Why I Wanted a Football Club to Host a Business Conference

Some of my favourite business ideas are the ones that never actually happened.

During my time at Aberystwyth Town, one of the projects I began exploring was the idea of developing a larger business conference as an extension of the Black & Green Business Club. We had already started thinking differently about the relationship between the football club and local companies, and a conference felt like a logical next step.

The traditional commercial relationship between a football club and a business is usually based around sponsorship. The club has an audience and assets, the company pays money, and in return its logo appears on a shirt, board or programme.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that model, but I have always thought it leaves a lot of potential value unused.

A football club has relationships. It can bring together business owners, supporters, community organisations, sponsors and people with shared interests. It has a venue, a recognisable local brand and a reason for people to feel connected to it. Once you look at those assets differently, the question stops being “How can we sell more advertising?” and becomes “What else could we create that businesses would genuinely value?”

That was part of the thinking behind the Black & Green Business Club. Instead of asking companies purely to give money to the football club, I wanted the club to become somewhere local businesses could build relationships with each other.

The conference idea would have taken that further.

There was the potential for speakers, workshops, networking, exhibition opportunities and sponsorship, with the football club effectively becoming the host of a business event rather than simply the beneficiary of local business support.

From a marketing perspective, this is essentially product development.

The 4Ps become very real when you approach a project like this. The product would be the conference experience and network. Pricing would need to reflect value to delegates and partners. Place was particularly interesting because Park Avenue itself could become part of the proposition. Promotion would then follow once the audience, product and positioning were clear.

The segmentation mattered too. This would not be an event for “everyone in business”. Local SMEs, sponsors, self-employed people and organisations wanting stronger local relationships potentially had different motivations. Understanding those motivations would shape the programme far more effectively than deciding on speakers first and worrying about the audience afterwards.

That is one of the biggest changes in how I think today. My natural instinct has always been to have an idea and immediately think about how we could make it happen. Strategy gives me another stage before that: should we make it happen, for whom, and why would they choose it?

The conference never reached the point of becoming a live event, but I still think the thinking behind it was valuable.

It was part of a much bigger shift in how I saw the football club.

Aberystwyth Town was not only somewhere businesses could advertise.

It could potentially become somewhere businesses did business.

And that is a very different proposition.