's programme Leisure & Events Management in Breda is the right choice for you?

Within five minutes you will find out if this bachelor's programme is the right fit for you!


Take the quiz

Study overview of this professional bachelor's programme

Learning community

Quality of life is becoming increasingly important in the way we spend our spare time. In the bachelor of Leisure & Events Management you will learn how to create memorable experiences.

The programme is delivered thematically. Students operate in an international learning community, which involves a mix of Dutch and non-Dutch (international) students in one classroom. The regular programme takes four years, but there is a possibility to do a 3-year programme.

The Leisure & Events Management programme is also offered in Dutch as Leisure & Events Management. Breda University of Applied Sciences also offers a three-year academic programme in Leisure, Bachelor of Science Leisure Studies.

Curriculum

 

Year 1

In year 1 (propaedeutic year), you will gain knowledge about the Leisure & Events profession through what we refer to as 'challenges'. You will complete a total of nine challenges in the first year. During the first challenge, you will get to know fellow students, for example, which helps you feel at home in school. At the beginning of the year, you will start with basic knowledge, but as the year progresses, the level of knowledge will increase.  

The academic year always consists of two semesters. At the end of a semester, your skills are tested with an individual assessment. You will be assessed on your theoretical, research, professional and societal skills. In addition to the challenges, you will take a number of courses during the year, such as English and Financial Management.

Year 1 is all about discovering whether this study programme is a fit for you – and whether you are a fit for the programme. A wonderful journey of discovery, which we would like to undertake together with you. 
 

Year 2

In year 2, you choose the broad Leisure & Events Management programme or join one of six specialisations. Whichever direction you choose, you will learn a lot about the theory and practice of the leisure industry. You will work on real life assignments for the field, receive guest lectures and regularly visit companies. 

It's also possible to switch to the three-year academic bachelor's programme Bacheor of Science Leisure Studies, after passing your propaedeutic year. 

Year 3

In the second or third year (depending on your study direction) you will do a placement. Once in a while you come back to school to exchange experiences and learn from each other. You will learn from a professional in the field and support them in daily activities. You will also work on assignments such as the development of a sponsorship plan for a sports event, the organisation of an event, target group analysis for the cultural sector or an amusement park, concept and product development or do a policy analysis. You can do your placement in the Netherlands or abroad. Breda University of Applied Sciences has a large international network and will help you find the right placement.

Year 4

In the first half of the fourth year, students work on one large-scale project or a variety of smaller projects commissioned by the leisure industry within the scope of their minor track. You may, for instance, organise a festival, write policy plans or investigate the marketing activities of a sports club. The second half of the fourth year is reserved for your individual graduation assignment. At the request of an organisation from the industry, you will conduct research in your specialist area, give advice and make an implementation plan for this. 

Pre-master's programmes

BUas offers its own pre-master's programmes:

  • Pre-master Leisure and Tourism Studies If you would like to study Leisure and Tourism in greater depth, our Leisure and Tourism Studies pre-master’s track might be just what you are looking for. You will start this pre-master’s track after your professional bachelor’s degree. The track lasts one year, after which you can move on to the academic master’s programme of Leisure and Tourism Studies at Breda University of Applied Sciences (one year). So, if you did a three-year (short) bachelor’s degree, you can obtain your academic master’s degree in only five years’ time in total!
  • Strategic Business Management and Marketing (SBM). If your academic results are good, you will be offered the opportunity of attending this pre-master’s programme in your fourth year. Successful completion of this track will give you direct access, after Breda University of Applied Sciences, to various Master of Science programmes in business-related studies in management and marketing at several partner universities. A few examples are the universities of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In this way, it will be possible for you to earn an academic master's degree within five years' time or, after having completed an accelerated three-year track, even within four years' time.

After your fourth year, you can also opt for a pre-master’s programme of a Dutch research university to gain direct access to their master’s programmes.  

Study load and coaching

The average study load for this programme amounts to approximately 40 hours a week, during 40 weeks. How many hours a week you will actually spend studying depends greatly on the person and differs per week. You may have different deadlines and tests at different moments, so good planning skills will be critical to your success.

 

Areas of specialisation

After your propaedeutic phase, you can choose to continue with the regular study programme of Leisure & Events Management, or you can opt for one of the specialisation areas. The specialisation areas are offered in English and in Dutch. Within the Dutch-taught variant, you will study a substantial part of the programme in Dutch, such as certain meetings and sessions, and creating documents and products. The literature and theory lectures may still be offered in English though. This will prepare you for a career in the Netherlands, but with the capacity of maintaining relations and cooperating with the international market. 

Leisure & Events Management (regular study programme)

At Leisure & Events Management, we train you to become the future leisure manager with a broad perspective on the industry and a modern vision of society. As society and the leisure sector are constantly evolving, it is essential to stay updated on the latest trends and developments. In recent years, we have witnessed the growing importance of topics such as sustainability, well-being, and corporate social responsibility, in which the leisure sector plays a crucial role. 

Through various projects, including marketing, you will work on developing your professional competencies. You will learn how to create leisure concepts and involve various stakeholders in solving challenges together. This is done in a deliberate and future-oriented manner, ensuring that the planet is not harmed and that the well-being of people is enhanced.

Throughout the program, you will get acquainted with inspiring organizations in the leisure sector through field trips, guest lectures, study trips, and collaborations with external clients. We offer a wide range of opportunities, allowing you to explore which subsector or role best aligns with your ambitions and talents.

Attractions & Theme Parks Management

Attractions and theme parks are continuously innovating. For instance, attraction parks are evolving into complete holiday resorts offering accommodation and entertainment at the same time. Attractions are adding digital experiences, zoos are expanding to include more facilities (e.g. climbing parks), shopping centres nowadays often have additional attractions such as aquariums or simulators, and museums and science centres are adding entertainment and experiential elements to their cultural and educational offerings.

If you choose this area of specialisation, you will gain insight into marketing, finance, staff planning, hospitality and security and safety. You will also have the opportunity to do a work placement at leading parks such as Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Europa-Park in Germany and Efteling.

This English-taught specialisation area is also offered to students of the Tourism Management and International Facility Management programmes. 

More information on this study track can be found on the website Discover Attractions and Theme Parks Management and in the video below.

Sports & Esports

Sports and esports play a crucial role in today’s society. They socially connect people, provide identity, are key to health, vitality and personal development. In addition, these sectors are major contributors to the leisure industry and therefore play a huge economic role.

Everybody is familiar with the sports sector which builds upon a huge history and tradition. However, esports is catching up quickly to become the fastest growing leisure sector in terms of participants, fans and economic value. Not only with sports-themed games such as FIFA or Formula 1, but also industry-leading games such as League of Legends, Fortnite or Counterstrike. Huge numbers of participants are involved in gaming and from a financial perspective the sector is larger than, for example, Netflix and all cinemas together.

At BUas we focus on the experience of sports & esports, not so much from the participant’s perspective (practising or assisting in (e)sports, professionally or otherwise), but more from the perspective of spectators and fans. Additionally, you will always study both sectors in this specialisation. Rather than focusing on one specific game or sport, the programme looks primarily at what these industries and (e)sports can learn from each other.

You will discover how to fuse insights from both industries and how to create new impactful and meaningful experiences for fans and enthusiasts. Regarding your professional career, this specialisation prepares you for work in various organisations in both sectors. For example, helping sports and esports organisations with creating the best possible and most innovative sports and esports experiences, but also supporting brands using sports and esports for branding and marketing purposes.

In Sports & Esports, we collaborate with real clients in the sports and esports industries. And for esports projects, we even have our own gaming facility where we can make use of all gaming and livestream equipment. This game facility can also be used for leisure to make friends or compete against other students.

With the specialisation, we also go on study trips to explore sports and esports beyond the borders of the Netherlands. We visit a city and various sports and esports organisations. Of course, we also occasionally engage in sports or gaming activities for fun with and against each other.

Live Music & Dance Events

Live Music and Dance Events is a specialisation that focuses on live music and dance events (music festivals, pop venues, clubs) at the heart of the leisure industry. The central theme of this specialisation is creating and organising sustainable events in the live music and dance industry with social and economic impact.

Within the Live Music and Dance Events specialisation you will be trained to set to work as a concept/programme developer, marketeer, manager or production leader at a music festival or pop venue. A professional field that is constantly changing due to impacts of social trends such as sustainability, big data, or crowd safety. You will be working in a flexible world in which operating independently as well as in networks and an ability to handle peak periods are key. 

Live Music and Dance Events is a specialisation for students who are flexible, have a great passion for music events (in whatever form), and have the ambition to work together and discover the industry, but also have a vision of the future of the industry. All this is offered in a free programme structure in which personal development is essential.

Social Innovation

Working towards solutions with people, not just for them. That is the power of Social Innovation. You will think up creative solutions to social issues together with others. Initiatives in the field of social innovation are connected to major challenges in society addressing themes such as sustainability, care, labour, equality, human rights.
There are two ways of looking at it:

  1. Within the leisure industry you will try to improve the way in which we cope with these challenges.
    Example: Festival Digital has chosen to sell only vegetarian food.
  2. Leisure time can be spent on contributing to these social challenges.
    Example: Trashfishing is a leisure activity during which citizens collect waste in their leisure time.

Within the Social Innovation specialisation area, you will set to work on concrete issues from business practice. You will do so inside and outside of the field of leisure, such as sports, theatres, museums, festivals and for care institutions, retail organisations or government autohoroties. You will mostly work at the interface of several sectors. The knowledge acquired in your courses can be used to create a broad support base among the people involved, citizens, residents and organisations. From their own background, everybody brings along knowledge and skills that contribute to finding useful solutions and strengthening a sense of community.

What is special about this specialisation is that you do not follow a fixed curriculum. You shape your own learning process by choosing certain topics and projects. Each academic year, you will work on about eight 'real life' projects, using methods from the fields of experience, community, facility and process design. In addition, you will work in self-selected multidisciplinary teams. So you work together with students from other years and other programs.

Events for Business

Events for Business is a specialisation in which events are used as a means to achieve business goals, such as branding, marketing communication, team building or relationship building.  Events have proven to be a powerful tool to add emotional value to a message you want to communicate. 

Major event venues or exhibition and conference centres , such as RAI Amsterdam, Jaarbeurs Utrecht and Ahoy Rotterdam have plenty of facilities for organising business conferences and corporate exhibitions. In addition, many companies from outside the leisure sector often organise events to promote new brands or launch new products. Just think of Coca-Cola, Apple or car makes. In this specialisation you will learn more about event venues, the corporate events market, and how the international events sector is developing. 

You will be trained to become part of a new generation of innovative and strategic events professionals, capable of creating (hybrid) events or series of events to give meaning to organisations, cities, regions or countries. This can be as a project manager, marketer, brand (city) manager, concept designer, data analyst or marketing and communication specialist. Are you creative, empathetic, have a hands-on mentality, good social qualities and the drive to discover the business market together with fellow students and graduates? Then this specialisation is just your thing!

.

Urban Life & Placemaking

This specialisation focuses on leisure taking place in cities and all the aspects playing a role there - looking from a social, economic and spatial perspective, in many different situations. 

This is as broad as the transformation of an old industrial site into a new vibrant cultural area, a cultural festival which links to the identity of a city and daily leisure in neighbourhoods in skateboard parks, community centres or small theatres. 

The city offers a dynamic context for leisure activities in all kinds of areas - such as culture, sports, events and hospitality. During your study, you will be guided in finding your topics of interests, work with projects for real clients and on top of that you even get the chance to live in a city abroad for 5 months! 

In this specialisation we pay attention to subjects such as concepting, place branding, community development and vision. Stakeholder engagement, gentrification, city interventions, well-being of residents and a sense of place are key words within Urban Life & Placemaking.

 

Three-year and tailor-made tracks

The regular track of this programme takes four years. However, with a appropriate pre-education a three-year track is available.

  • The 3-year track for students who already have a vwo diploma, a ‘Hochschulreifezeugnis’ (Abitur) or a comparable pre-university education
  • For Dutch students only: The tailor-made track for havo graduates: you will start your course of study at De Rooi Pannen (mbo level) in Dutch and you will proceed to Breda University of Applied Sciences in year 2 of the regular 4-year programme.
3-year track

With a propaedeutic certificate
Do you have a propaedeutic certificate from a hbo (professional) or wo (academic) degree programme in the domain of leisure, tourism or hospitality and did you obtain this certificate within one year? If so, you qualify for the three-year track. If you have a propaedeutic certificate in higher economic education, there are additional admission requirements. These are passing the progress test and demonstrable knowledge of the English language at B2/C1 level. All other students do not qualify for admission.  

Do you comply with these conditions or do you want to know more? Just contact Iskander Khairoutdinov via khairoutdinov.i@buas.nl.

With a hbo (professional) bachelor’s degree  
Are you in possession of an hbo degree? If so, you may qualify for completing the Leisure & Events Management in a shortened programme, depending on your previous education and wishes. Please submit a request to the board of examiners via LEMboardofexaminers@buas.nl.

Have you already obtained a degree in higher education? Then you will have to take into account the payment of institutional tuition fees. These amount to €12.500 per year.

The track

Do you comply with the conditions? Then you may skip the general propaedeutic year and start straight away in the second year of study, in one of our specialisations or in the regular Leisure & Events Management programme. The following areas of specialisation are available for you to choose from:  

  • Attractions & Theme Parks Management
  • Sports & Esports
  • Live Music & Dance Events
  • Social Innovation
  • Events for Business
  • Urban Life & Placemaking

A matching procedure applies to all these specialisations. Please take into account that this matching procedure will take place in mid-April or May. On this website you will find more detailed information about the areas of specialisation and the regular programme.  

Practical experience
Whether you opt for the regular Leisure & Events Management programme or for a specialisation, you will always work on assignments for the Leisure & Events industry. These could be projects you work on together with fellow students, but you will also do a placement at a company or organisation, or go on industry visits for a peek behind the scenes. In addition, there are possibilities to do an exchange abroad.   

Minor and graduation 
In your final year, you will choose a minor in which you will further explore a specific theme, such as esports or crowd management. You will also complete an individual graduation project.  

How to apply
You can apply via Studielink. Please note: always choose ‘year 2 / main phase’. Then make a choice from the specialisations and email this to Iskander Khairoutdinov: khairoutdinov.i@buas.nl.

Before 1 August, send a certified copy of your propaedeutic certificate or hbo/wo degree, or a statement from your current school describing that you have already obtained your propaedeutic certificate or hbo/wo degree, but will not receive it until later (no later than 30 September).  
 

Special tailor-made track for havo graduates

You have just earned your havo diploma, would really like to work in the Leisure & Events industry, but are not sure about the step from havo to hbo. Either you fear this step is a little too big, or you are inadmissible to Breda University of Applied Sciences. Breda University of Applied Sciences, in cooperation with De Rooi Pannen, offers the perfect alternative in the form of the tailor-made study track. You will start your course of study with two years at the programme 'Medewerker Evenementenorganisatie' at De Rooi Pannen (mbo level) in Tilburg. You conclude your studies with an mbo diploma level 4. Next, you will proceed to this Breda University of Applied Sciences’ degree programme where you can earn your bachelor’s degree in three years.

More information

If you have any questions left on this tailor-made programme after watching the Dutch video below, please send an email to Richard van Bragt (bragt.r@buas.nl), coordinator at Breda University of Applied Sciences, or Bas Horsten (b.horsten@derooipannen.nl), coordinator at De Rooi Pannen. You can also read more on the website of De Rooi Pannen (in Dutch).

 

Exchange programmes

In the third academic year, many of the Leisure & Events Management students take the opportunity of doing a part of their course at a university abroad. An exchange period lasts approximately 20 weeks. Possible destinations are: Spain, China, Italy, France, Ireland, Arizona (USA), Finland and Portugal.

For her exchange, Manon went to an international school in La Rochelle, France.

Manon Huls in La Rochelle

“During my exchange, I met a group of international students from all different nationalities. This group made me understand the different norms and values of other cultures. Although we had different views and opinions, we had a shared goal to enjoy the exchange and together had one of the most memorable experiences of our lives.” 

Entrepreneurship

At BUas you are trained to become an entrepreneurial professional. In all the professional bachelor’s programmes, you are given the opportunity to develop your entrepreneurial skills. Alongside your studies, you can join BUas Startup Support, BUSS. BUSS organises (networking) events and connects student startup entrepreneurs, there is even the possibility to apply for guidance from your own startup coach.

You can also graduate within BUas with your own company! Every academy offers this opportunity, though a selection process may apply. Maybe, by that time, you already have a small profitable business or have plans to start one? BUas Startup Support can help you.

More information on how to start your own business.

Eye-catchers

Admission

To be admitted to this degree programme, you need a havo or vwo diploma with an appropriate profile, or an equivalent of these Dutch diplomas. You can also be admitted with a level-4 mbo diploma. 

  • Check out the complete admission requirements and the possibilities if you do not meet the requirements
  • Additional requirements have been set for the 3-year track.

Application

If you meet the admission requirements, you are invited to apply for this programme. Please check out the application procedure

Study costs

In the academic year 2024-2025 the statutory tuition fee for bachelor's programmes is €2,530. In addition to the tuition fee, you will need to take into account additional costs for participation in the introduction week and the purchase of study materials such as textbooks and excursions. Read more about study costs.

Isabella Forchini - Leisure & Event Management

Follow your true passion

If you work with passion and love, the rest will follow and you’ll find yourself having the job of your dreams. In my first year, I really enjoyed Production and Business Innovation because it’s creative and practical at the same time. I love the concept development part; it is very challenging but also rewarding once you turn the final idea into reality.

Follow Your Road to BUas

Isabella

Graduate | Specialisation: Social Innovation

After your bachelor

Quality of life is becoming increasingly important in the way we spend our spare time. As a leisure manager, you may take up a career in theatres, music labels, sports centres or city marketing. Career examples are: concept developer, operations manager at a theme park, policy advisor.

Like to know more? After your bachelor.