Don't Forget Your Tickets
Don' Forget Your Tickets is a podcast devoted to the unsung heroes of the spectator sports and events industries, the Ticketing Managers. We explore who they are, their well-guarded industry secrets, and how they entered the field. Beyond that, we delve into a broader ticketing realm, inviting experts from various fields to share their insights and stories. Our primary aim is to add value and highlight deserving individuals.
(The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com)
Don't Forget Your Tickets
Innovation and Fan Engagement: Inside Club Brugge's Digital Evolution with Thomas Rypens
What happens when sports collide with innovation? Join us for an insightful conversation with Thomas Rypens, Direct-to-Consumer Director at Club Brugge, as he shares how the club is revolutionising fan experiences and boosting revenue through digital strategies. Learn how the integration of ticketing and merchandising, backed by a powerful data ecosystem, is transforming fan engagement.
Thomas sheds light on Club Brugge's digital-first approach, especially their use of platforms like Roblox to engage younger audiences with innovative strategies like launching the Away shirt in the metaverse. He also discusses the balance between traditional sports marketing and modern digital platforms, illustrating how research and fan feedback shape their bold moves.
We also explore the importance of cross-department collaboration at Club Brugge, where ticketing, merchandising, and fan services work together to create a seamless fan experience, driving both engagement and profitability. Tune in to "Don’t Forget Your Tickets" to discover how Club Brugge is leading the way in sports and digital engagement.
Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg. The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com
What does it take to create a seamless fan experience? How do you balance fan engagement with commercial success? This is what we'll find out in today's episode of Don't Forget your Tickets, where our guest is Thomas Riefens, director Consumer Director at Club Riche. From integrating ticketing and merchandising to use data to drive decision, thomas shares how his team is transforming fan journeys while maximizing revenue. Stay tuned for insights that could change the way you think about fan engagement and innovation. Hello and welcome to Don't Forget your Tickets, previously known as ticketingpodcastcom and also known as the podcast, where experts within the ticketing space share their stories and insights.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is an exciting one. We will be discussing customer experience with the head of internal customer experience team of Club Bridge I hope I said it right Consisting of marketing professionals, digital strategists and data analysts. So please welcome, thomas Ripens. Direct to consumer director at Club Bridge. It's great to have you on the show, thomas, thank you. Thank you for having me. What a great intro. So I mean direct-to-consumer director. That is a super interesting title. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think it's a role that didn't really exist before I came into the club. I think we have a B2B director already before we've been in multiple years which I think most of the club referred to as a commercial director, but we didn't really have that for the B2C part, for the fans. So in that sense, I'm responsible for all fan services and products on one hand, which is things like ticketing and things like merchandising, food and beverage, events, etc. But on the other side, we also put down a customer experience team, as you've mentioned in the intro, which really focuses on the journey of the fan, and there we indeed have the marketing team, and we also have innovation, digital strategy, and I try to combine both in a sense where one thing is fan experience and convenience and on the other side, you do have the reality of being a football club that needs to make money as well and we try to be profitable. So it's the mix between both of that.
Speaker 1:I think you've closed the gap there, which is super interesting, right, because the customer experience is something that people have been talking about more and more over the last couple of years. It seems like you're the right guy in the right place because, when I look at your background, you have quite an extensive one, I mean from the digital space, as full stack web developer. I wish I could code myself. I guess you can digital project lead founder, digital lead operations lead, co-founder you brought someone with you the next time, probably, and then you were head of product and then finally co-founder again and advisor I. I know you'd been in Clear Bridge a little bit before you started this journey and you came back in July 2022. I mean, maybe it's a stupid question, but why return to football?
Speaker 2:There was lots of buzzwords in the functions I did before, but mainly because I was sitting in the agency scene for about 15 years before I joined Rouge and, let's say, the other side of business, and it's true that most of these things still help me every day, like I've been in code. Indeed, but that's about 10 years ago, so I wouldn't say I would be able to code today, or at least not in a decent way. It would be spaghetti code, I guess. But if I talk to our CTO about new projects, about technicalities, or about API systems or ecosystem that we use for our data, you do feel that it still helps you to understand how the logic behind the product works, because he knows that I will take into account some of the impossible questions I might have, because I know how development on the backside of things works a bit.
Speaker 2:I did graduate as a product designer myself, meaning that I hope that I can still see what's good UX, what's good UI, when we were talking about our platform. So I think all of these roles, in a sense combined, are still helping me every day to talk to all sorts of stakeholders we have at the club without being an expert in all of them. You know what I mean. We have better designers than me, we have better developers, we have better project managers than myself. But obviously I think the strategic part is what really drew me to the sports side, because in the startup I co-founded, it was sports related. Before, when I made websites, that also was sometimes sports related, but being able to really create and craft the strategy for fans for Belgium's biggest football club, that was definitely something that drew me in.
Speaker 1:When were you a consultant for Club Bruges the first time?
Speaker 2:It was about seven years ago now. Yeah, that was as part of an agency. We worked with Bruges to try and define their data ecosystem at that time, which they were building at the time, and that was my first encounter.
Speaker 1:Got it and then you return in 2022, right? What had changed in that period? It?
Speaker 2:was a complete overhaul.
Speaker 2:They already at that time were, let's say, one of the most, or even the most innovative, with a board that's really open to innovation and open to new things and open to investments.
Speaker 2:I still remember that at that time we were talking about automated reports and like having a 360 degree on fan data, which lots of the teams today in europe don't have yet.
Speaker 2:So I remembered the club was talking about that and when I jumped in two and a half years ago when I was super happy and surprised as well to see that the cto that they hired right after that, the solvency period really pushed through and I was to, by using the right set of tools to build that ecosystem and that's been massively for the club because today we are not only sitting on a mountain of data but we are actively using it in our day-to-day work. So, as you can imagine the way a club is structured and run and the output of those things when it's really data-driven, that is super different than it was with so many manual things that they did before. Some of these things are now automated, are much smarter, are faster, sometimes even more efficient, with less people if that's possible, and we all know how lean and lean sometimes football clubs need to be when it comes to the different caps people need to wear to be able to let things work.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it was a big change yeah, I mean cTO is also not a normal role to have in a football club, right? Would you say that all football clubs these days should have a technical department, like yourselves?
Speaker 2:I'd say it eases things in a sense where you have someone internally who can strategically define where you're going with that. Also, someone who decides which tools do we implement, which do we build ourselves, is one of the major fails I sometimes see in other clubs. Or it's sometimes too white label and you don't have enough freedom with your products that you build or the ecosystem that you build. On the other hand, you can also build too much yourself and reinvent the wheel every time, make a lot of costs and also on the maintenance side of tools. That's where a lot of the companies worldwide are sometimes underestimating what that means. The fact that we do parts of our API development internally helps us to go fast, but I have nothing against external agencies that help you in development, but I do think you need to have the vision of what you want to build internally. That, at least, is something that I'm happy that we have.
Speaker 1:I mean your role. I mean it's a lot of product involved, right, and sometimes it's hard to measure product Okay, what are we actually delivering? But your role is extremely commercial, so you've been able to attach some KPIs, to put it that way, some measurements to measure success. Do you mind sharing what you're measuring?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think there's one obvious one way, some measurements, to measure success. Do you mind sharing what you're measured on? Yeah, sure, I think there's one obvious one. If you steer on a few pnls like ticketing and merchandising and kids and food and beverage, it's obvious that you have a seasonal revenue goal and we've obviously chunked that up into kpis per game. And then you we also have one every after the regular competition and then you have one after the playoffs, etc. But it's also about the margin and how you make profit in the end as well. It's not only about the revenues, I'd say, per P&L. We have that cleared out. And then there's a few KPIs that we steer on within the business of that P&L.
Speaker 2:If you take, for example, merchandising and food and beverage, you're talking about average order value, like how many beers or burgers are we able to sell at the same time? And not because we want fans per se to buy more and more and more. It's also to understand are we able to serve our fans? Because we have a stadium which is quite packed, which is also quite old, and if we see that the spend per head is dropping, it also might mean that the lines and the queues are getting a lot longer, so it also gives us a sense of are we able to give the convenience that you want to be able to give? Average order value is obviously important. When it comes to webshop and merchandising, you want to sometimes shift some of the load you have on your flagship store to the online part, so that's definitely a KPI. We are watching, I think, the shirt sales things like your home, your way, your church shirt. You want to make sure that you keep your targets there as well, because that's a product that's linked to your branding, that's linked to your fans. Every other week you want to get that out there, massively important for any club.
Speaker 2:When you talk about the business side and obviously also profit, I think the season tickets and game tickets and that's obviously what you guys are interested in as well is definitely something that we heavily invested on the last years. Also, the reselling of these tickets when fans are not able to make it to a game who have a season ticket is super important to get people to the game. And then I think one of the things we really worked on last year was the attendance part, because, as all of us know, when the things go well and you become champions two years in a row, the fans are there and they're supporting and I'm definitely not saying that they are not when sports results are down, because we've seen the opposite as well but you do tend to see more of a core group stand up and then other fans kind of clicking out. So we try to find ways to improve that as well. And then I think finally and that's the most difficult one to learn is the MPS course.
Speaker 2:We try and implement that in as much P&Ls as we can Online. In as much P&Ls as we can Online is obviously the easiest one. Asking them how did that delivery go, how did you feel about that product, what about this journey, et cetera. And it is something that we do try and steer on when it comes to convenience and because, in the end, if fans are happy with what they purchased or what they experienced, they will in the end, also connect better with the services that you're offering.
Speaker 1:Obviously, this is a ticketing podcast, right? Or don't forget your tickets, because that's an important thing. But I mean, you are responsible for ticketing, but you're also responsible for several other revenue streams. Can you share a little bit how this is connected?
Speaker 2:have this role right. So the departments already existed when I came into the club. We also already had ticketing. We also already had merchandising.
Speaker 2:The thing is that by combining them into a D2C group, as we call it internally, it helps to kind of cross work together. And now ticketing is thinking about okay, we're going to play Aston Villa and the Champions League, and can we already put a scarf in offering as well at the same time, because it's a package? It's actually a package deal because a fan doesn't go to ticketing first and then to the merchandising and then to F&B. You need to have that as a journey and you need to think about when does a fan do his stock-ups on his Clébrouche card and when is he going to buy the beer, and maybe if he comes in a bit earlier, he has a bit more time to buy some merch. These are some of the things that we try and combine better by talking to all of our people at the same time, and that's why we have these cross-department meetings, et cetera, to make sure that we align better than we did before as separate departments.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if you look back on the history of ticketing, it's a very step-by-step process Select your ticket, select your seat, or maybe the other way around then add your data, or maybe you're logged in, maybe you're not logged in. It's a very strict journey and when you look at e-commerce what's happened over the last couple of years it's a completely different journey, recommending different products. So you, basically, you're trying to pull everything together to use every opportunity of every ticket that's sold to sell more right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's sometimes a harsh reality, obviously, because you do want to tell fans that it is about the game and it is about the game and about how you feel as a fan and that's definitely the case and at the same time, you do have the reality of trying to be profitable and making sure that the business part on itself is something that can be profitable. You obviously have transfer money, et cetera, which is not per se linked to my P&L. So, in a sense, that's where we need to work at. But I do think, indeed, what you're saying is most of these things I don't see as being very efficient at some of the clubs, and that's where we are putting a digital first strategy in, where we are very digital when it comes to our ticketing sale. We're very digital when it comes to our merchandising.
Speaker 2:Even servicing our fans is something that we try and do digital when you talk about your spending at a club. You have full transparency about what you've spent, but also what you've got in cashback in your own personal app. So, in that sense, I think having everything online and making sure that everything's in the cloud and that we're able to put that on the front end to fans is something that we feel helps in getting quicker to fans sometimes, even though it's not always with like a face-to-face encounter, but that is something that, for us, really made things a bit more efficient when it comes to working in the club, because if you've been in a club, you know how much and how pacey you can get. So I think making sure that you choose what you want to do digitally and whatnot is something that truly helps you Great.
Speaker 1:So, switching tacks a little bit, let's move over to something we hold dear and I think everyone thinks it's exciting and it's a balance between being too innovative and still solving the basis right, and that's always a balance. I had a look through your LinkedIn profile and I mean that's always a balance. I had a look through your LinkedIn profile and I mean I have two kids. Roblox is a very popular game at the house played, maybe too much, but you did a Roblox stunt, didn't you? Or can you call it a stunt? Can you tell us a little bit more about that? And then also a little bit on how you innovate in the club.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think it was a stunt within a strategy and a tactic, I'd say, where there's obviously a goal of what we're trying to do with the kids metaverse that we have at this point. So what we've actually done over the last year is we made sure that we had membership for every age group in the club. Before we had a kids working, which was from zero to 12. And then there was this wide gap going from 13 to 17. So we decided to talk to the fans, to talk to our youngsters and understand what they would be interested in. They also have been able to choose the name of the membership, which is now called Young Blues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that we tried out now is what if we would meet these youngsters where they are and that's online and in what you just mentioned as an example, roblox would be one of those places where they are at, and we decided at the start of the season at the start of the shirt sale, for example we wanted to show that we connected with them within Roblox.
Speaker 2:So we built this lounge where we couldn't do really more than just sitting there as a kid and then watching some of the items that we were launching Roblox drops, and I think the stunt you're referring to is.
Speaker 2:The first shirt we launched this year was our Away shirt, which is a white shirt, but we decided not to launch it like usual with pictures and video and then showing it to fans, but we decided to tell our fans, like listen, if you want to see the shirt first, you need to be in Roblox, and obviously the young fans really loved that because it was going to them first before it went to the public. What we saw is that loads and loads of kids came up in Roblox and just simply watched up until that shirt dropped for the seconds we're counting down, and that's the moment when we built that that you see. Okay, this is something that is triggering, it's engaging and these youngsters are engaging with that. So that's why we decided to increase that effort on that and to also do the same thing with the home shirt and the turt shirt. And we have more plans with Roblox, because we simply see that the engagement numbers are through the roof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean, there's no limits to the audience. Right, you reach a global audience instantaneously.
Speaker 2:Which, to be true, is not my first goal. I think my first goal is to reach youngsters that already have a black and blue heart. When it comes to that, and if we're able to be out there as a more European brand, of course, that's something that will take, but to me, the Roblox part, and that having as a part of our young blues tactics, is really something. That's as you refer to us as being innovative, because if I look at the list of ideas that our team has ready for the coming two years, the list is 200, 300 ideas long. The question is like where do you invest, where do you take a risk and where do you develop? And that's something that I think that's what true innovation management is about. I think that's where some of my background sometimes comes into play, where there are systems and frameworks to define where do I put my money, where do I put my risk and where do I lower the risk.
Speaker 2:And then innovation management to me, is really all about doing the research with your fan base, something that not an awful lot of clubs are already doing, like listening to them, understanding them. We could have called our membership something completely different, which didn't really connect with the youngsters, but they've been able to choose themselves. And then, if you do that research, you create ideas based on that research and you then validate those ideas again with the same group, quantitatively, qualitatively. That's when you know, okay, that was a bad idea, that was a good idea. This does not have any foundation for a bigger group. And that's when you really see that, okay, now we're going to invest I don't know 200K in something, the idea that already this is validated with a fan group based on price point, based on interest, based on likability, et cetera. You know that the 200K risk that you're making is going to be a lot lower than when you simply do something from your ivory tower in the office, if you know what I mean. So that's how I look at innovation within the club.
Speaker 1:I think one of the challenges in I mean every company, every football club, sports club in general is that you have ideas and then you invest a lot before you actually validate it with the fans, as you're saying, and that makes everything so much more expensive and the risk is so much higher. So how do you communicate with the fans, as you're saying, and that makes everything so much more expensive and the risk is so much higher. So how do you communicate with the fans? Is it through focus groups? Is it like quantitative analysis? How do you approach that?
Speaker 2:It depends. As I said, it's a pacey environment, right? So we go from one Champions League game on Wednesday to the next game on Sunday, so there's not always that much time to think strategically, or at least not for the team. That's sometimes very operationally getting things ready for a game, but obviously sometimes there's, depending on what we're trying to do. I think we have two approaches for the gold membership, which I guess we'll talk about later as well.
Speaker 2:We really put down a project where we did qualitative research. First we sat down with focus groups. We had three of them. We defined the segments that we wanted to talk about because in one hand, qualitative research helps you in understanding that the idea you have gets a bit more complex from fans, but at the same time it also generates you new ideas which you didn't think of from a fan's perspective. Making sure that you validate that with quantitative research, like surveying it to a group of 2,000, 3,000 fans from that same type of segment gives you the answers or the validation you need, or even kill some of the ideas that were discussed in that focus group with less people.
Speaker 2:But sometimes we even try to do it through marketing. Just a simple example is that within the golden membership we launched last year, we wanted to promise fans that they would have a chance to win very unique experiences. We wanted to promise fans that they would have a chance to win very unique experiences. The question is, what do fans think is a unique experience? So then you can ask them, or you can simply also try and blend that into some of your marketing campaigns, and that's what we did.
Speaker 2:So for the Christmas campaign, for example, we did some sort of an advent calendar so a fan could come back every other day or every day and they would generate points by coming back to an advent calendar and at the end of the campaign they could actually bet their points on prizes and there's a typical thing like signed shirts and a framed shirt and a ticket, et cetera. But the team actually blended in some of the unique experiences we were considering to put into the gold membership. Think about attending a press conference, give the kickoff to a game, like things you wouldn't really come up with themselves per se, and then that's when you actually we did a marketing campaign without really asking them consciously, like subconsciously, we got the answer of what they really found interesting and one of the things that we saw in that press conferences attending them is not something that a fan is really waiting for, because after the game they want to go home and that's that how do you become a gold member?
Speaker 2:uh, yeah, that's a very good question and has a broad answer. What we saw in 2022? We saw quite a drop in our season ticket attendance. About 4 000 fans didn't really show up when things were heavy and rocky. So we're questioning like is it really the only way of getting the stadium full? Is it really like being champion every other year? Is that you have a problem at a certain point as a club because you will have that downfall? You will have that upcoming again.
Speaker 2:So we were thinking like what are two positive things that we want to see from our season ticket holders? Positive behavior. One is obviously showing up. The other one is obviously, if you're sick or you're not able to make it or whatever, you release your ticket so that other fans have a chance to claim it. What we then decided is if a fan does one of these two positive behaviors before a game or when it comes to a game, or releases his ticket, we see that as a positive streak. So we give you like a green mark. We've done this for this week. You showed up or you released your ticket. What we decided is if you were able to do that as a fan for 90% of the game, which in our case is 13 out of 15 games in the regular competition. You would become gold member, so there's no price on that membership, and that, in the end, showed to be the key to that membership the fact that you needed to earn it.
Speaker 1:Nice. So basically, you earn it over time and then you become a gold member. May I ask, how many gold members do you have?
Speaker 2:we now have about 13 600 from the 22 000 season ticket holders we have. We obviously did the measurements of how many people would have been gold before the program was there just to see how many percentage would actually have that 90 already, which at that time was about 10,000 people. So we did see an increase of about 32% of fans who actually changed behavior to get to a gold level, which for us was quite an astonishing number.
Speaker 1:Impressive. Impressive as well 22,000 season ticket holders and you have a capacity slightly north of 29,000. Then you have the away tickets, which means that you have about 2 000 free seats for each match. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:yeah, about like 1500, because there's a bit of b2b in as well. So, yeah, about a thousand to a thousand five hundred tickets we're selling every week and then depending on how many they are releasing because they obviously come on top of these open seats.
Speaker 1:Is it more or less the same season ticket holders every season, or do you see some drop-off between seasons?
Speaker 2:Not a lot. We have an older fan group, mainly above 40 years old, so it's usually the same. There's always a few percentages that change, but it's usually the same people 40 plus is still a young fan base, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Of course, yeah, sure, of course, yeah, sure, of course. In terms of season tickets, and the reason why I'm asking about renewals is that I'm a firm believer of a subscription model, right Like we pay for our Spotify account once a month instead of once a year, we pay for a gym membership maybe a little bit different, but I know that you don't share that view. Can you share a little bit on why?
Speaker 2:Well, I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of subscription models. It's more before we would implement something like that. There's a few things that we need to take into account. I think for one, but it's more of a trend. It's not something that I really researched, but things I feel and see in other research is that sometimes people are a bit subscription tired in a sense, where they do have a lot of subscriptions and they are a bit more aware of subscriptions that they sign because they also know that the monthly cost is going to keep on continuing if they don't cancel it. That's one, I think.
Speaker 2:On the other hand, for us at this point, with how a season ticket has been built up as a product, it isn't really useful. There's other clubs in belgium that are using a subscription model and I think in a good sense, where it makes total sense, if you don't have a sellout for your stadium to be able to then still buy in october, november, february, and you buy a season ticket which every month again until the next year. It's a good way of selling out your stadium, while if we would do a subscription model, there's things like cash flow. That is going to be completely different, because now we obviously have everything at the same time every year again. So for bookkeeping it's different. We wouldn't also win new fans, except, obviously and then I think it's something that cooperated quite well is the connection as a product towards the youngsters who don't per se have the funds of paying I don't know 400, 500 euros all at once.
Speaker 2:So then, that's what I said in the beginning. I wouldn't be a huge fan to implement it today, because the season ticket is one product for a full season. I think we have a different story when we would chop up the product. Then we would say listen, you're a young fan and you wouldn't mind missing the big games because you are more budget oriented. And you would say I want to see seven games throughout the season because I wouldn't be making more and we put that away at a lower price. And you take that subscription model. That would be something I'd be interested in, because there's also going to be people who want to buy, let's say, the five top games. I want to pay more for it. So in that sense I think there's a way of looking at subscription models in different senses. But for now, I think subscription model is interesting to get your stadium sold out.
Speaker 1:I agree and I connected to how you pay and I understand the subscription tiredness. I lost my wallet a couple of weeks ago and everything stopped. My whole life stopped.
Speaker 2:I can imagine.
Speaker 1:If you think about Belgium football compared to European football, how innovative are you in Belgium? How tech savvy are the fans compared to European fans, Would you say? Is it easy to test new technology?
Speaker 2:I would say that we at Bruges are not necessarily a fan of the gray method, which means that we like to choose black or white. The gray method, which means that we like to choose black or white, meaning that, in a sense, if you put down a new service or a new product, in the end it comes down to change management right, and if there's something that fans, at least in belgian culture and we're a bit more conservative than the rest of europe I've already learned if you change something, they will always have problems with that. Also, the fact that you are talking to a fan group of ranging from 18 years old to 60 years old, there's always going to be the issue of yeah, what do we do with the elderly? What do we do with the youngsters? Where do we connect different platforms, different social media? Instead of trying to serve all of them with semi or average solutions, we decide to go for the best ones and then make sure that we do decent change management. So, for example, about five years ago, the club decided to close down offline ticket sale in the ticket office, so we do not sell tickets anymore at the gates. I can tell you that that was not, per se, a very popular thing at the time for our fans. But at the same time we also opened up ask club, which is an online platform where they can send in questions and tickets to get help, and we didn't like a day, day and a half that's the sla right now. We answered these questions to them. So that was a quite of a black and white decision which in the end forced also people from 60 70 to also buy online. The thing is that what I kind of sense with that is that if you ask them once or twice and the third time, they will feel okay, this is not that difficult, right?
Speaker 2:We are also in the process of digitizing our ticket access. So today our fans can already enter with a QR code within the app which is their season ticket, so that they don't have to print the PDF or find the PDF and then pinch it and all these things. Because you want to smoothen these things, let me tell you it's the same questions Fans this season. They have a card which they can use to access, so lots of the season ticket fans don't use the app per se to get in, it's more the single ticket users. But then the question is at a certain point. Any club will make the switch to online ticket access. The question is are you going to be the first to last? And if you're going to be the first, it's really just about change management and making sure that you help them in the process, because it will come anyway and you can do it in five years or seven years. Every fan base will stand up against that change. It's just about how you try and tackle it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I think the change management part and the ability to communicate is incredibly important. For sure, no one likes plastic, do they? So hopefully you will be all digital in a while. But we are quite traditional in this podcast as well, and we have a tradition, and that is to talk about match day rituals, the day of the big match. I mean, what do you do, what's the first thing you do in the morning and how does your day go about?
Speaker 2:Getting nervous. In a football club it's a bit different than you are as a fan, where all sorts of things that happen in the game really affect lots of the business you have on Monday or the day before or the day after. So in that sense I'm a lot more impacted, let's say, by the game result and the way we play etc. So I'm really sitting there as a fan but at the same time it's different than you were still a fan.
Speaker 2:I live quite far away from the stadium and from Rouge. It's about an hour and a half drive. So I try to be at the stadium about two hours and a half in advance and then already there's a lot of the team already doing all sorts of things like making sure that the stadium's ready. We still share a stadium with Circle Rouge, which is the second team in Bruges. Everything needs to be changed in colors and the drinks need to be up there and so on. So it's more of like a mini tour to try and see the team right before the game and then be nervous. And I think all respects and kudos to the team, who are really having a proper function at the game, which is selling the merchandise and making sure everyone gets in safe, everyone gets in fast. So my actual practical role during a game is not huge. But sometimes things go wrong and then you need to make decisions and then the WhatsApp starts flying around and then that's the main part I'd say.
Speaker 1:Notifications for sure, exactly, yeah, another tradition that we have, thomas. It's been so much interesting stuff here today and lots to sum up, probably, but if you were to sum up the discussion in two to three key takeaways, what would those be?
Speaker 2:I think I've given it before, because I still think people are doing it not enough.
Speaker 2:I think for lots of clubs, talking to fans or getting feedback from fans seems like a huge deal which they don't want to spend time or people on, and, at the same time, it's not that hard, right?
Speaker 2:The only thing that you need to be aware of is that you do not ask them subjective questions, because you can say we have this idea and this is a good idea, right, and then you will get answers like yes, that's a good idea. But if you try and have one person in the club who understands research, it'll help you so much in limiting the risk in innovation, it will make sure that you understand your fans better and it'll let you put better pricings out there, better products out there, et cetera. So for me, I think it'll also let you think, because the gold idea that we had about attendance is something that came from one of these focus groups. So if it all starts with talking to them, even if you're a small club and understanding your fan base, even if you have, I don't know, 5,000 attendants or 10,000 attendants, it's still 5,000 to 10,000 people that decide to show up to your game, so I think it's always worthwhile to listen to them and then act upon that.
Speaker 1:Definitely so. Listening is a key takeaway, for sure, and I couldn't agree more, and I've really enjoyed listening to you today as well, and I'm sure the listeners will as well.
Speaker 2:If the listeners want to reach out, thomas, how do they get in touch? I think the easiest way is I'd say I'm quite active on linkedin. I also share lots of the stuff that we do a bruise there as well. So if they want to reach out or send me a message, then I think linkedin would be the best way to find me amazing.
Speaker 1:so thank you again, thomas, and also the best of luck in the upcoming season. Thank you, so it's going to be really cool to follow you and also the stuff that you're doing. I'll give a tip to my kids as well to check out the Roblox, even though if they're from Norway Perfect, you've been listening to. Don't Forget your Tickets, where today's guest was Thomas Riebens, direct to consumer director at Club Bruges. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to our sponsor, ticketco, for powering this podcast. My name is Carl-Erik Moberg. Until next time, have a great day and, by all means, do not forget your tickets. Thank you.
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