Fan Offers
The problem:
Fan Offers addresses the problem of the rising cost of watching live sport, with an estimated £3.1 billion spent annually by more than 1.4 million fans that attend live matches each week in the top five professional football divisions in England alone.
Our product:
Fan Offers is a platform that aims to save fans both time and money by aggregating relevant club news and information as well as brands that supply targeted offers for transport, accommodation, food, betting and other online purchases. By buying online through Fan Offers, a supporter also receives ‘Fan Points’ which may be exchanged for exclusive vouchers with sports fan’s favourite brands.
Our Vision For Fan Offers:
To become the ‘go to’ platform for fans that support a club, where they can check latest news updates, make arrangements to watch a match such as booking a train, hotel or a parking space, finding a pub that is showing the match or ordering a takeaway to watch it at home.
Our strategy is to work in partnership with professional clubs as they are financially incentivised to promote our platform to their fans and to encourage them to use it for their online purchases. In this way, clubs are able to provide additional value and convenience to their supporters at no cost to themselves and rather, this generates a new revenue stream for the club.
Fans Offers encourages supporters to spend money through our platform, even with the brands that already make purchases from in order to benefit themselves and the club that they love. By channeling their online spending through Fan Offers, they also support their club financially and gain rewards for themselves.
For our partner brands, they benefit from the brand association from the professional clubs at no cost, the direct contact with fans in the context of their favourite brand and the traffic of customers making purchases with them.
Fan Offers benefits each of the stakeholders involved in our model and our aim is to position our platform as an essential tool for the sports fan, an additional revenue stream for the clubs and a flagship advertising partner of the UK’s top brands.
August 2014 – Pitched and accepted on Accelerate at Judge Business School, Cambridge.
From August 2014 on: Refined value proposition and commissioned beta version of Fan Offers website. Pitched to Cambridge United for a pilot to test the value proposition. Acquired first group of online retailer brands including Hungry House, Papa Johns and Amazon, Red Letter Days and Hotels.com. Partnered with more brands including 02, Virgin Media, confused.com, eBay, Sky Bet, William Hill, Paddy Power, etyres, interflora, laterooms.com and lastminute.com.
March 2015 – Launched pilot phase with Cambridge United and gained 180 users already.
April 2015 – Following user feedback, commissioned design of the full version of the Fan Offers platform with significantly increased functionality. First transactions made through the site. Acquired flagship brands of Just Eat, theTrainline.com and Just Park.
We plan to use the funds from this round for the following:
* the development of an app version of the product
* to employ a marketing executive and account manager to service a larger portfolio of clubs
* to attend the industry trade show, Soccer Ex, in the Autumn to sign up clubs and raise awareness to decision makers
Once we have a fully operational product and built the portfolio of clubs promoting Fan Offers to their supporters (so that the business is cash generative), we then plan to open a further funding round in the Autumn at a higher valuation. The purpose of that larger round will be to scale the refined product to clubs and increase brand awareness.