Events made less commercial with French and Saunders' backing (5)
I believe the answer is:
meets
'events' is the definition.
(meet is a kind of event)
'less commercial with french and saunders' backing' is the wordplay.
'less commercial' becomes 'me' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'french and' becomes 'et' ('and' in French).
'backing' suggests the final letters.
The final letter of 'saunders' is 's'.
'me'+'et'+'s'='MEETS'
'made' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for meets that I've seen before include "Effectively copes with" , "Comes across" , "Comes into contact with" , "Hunts" , "Comes into the presence of" .)