With 10 years' experience working in brand and content for some of the UK's biggest hospitality brands under her belt, Bella leads marketing for Togather's Live events. Owning the go-to-market strategy for festivals, stadia and event partnerships. Recent work includes the Palate Shift trend report and the concepts behind a number of Togather's biggest tender pitches.
Most sports have a core fanbase, who will come to as many matches, races or games as they can. Beyond that though, there are always more casual fans or newcomers that you should be looking to engage - and with Oracle’s Fan Experience report noting that 67% of fans do not currently own a season ticket or membership plan for an individual team, that potential audience is huge.
Your space, and your F&B offering, needs to work for families, women, young fans, newcomers, and fanatics.
In recent years, we’ve seen sporting organisations work to invite new fans into the fandom by hosting fanzones at neutral venues, sometimes miles away from the action. For a global event like the Olympics or World Cup, central London fanzones are an ideal solution to bring fans closer to their team. For more niche sports or those with hard-to-buy tickets, fanzones offer a lower-cost entry point for fans to interact with their brand.
With no actual sporting action going on, the F&B offering at these types of fanzones becomes crucial to the overall experience. Togather have worked with sporting organisations to select street food traders and bar operators that reflect each individual brand, whether that’s classic American ballpark food or an international lineup reflecting the global reach of the Olympic Games.
Going a step further with themed dishes and exclusive drinks can really help tie an attendee’s experience to the brand, sport or player in question, building an emotional connection that goes beyond just buying a burger.
Trafalgar Square has become a popular spot for organisations and sporting brands to host in-person experiences and screenings of major events, with Ride London, MLB London and McLaren Racing all hosting major events in recent years. These kinds of experiences are especially appreciated by families or young professionals, who may have yet to be convinced to spend their disposable income on a ticket.
The same applies in-venue. Ensuring that families have what they need is vital to ensuring that they come back - and that those young visitors grow up to become diehard fans. LIV Golf, well known for being something of a party event, has introduced “family holes” - spaces where kids can play and parents can relax, with tailored food offerings, and many stadiums offer family meal deals that ensure that families can be fed at a reasonable cost.
Considering every fan when you plan your fanzone F&B offering, whether it’s in-venue or at an activation, can be a gateway to turning new faces and casual fans into season ticket holders.
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