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
Martin Dunford (interviewed by Alex Eagle) on the Digital Transformation of Football Fan Engagement - A Live Special from Emirates Stadium in London
How Are Mobile Apps Transforming Fan Engagement in Football?
In an era where fans expect a constant connection with their clubs, mobile apps have become more than just digital hubs—they're powerful tools for engagement, loyalty, and revenue generation. But how can clubs make the most of them?
At Don’t Forget Your Tickets at Emirates Stadium, Martin Dunford, CTO at Urban Zoo, sat down with Alex Eagle to discuss how football clubs are leveraging digital innovation to build deeper relationships with their supporters.
In this episode, they explore:
- How club apps have evolved from simple information platforms to fully interactive fan experiences.
- The role of ticketing, gamification, and personalization in boosting fan loyalty.
- How data-driven insights help clubs strengthen their marketing and engagement strategies.
- Why even smaller clubs can benefit from embracing mobile-first solutions.
With more clubs investing in digital transformation, now is the time to rethink how technology can enhance the fan experience.
Sit back and enjoy the conversation.
This Live Special episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets was recorded at the Don't Forget Your Tickets conference at Emirates Stadium, January 23rd 2025, as the tenth out of 12 on-stage interviews that day. Martin Dunford was interviewed by Alex Eagle.
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
In today's football landscape, fan engagement doesn't end at the final whistle, it's 24-7, and it's driven by digital experiences. Apps have become a vital tool for clubs to connect with their supporters, both on match days and beyond At Don't Forget your Tickets. At Emirates Stadium. Martin Dunford, CTO at Urban Zoo, sat down with ticket host Alex Eagle to discuss how apps are transforming the fan experience and how technology can bring fans closer to their clubs. Mobile apps and live streaming for over 65 football clubs and federations across the UK, making Martin a leading voice on digital fan engagement and ticketing integrations.
Speaker 2:You should lend him an ear. I just want to say it's nice to see a few friendly faces on the front row from our partners at FC Wimbledon.
Speaker 3:Hi Jinx, are you an AFC Wimbledon fan as well, or Spurs fan?
Speaker 2:They're my third club.
Speaker 3:now you won't go there.
Speaker 2:No, they are a great club actually.
Speaker 3:Thank you for joining us on this conversation. Maybe if you could just give us a quick introduction to yourself and a little bit about Urban Zoo for the audience, please.
Speaker 2:Sure. So I've worked in the tech industry, specifically with football clubs, for over 20 years now. I was at an agency called Ripple Effect where we did a lot of websites for the likes of Arsenal, everton, sunderland clubs like that. I stayed there for years and years and years longer than I'd like to sort of admit to because I give away my age. I then went and worked in the pharmaceutical industry for two years Really good work, really litigious work. I missed football and then Chris at Urban Zoo gave me an opportunity to get back into football, because Urban Zoo were doing apps already for football clubs, and six years ago I joined urban zoo and we started building what we call the game changer platform now, which many of our clubs are on, and that constitutes website apps, single sign on streaming, and people like afc wimbledon are on that platform perfect.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're not going to tell me, like my last guest, that you're also an ex-professional footballer, are you?
Speaker 2:No, but interestingly enough I did have a football background in terms of I worked at Everton when I was a youngster, so probably from the age of 15 up until 21. When I left uni I used to work there in the summers in a ticket office packing up tickets, sending them off Very old school manual process, and then I moved up onto the windows I think it was an old ticket master system we used to use then. So I've got a good grounding in football club culture and particularly the ticketing side and the frustrations that fans can have and how we can help solve them.
Speaker 3:Perfect. Well, let's dive into the topic of the conversation today. Can you tell me what the evolution has been within clubs at where we were, say, maybe 10 years ago, and where we are right now, and what's changed in that time?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think when apps first became a thing when the iPhone came out, there was a lot of just desire just to have an app and it wasn't really any reason to a lot of the football apps. They were just replications of football websites. Really, We've definitely moved on from that point. Now we're starting to diverge. Websites started to get better at being mobile, so that sort of made the question of like, why would you want an app if you can do a mobile website which is legitimate? So then we have to take advantage of the sort of native capabilities of an app, the security it gives you and things like that. So the apps have evolved from just being a replica of the website to being something more of a utility to the fan, offering things like ticketing, gamification, real-time information, push notifications, things like that.
Speaker 3:So is that, then, essentially giving apps a purpose, then becoming a companion, rather than just a screen or an icon of screen on a mobile phone?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly, I mean, what apps do you?
Speaker 3:use most probably my banking app on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, I thought you're going to say tinder yeah, no, um.
Speaker 2:yeah. Banking apps are a good example because they're a utility app. It's one of the things that people don't question. They just install because it's easier to use than logging into a banking website on your phone. And that's where a lot of football clubs are thinking for their app. They want it to be a utility for the fan, they want it to be the first port of call, often in the communication with the club as well. So more and more we're adding functionality for clubs. Where it allows it to be that and hopefully it's front and center in the fan's mind, we can provide things like widgets on the phone screens. So that's another entry point into the app. Again, it's front and center in the fan's mind and the more they use the app, the more we can learn about the fan and then create tailored experiences.
Speaker 3:So it's about making it unique to that fan. Essentially, is what you're saying, is it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the evolution of where it's going to go, that we're learning information about the fan every time they log in, every time they interact with anything within the app. So it could be as simple as like we have a gamification module and they're entering quizzes, but they keep on entering quizzes about the women's team but not the men's team. Well, implicitly we know they're probably a women's team fan more than a men's team. So the app could evolve for that fan to be more women's team focused.
Speaker 3:So does that help a lot then with the data generation and thinking about how the clubs can utilize this data as well. So it's unique to the fan, they're engaging with it and therefore there's more data coming over to the club.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's almost like a virtuous cycle of the fans want to go to the app because it's got a utility. They interact with the app more, the club learn more off the back of that data. Data is almost like a commodity nowadays. I think again, like with previous talk talked about where it's really valuable to a club. They can learn so much and the more they learn, the more they can act upon that, and then the better the experience is, and then the fan uses it more and it keeps on going and going.
Speaker 3:Well, that's the theory and then, I suppose, tying up that journey as well, then that can also be used in a commercial sense, I imagine, for clubs leveraging that for commercial sponsorship with all the data that they've got yeah, exactly so it works almost on, works almost on two levels.
Speaker 2:There's the obvious more eyes on the app could be sold as advertising space. We can also personalize that advertising because we know the type of user that's logged in, so we can get segmentation back from a CRM system and we know okay, this user has bought a season ticket already, so let's not show him a season ticket. We know he hasn't bought the away shirt, so already, so let's not show him a season ticket. We know he hasn't bought the away shirt, so let's show him the away shirt.
Speaker 3:Or this fan has bought an away shirt but she hasn't yet bought the third shirt, so let's show her that. How important is it for someone like urban zoo and the relationship with the club, because obviously that sounds like a lot of information, a lot of detail. So how important is that relationship of getting that data and you helping the club to be able to understand that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we operate across the whole spectrum of English football. So we've got Premier League clubs right at the top of the pyramid, right down to National League clubs, and they're all on a journey for gathering data from their fans. The Premier League clubs will often have whole data science departments, enterprise CRM systems and they're learning loads and they've got AI running to segment all the users. The clubs lower down the pyramid maybe haven't got that. Maybe they're using like a MailChimp or something like that, and what we try to do is plug the gap between that, because we know we're going to operate with clubs, sometimes with nothing, and we can help them get on that journey. So by providing services in the middle layer of that, where we can take information from a really complex CRM system, normalise it and then provide the same experience as we could from something like a MailChimp, allows us to go into these clubs, maybe without the staff and the capacity to do it or they might not think they could do it, but we can show them ways they can do it.
Speaker 3:Perfect, let's move that on to then in-app ticketing. Yeah, and we were talking earlier on. You said it's not the be-all and end-all, but I'd like to just discuss that a little bit more, about the importance of it and getting it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think in-app ticketing is probably the key utility. As a fan myself, I prefer it when I can go to an event and I've got the ticket on the app. Yeah, we can do things like you know add to Google wallet from an email and things like that. That's fine, but having the confidence of having it in the app allows you to possibly do all the functionality that that wouldn't allow you to do so transfer tickets, resell tickets.
Speaker 2:We have a lot of clubs with big hospitality departments and they want to share tickets between, like you know, I'm the owner of a box but I need to give my eight tickets out to my colleagues or clients or whoever it may be. So, providing good mechanisms, good user journeys for that. And also, again, it links back to the data. Every time you share a ticket with a friend or a colleague, they have to log in to receive that ticket and see it in the app, capture their data and then the clubs can act upon that. And maybe that person has been invited to a hospitality event but has never purchased one before. So you might remarket to that secondary market to say, okay, well, why don't you bring your friends if you know they're a business owner or something like that.
Speaker 3:So then, moving on from that, I'd like to maybe tie those last two questions together. Is there any good examples in the marketplace? Maybe we're wrong to name club names, but anything that you can think of that is a good example of a club doing this right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I won't name names. There's a couple of Premier League clubs who are operating at a higher level with clever CRM systems and reward systems and things like that, and they're bringing it all together. So, as users are interacting with the app, you read an article, you get rewards points, notification pop-up that's also popping into the CRM system to say they've read this article. The fans are happy because they're getting encouraged to use content daily, so it makes the app habitual. They come on daily. They can earn a certain number of points per day, but the club are happy because they're earning a lot of data in that loop and then they can remarket back and, as I said, it's like a virtuous cycle. One important thing to do is, like as I said earlier, we're trying to make that model available to all levels, so in a year or so you won't have to have a fancy CRM system. If you've got one, brilliant, we'll plug into it and make it work.
Speaker 3:It'll probably work doing things that we won't focus on, but we want to try and get everyone to a base level where we're doing those kind of things and is it essentially, then, looking to take that fan on the journey from maybe being a passive fan to a loyal fan and helping the club to understand how to do that with the data, with the functionality that is available to them? Maybe just touch on that a little bit for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's usually a lot of clubs will operate on a principle of personas, so they've developed a persona. This is a highly engaged fan who's like an ultra fan, who comes to every game. The type of marketing you would do to them is probably different than a peripheral fan. So I was talking to some guys earlier about in the lower league how it's a bit harder to engage because people are maybe, when they're selecting a team, as if you select a team. But nowadays I think kids do. They think, oh, I'll go for that Premier League team, but how can the lower league clubs capture them? As we're your local team, how can we engage with you in the app and on the field and in the stands to make you want to go and engage with our club rather than just following a premier league club.
Speaker 3:That's an interesting point, because a lot of people have a premier league club and they don't necessarily support their local club. Yeah, so that's a big challenge, isn't it? For especially clubs in league one and league two that are up against a premier club.
Speaker 2:It definitely is, and I don't think apps that will be all an end. All that will solve that problem is going to be boots on the ground, like going out in the community and doing it. But the app can play a role in that. Websites can play a role with it. The whole digital ecosystem can.
Speaker 3:Perfect, and I suppose the last question I'd like to ask you today is where do you see the future of Club App? So we talked 10 years ago and we talked now 2035, again similar to what I asked earlier on. Where do you see it moving on from here?
Speaker 2:I think it's going to definitely become more personalized. I mean, we're already operating in that space where, on a match day, fans will be going into the ground or they might not even be going to the ground. We'll know if they're going to the ground or not. The app will evolve to say okay, we know you're going to the ground, we know you're coming from London up to the north. Here's your travel options, things like that. You're in the vicinity of the ground, we know you are. Here are your pre-match entertainment options. You're in hospitality suite, so we know you're going to go there. Oh no, we've got a fan zone. Here's what's going on there and that will be applicable to every sort of day of the week in the app. You know it's a monday, maybe it's a retail monday, but maybe there's special offers for certain areas and certain segments, because they've reacted to that kind of content previously.
Speaker 3:Perfect Well, martin, thank you so much for your insights today. Really appreciate that. If we could have a round of applause, please for Martin from UrbanZoom. Thank you.
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