The relationship between success criteria and success factors in organisational event projects

•This paper identifies success criteria and factors of organisational event projects.•It explores the relationships between success criteria and success factors.•Success criteria include objective oriented and stakeholders oriented attributes.•Success factors contain task-oriented and relationship-oriented management areas.•Relationship-oriented management activities are found to influence project success.

Project success is a widely studied and discussed phenomenon of project management. Whilst certain success criteria and success factors are common across different project types, there are unique criteria and factors that apply only to specific projects. This paper presents the development and investigation of the attributes of the success criteria and factors of organisational event projects, as well as an analysis of the relationship between the criteria and factor areas. The study is based on a questionnaire survey of world and European championships. The findings of the study are of interest because they distinguish the success factors that represent relationship orientation and task focus. An analysis of the correlations suggests that relationship-oriented success factors, such as communication, co-operation and project leadership, play a crucial role in carrying out successful organisational event projects.