Best Small Business Serving Football 2018

Beyond 90

Here at Beyond 90, we strive to enhance events through four divisions…

Atmosphere: our team create and produce exciting events
Engage: we provide staff to interact with fans, deliver activities and enhance fan experience
Fourteen: we help clubs, stadium operators and civic bodies design & develop fan spaces
Pix: a new digital division to provide fans, clubs and stadiums with innovative digital content

Over the course of the 2017-18 season, the team are proud to say that even though we are a small team, on average we produced 8 events a month for our clients, with a total receiving audience in the millions.

We are proud to work with clients on their events, of all sizes, reaching all ages and types of fan. Beyond 90 are forward thinking and innovative when it comes to the sports industry, constantly trying to break down barriers and provide interesting content ideas to the market.

With industry partnerships not only at the professional level, but in sports education as well, we are also keen to give experience to the next generation, employing event staff and business interns to inject fresh thinking into the way we work.

ESF Events

ESF 2018 is the UK’s biggest youth football festival, with over 1200 grassroots teams and 40,000 people participating

ESF 2018 is a series of professionally organised residential football festivals that bring boys’ and girls’ grassroots football teams of all abilities together for an exciting weekend of football and fun.

ESF offers grassroots teams in the U7-U15 age categories the opportunity to enjoy a safe, affordable and exciting team touring experience Whatever the result is on the pitch, we aim to provide positive sporting experiences for the children and their families, which they will remember with their teammates, friends and family members for years to come.

ESF 2018 then culminated with the ESF Grand Finale, our Champion of Champions event, which was staged at St George’s Park.

The challenge for 2018 was to improve accessibility to the events, to enable more youth football teams that ever before to participate in ESF. The target was for over 1250 grassroots youth football teams to participate.

Working with selected partners, including Butlin’s, Haven , St George’s Park, Mitre, Mercieca, Kick It Out and Grassroots Football UK, 2018 was a record breaking year, with 1268 teams participating. www.esf.co.uk

Goodform

Goodform is the UK’s leading sports marketing and insight agency, committed to helping sports organisations understand, engage and grow their audiences. As well as working with Tottenham Hotspur FC to help them transition Season Ticket Holders from Wembley to the new stadium, Goodform has been the EFL’s official e-CRM and Data Services partner for the past three years, instrumental in delivering comprehensive data and fan insight both centrally and across the EFL clubs. In the 2017/18 season, Goodform has delivered key research projects for that have informed key strategies for the EFL and its clubs.

These include the ‘Stand Up for Choice’ survey on safe standing, which received over 33,000 responses. This project demonstrated that 94% of fans want the option to choose between standing or seating while 69% said they would rather stand than sit during games. The findings received extensive media coverage and were used during the parliamentary debate on the issue on 25 June 2018.

Additional insight projects have informed the international marketing strategy for the EFL’s streaming product, iFollow, as well as delivering insight to all 72 EFL clubs on fan match-day experience – evidencing the extent to which Goodform’s work impacts across the industry.

ILG Business

The ILG Elite Sports Platform, is for sports teams who want to be at the forefront of performance analysis and communications technology. With unique and innovative features, the ILG Elite Sports App is a secure and easy way for coaches to improve sports performance and communicate with their athletes.

We can build you a bespoke app, tailor- made to your team. It would have your team’s logo and designed to fit your brief. You decide what features you’d like for your app.

We pride ourselves in the utmost security for the Elite Sports App. Here at ILG we understand how important it is to protect your data. We have extra security as we are partnered with IBM which allows us to control the MDM, so in the worst-case scenario if the device was lost or stolen we can remove the MDM and the app. Also, you are unable to forward anything from the app to other devices.

This is your app – you own it and decide how it will work best for you. Each of our apps are unique to the client and we aim to provide a customised service every time.

Oaks Consultancy

Here at Oaks, we help sports organisations raise their game Formed back in 2008 – with roots in the business of sport – our journey over the last twelve months has seen us work with organisations of all shapes and sizes in and around football. We are income generation specialists, supporting organisations in football and the wider sports sector to run more profitable and sustainable businesses using our strategy, business planning and fundraising tools: ultimately empowering socially-minded football organisations to expand their work, support more vulnerable people, and ultimately change lives across the UK.

We have supported the strategic and income generation ambitions of Premier League level community schemes including Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, Newcastle United Foundation, Leicester City Community Trust, Albion in the Community and West Ham United Foundation, and organisations throughout the EFL including Cardiff FC Community Trust, Blackpool FC Community Trust and Pompey in the Community, amongst several others. Last season we successfully secured over £5m of new capital and revenue income for these organisations from the likes of Sport England, Comic Relief, Children In Need and various other funders: enabling these organisations to reach vulnerable people other agencies struggle to support and deliver incredibly valuable social impact.

The Sporting Memories Foundation

The Sporting Memories Foundation is the World’s 1st Charity dedicated to Football and Sports Reminiscence & Physical Activities, helping tackle three of the largest issues facing an ageing population; Dementia, Depression & Loneliness. As the charitable arm of the not for profit Sporting Memories Network, Sporting Memories is an innovative approach to supporting some of the most vulnerable in society. 5 million people over 75 live alone in the UK. 850,000 live with dementia. 60% of older people in care have depression yet over 80% receive no treatment for it.

Led by Co-founders Tony Jameson-Allen and Chris Wilkins the organisation has 15 WTE staff posts working across the UK. In 2017/18 we worked with over 300 partner organisations, many of which were football clubs or their community foundations, training over 250 staff and volunteers to support the 110 free, weekly sporting memories groups that have delivered over 57,600 individual attendances by former players and older fans.

Having worked with BBC Sport on the groundbreaking documentary, Alan Shearer; Football, Dementia and Me, The Foundation produced a guide for the PFA for former players diagnosed with dementia. Find out more at www.sportingmemoriesnetwork.com

WePlay

WePlay was started with a single mission in mind – to disrupt an archaic sports marketing landscape and to help our partners to effectively engage sports fans and generate measured, incremental revenues from their marketing activity.

After winning Agency of the Year at the FBA’s in 2017, WePlay have gone from strength to strength, growing revenues by 59% and our staff base by 63%. We have also attracted an amazing line-up of new client partners, including the likes of LaLiga, Ligue de Football Professionnel, ESPN, FIBA, Melbourne FC, PRO14 Rugby, PGA European Tour, Ryder Cup, Turkish Airlines Euroleague and more.

The last year also saw WePlay deliver over £24m in direct commercial revenues for our client partners from our array of digital sports marketing efforts.

Zeelo

Zeelo was founded in 2017 by young entrepreneurs Barney Williams (26) and Sam Ryan (25) to reinvent the way fans travel to matches. The business was founded after experiencing the mele of fans traveling to Twickenham on an international match day.

They spotted a clear gap in the market to make travel simple and convenient using data to understand where large numbers of fans were traveling from and to match that demand with executive, direct coach routes.

Zeelo uses it’s unique AI powered algorithm to connect like minded fans with direct, hassle free and fun shared coach services based on fan demand. Originally launched in February 2017, Zeelo has grown from 0 to 3000 regular sports fans traveling each month. We have partnerships with 12 major football and rugby clubs including Man City FC, Swansea City, Cardiff City, Aston Villa and also run unofficial services for West Ham and Tottenham fans.

With Zeelo, fans are 65% more likely to go to more games, spend £12 more at the ground and service level ratings remain at over 9/10 across all journeys.

Zeelo has recently been backed by Jaguar Land Rover and plans to expand across the UK and internationally in 2018/19.