The Sponsorship Strategy Behind 175,000 Fans at Fanatics Fest

Paulina Giusti:

What's very important when it comes to relationship building is making sure all your internal players really understand the value of what you do and then it becomes a lot more of a streamlined process. Until people understand your value of having a deal term outline and the impact that it has on their day-to-day job, that's when you start to see things scale and success start to take shape.

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events create great brands, but pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences, well, that takes a village and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Camille Arnold:

I'm Camille.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Rachel Andrews:

Hi everybody. What is going on in the wide, wide world of events? You have some snazzy folks on the podcast today. We'll get into that in a second, but today's episode is all about great events. Shocker, right? But that great events are built on relationships. You can have the best venue, the biggest budget, the flashiest activation, but they still fall flat if the relationships and what you're trying to do aren't there. Events are a people business. The ones that work are built on trust between planners, partners, teams and vendors, brands and fans. And today's guest has lived that from just about every seat. She's planned events, she's hosted this podcast and she's currently running sponsorships for Fanatics Fest, one of the biggest B2C sports and culture events in the country.

I'm Rachel. I'm joined today with Felicia. Welcome back to the Great Events Podcast. And today we are very excited to have our very own former co-host, Paulina Giusti back on the other side of the mic as a guest. Paulina is the director of sponsorships at Fanatics Fest and obviously, like I said, she's a former Cventer, used to be on our team running all of our global events, especially Cvent Connect. She used to be a former Great Events podcast host and now you're leading sponsorship strategy and execution at Fanatics Fest. So I'm pretty pumped to talk to you about what you're doing because that's super cool. Welcome. Why don't you tell us a little bit more that's not on paper?

Paulina Giusti:

Hi guys. Thanks for having me. What a full circle moment. If I think back to two years ago, what was super appealing about Fanatics was that Fanatics Events is one of the portfolio companies within the overall business and the concept of building a Comic-Con for sports fans was the idea that generated from our CEO. And he was like, "How do we not have a festival that celebrates the passion that so many fans, sports fans specifically have? And why don't we look to a model like Comic-Con to mirror?" And so from that idea, Fanatics Events team was born and Fanatics Fest New York is our first iteration of product, if you will.

And when I first joined the team, I was in a pretty traditional events ops role, if you will, very tactical. I started in a very traditional role and after being in seat for six plus months, I saw that there was a gap in the business where we were bringing in these incredible brands to be a part and amplify the story of Fanatics Fest, but we were really struggling to fulfill those activations on site and thread them as part of the narrative with our overall event.

And so I raised my hand and I said, "Listen, I'd love to be involved in the sponsorship side. I've always wanted to be closer to the revenue side, to the brand side of decision making." And so from there, have been in partnership with my VP building our sponsorship strategy and our fulfillment process for Fanatics Fest New York, and it's just been really incredible. Building these incredible activations to see the success can only be grounded in having really great relationships. And that goes to say with your internal teams, with your external vendors, with your partners. And my gosh, I've seen a very different side of what the events business can look like. Last year we had 175,000 attendees or fans walk through the door. So it's just the scope and scale is so different, but flexing a lot of the same muscles that I grew and honed while with you both on the other side.

Felicia Asiedu:

People think that the allure of B2C is... Especially I've not actually done it before, I would say. I've been B2B pretty much my whole life and then everyone thinks, "Oh my gosh, I wish I was in B2C. It looks like so much more fun. It's so much more exciting." Put us out of our misery. Tell us the truth. Is it just much more fun and exciting?

Paulina Giusti:

I think it's what you make it. If you boil it down to the brass tacks, we're all doing the same job. We're all putting on really incredible experiences to connect people in meaningful ways. I find this era of my career a little more exciting because of the brands I get to work with. There are different KPIs and there are different ways to measure success when it comes to B2C. And I feel like, at the end of the day, also it is about giving the fan the most memorable experience and that is the utmost measurement of success.

Rachel Andrews:

So as a B2B primarily event strategist, you get to do more of the flashy stuff like your... Hopefully your budgets match that too. But moving from a B2B SaaS or event tech space to B2B sports and culture activations, what drew you to the sponsorship side to begin with? Because you've pivoted from... And just talking to people in the industry all the time, you could do so many different things in the events world and this is just one major part of the events world and the sponsorship realm. Take us through that. You started to take us through your journey, but first to Fanatics and then to Fan Fest like B2B versus B2C events and then sponsorship specifically.

Paulina Giusti:

I wanted to get closer to the revenue side and the brand side of decision making. I think that's always been something that's been super appealing to me. Less about executing the event and designing the event, but more about influencing what gets sold and why and making sure that those people who are investing in the experience are part of our overall narrative. The event takes place at the Javits Center in New York City and it's a full takeover. We're talking over 100,000 people that walk through the door over the course of three days. Because we've seen so much attendance and success, I want to say there's a shift from marketing to marketers, planning for planners, to building for fans and at scale. And I feel like we've been riding this rocket ship. In a year three event, you rarely see success, you rarely see revenue.

At the end of the day, most year three events are covering and just hoping to scale and create like a foundation. And in year three for us, we are seeing revenue. We are growing at such an incredible clip and we are lucky enough to have some really impressive budgets to support the programming. I wouldn't say the runway time is longer, at least for us right now. When I first joined, I think we had a runway of three and a half, maybe four months before the first event and we saw 75,000 people walk through the door in year one.

Rachel Andrews:

Tell our listeners that might not be familiar with Fanatics Fest, what is it?

Paulina Giusti:

The precipice of the event was centered around why isn't there a massive fan festival that celebrates and brings together all sports fans similar to a Comic-Con style? And so actually our CEO of Fanatics Events started Comic-Con essentially and has the experience of building what an event looks like for fans and radical fans, if that even makes sense. And so we've leaned into the structure of what worked for Comic-Con and iterated off of that to support a sports experience, but it brings all the major leagues of sports, the NFL, the MLB, the NHL, UFC, it's meant to be a connection of all of our business opportunities. Similar to how Cvent Connect really features all of the different products and offerings, Fanatics Fest is the exact same. We have a betting and gaming division, we have a collectibles division, we have our events division.

And so we're bringing all of those other portfolio companies on site and activating them to create a great experience for our existing customers, to grow our customer base, to expose fans, to perhaps the collectibles business. And so it's really meant to be an intersection of sports, collecting, culture. We have celebrities that come through the event that you're like, "What? Oh my gosh, we can't believe this person is here." Yes, there are the sports GOATs, Tom Brady, LeBron, all these guys come through, but it's so much more than that. We have three massive stages where we feature podcasts. We also have a main stage, which can be anything from podcasts to impactful one-on-one conversations to a Travis Scott concert. So there's just a lot of synergistic energy happening that's all meant to connect sports fans, collecting culture together and it's been really fun to be a part of.

Felicia Asiedu:

We recently had the London Marathon and our VP of sales went and he said it was such a level playing field. Everyone is running the same race in a sense and everyone's family and friends are there cheering on. So you're all leveled. You see how you said celebrities are there, they're fans too. Then it kind of just levels. Everyone needs to have an amazing experience. You wouldn't say," Well, actually let's make sure the sports stars have an amazing experience, but the rest of the audience is okay." You would probably be designing and creating so that everyone gets that wow and everyone feels like they should take that next step to the collectible or whatever it is you're designing, which I think is really cool. I love how you have these events, these massive events that just bring people to that, "hah" moment together and everyone's suddenly nice to each other, which is cool in amongst the world, let's just say.

So I'd be interested to know how has your job actually changed. So obviously you've gone from event design to sponsorships, but what does it actually look like? What does your day-to-day look like now?

Paulina Giusti:

I shape deals that really make sense for the business. Revenue driving is obviously a goal and a priority of ours, but making sure that they're executable from a logistics perspective to also ensuring that whatever we are designing, putting together is additive to the fan experience at the end of the day. And so working with a variety of sales stakeholders. We have a variety of people who are selling into this event and not everyone has a background in events. And so some people come up with these incredible ideas and I'm, "That'll never pass health code." So you have to keep people honest in what the sales pitch and experience looks like.

We also partner with our partners at OBB Studios, now Fanatics Studios, and they've been a dream to work with. They have incredible relationships with some of the most iconic brands, and we work together in developing not only the deal, the deal term outline, the deliverables that they receive, but also what does their content strategy look like? This event, while it's a fan experience, it is the most viral epicenter of sports for four days, and it's incredible how much brands and influencers and content creators can generate while on site. And so ensuring that we're structuring these deals to support very much, like you guys know, promotion after the event. Beyond the four walls of the event and the activation that they've built with us at Fanatics Fest, how can they continue to amplify that story? And so ensuring that we're being able to present them and put them in a position to do so.

But it's a lot of deal structure. I work a lot with the sales teams, but the cross-functional nature of this role is so similar to those of event directors, event organizers. We are constantly having to say the same thing in different languages, whether it's to legal, whether it's to marketing, sales, ops. And so I do that with the lens of, "Here's this brand, here's how we've structured this deal, this is how it needs to come to life." And then facilitate that through all of those conversations.

Rachel Andrews:

Tell us about some of your favorite activations, brands that you've worked with. I've heard some of your fun stories and cool things that you've personally produced, but work with a team to produce on site.

Paulina Giusti:

So I should mention my first day at Fanatics was at WWE WrestleMania in Philadelphia. They have probably single-handedly the most passionate and broad scope, broad facing fan base. They have this incredible activation. So all of the WW athletes and stars have their own walkout music before they enter the ring. And it's a big thing. It's very iconic. The fans sing along to it as they walk out. What they did was they created an activation and it's called the Superstar Entrance, and fans can walk out to their favorite wrestler's song. It has an LED wall behind them. They can channel the energy and the vibes of the athlete that they love the most and they get to walk away with a digital asset and it's just great. You see a six-year-old kid walk out and act like he's Cody Rhodes and your heart just drops and you're like, "This is why I do it. This is why this is it. That's all I needed to see and hear all day." And then you hear it a thousand times over in a day and you're like, "Okay, I'm done."

But I loved it. I thought it was so creative. It was such a great way to have the fans experience something very emotional on site but then have a great digital takeaway to share and amplify the experience right after the event. Our other partners, Dick's Sporting Goods, that entire organization is incredible. I love working with them. They are one of my favorite partners. They really focus on supporting the fan, making sure the fan has the best experience. Their activation is almost this progressive environment, at least last year's was. So you'd walk in and you got to see all these unique touch points, but they all felt threaded together.

They had a track man swing suite last year. They had batting cages for softball and baseball. They had a cleat wall. They had a GOAT photo moment. We activated a smaller podcast stage in their space. They offered meet and greets, but here's the thing that I think makes the most sense. Similar to Connect, we have call it show features that can be sponsored. We have show features at Fanatics Fest, one being the Kids Zone. Dick's Sporting Goods has taken over the Kid Zone in partnership with RCX Sports and it's an awesome place. It's activated to support skills and drills and sports clinics for boys and girls of all ages, but what's awesome is that we program it with celebrities and it's celebs with kids and sports. And so what we'll do is we'll have like Kevin Durant, who obviously is a basketball player, but he's playing soccer with kids in the Kids Zone for 15, 20 minutes at a time.

We have Jaden Daniels throwing footballs to kids, so it's this dedicated space that it's exclusive to kids. They get to have these really cool moments where they learn about the sport and fun of the game, and then they also get to engage with athletes. And I think Dick's does a great job of facilitating a really fun and no pressure style space. So those are my two favorites so far. I'm really excited about this year though.

Rachel Andrews:

I want to dig into the relationship sponsorship side more because that is a world that our listeners are deeply in bed with. It might not be part of their team necessarily, but they don't always run it. They're involved. I mean, I think most people running B2B are doing some form of sponsorship. I know you work with the sales team on those deals. Are you also working on the playbook there? Walk us through what does that look like from a fulfillment side. You have the conversation with your relationship and then it comes to fruition at the end or are you the one bringing all these ideas to the table and then selling it?

Paulina Giusti:

It's a twofold answer. We've created a pretty tight sponsorship strategy and process. We live and breathe by deal term outlines. There's a template and then there's an opportunity to get really creative and partner with the salesperson and say, "Okay, based off your high level conversation with the brand, what were some of the priorities, what are some of their goals?" And from there we'll iterate off of some creative ideas that we have internally with our ops team, with our marketing team, and then obviously with our own sponsorships team. But what's very important when it comes to relationship building is making sure all your internal players really understand the value of what you do and then it becomes a lot more of a streamlined process. Until people understand your value of having a deal term outline and the impact that it has on maybe their day-to-day job, that's when you start to see things scale and success start to take shape.

For us, the process is reading all of the stakeholders in at the earliest point possible. And then when it comes to partnerships on the externally, we have a general contractor who we've been working with over the last couple of years, very well known in the industry. They know the Javits inside and out. And so those relationships that we have with them are really, really strong and helpful in terms of having a baseline of what's possible. Can we do a multi-structure, multi-level move-in given the move-in times that we have? They give us a lot of sort of the direction and blocking and tackling that we need to get the deal terms done, but also to get the build done and whatnot. And I think the third piece are, perhaps not our general contractor partners, but our other partners, OBB Media, our Fanatic Studios partners, them having these really incredible creative ideas about content capture and how to engage with talent.

And so making sure that they understand this is the build, this is the concept as we start to source for talent to activate within the booth, does it make sense? Does it make sense for a tennis player to be in a football activated space? So we have these conversations on a pretty ongoing basis and I think what's most important is creating that baseline of information sharing and having clear but very constant lines of communication across the board with all of these different stakeholders.

Rachel Andrews:

You're enforcing the deal term outlines to align the delivery of your sponsor's expectations, right? Is that where a lot of activations live or die? Or is that more with the media team? There's a lot of partnerships inside of this. Are you actually delivering it or you're communicating this is what needs to be delivered and then those folks deliver it?

Paulina Giusti:

There's a variety of ways. Some brands have their own agency or EAC and they've got a structure that they use at scale across other shows and they'll activate at Fanatics Fest onsite. There are others who are like, "We want to create a bespoke, very custom, specific experience highlighting this sport and these products." And so from there we'll partner together and we'll partner with their agency. In some cases, I do act as the agency in a consultative role, but knowing that an agency at the end of the day is fundamentally responsible for it. I think the one thing that sits with me is once we sell it, we own it. So I want to be a part of those conversations from the beginning all the way through fulfillment. And the best activations feel easy because there's so much time pre-event spent engineering them, making sure that the activation really has constraints that we need to solve. I want to make sure that I'm touching all of those parts.

Felicia Asiedu:

It sounds like you have a lot of people that you're working with because when Rachel asked that question, sometimes people could say, "Well, I just take this part and then I hand off and someone else does it." But you're like, "Actually, it depends on the activation." You could end up actually touching so many different parts, ops, marketing, talent, legal, finance, vendors all the way through. How are you managing all those relationships?

Paulina Giusti:

I think it's a skillset that all event organizers have. Whether it's with all those stakeholders, maybe they don't even realize it, but it's a transferable skill that all of us have and you don't even need to be in events. If you have ever project managed something, you have the skills to do this. And I think what's interesting is, there really are no handoffs. Event organizers don't even have handoffs at any stage. At the end of the day, we're all at least one finger on the pulse of something that we've been a part of to make sure that we see it through fruition. All of those touch points, all the stakeholders, some you hold hands throughout the entire process. Some you shake hands to get to the next phase of the process. And so it ebbs and flows in terms of tax on your time and tax on your focus, but you're able to balance it out. You're not working with legal throughout the entire process.

Rachel Andrews:

I was going to ask a tricky question that you can opt to not answer if you don't want to, but I think what my brain in B2B goes immediately to how do you prove ROI for some of these brands? And I know that's tricky because it's the fan activation, how far your reach goes on social, the impact on site. From an ROI, you guys are asking the brands their sentiments of how they thought it went, how they interacted with fans. How does that work? And I know that may be outside of your team, but is it within?

Paulina Giusti:

No, it is. And honestly, I still operate that way. So it's hard for me to be like, "Well, how do we tell them that it was worth it and they have to come back and spend 40% more next year?" I still approach our deal term outlines and the conversations of how are we maximizing this for the brand? Are we ensuring that they are getting transactional data points from participating in the event? And the short answer is, at the end of the day, the brands are responsible for their own goals and priorities that they develop based off of the design of their activation. We aren't necessarily fulfilling that other than our throughput of fans. I would say my KPIs that I give to myself, if one of the goals of the brand is we want to experience or we want to have as many fans walk through our space as possible, that's all about throughput. That's all about ensuring that we have clear, seamless entrances and exits located to a big throughway or talent walkway, if you will, on the show floor.

There are some tactical things like that that we can execute, but when you think about the event as a whole in terms of defining success, we still lean into our NPS score and find ways to enhance that. We read the attendee fan survey data and say to ourselves, "Oh, okay, we need to offer more food options." Or, "Okay, how do we do a better job at keeping people engaged while they're waiting in line for photographs and autographs with talent?" And so there are ways that we iterate the design and the programming and enhance it to improve our NPS score.

And then there are some like, we'll read all the open text feedback and be like, "Okay, well, that person was really unhappy with their salad." There are small ways that we're hoping to tweak. I think as we start to have a more refined planning process, we'll lean into more scalable measurement options. It's a big undertaking and I think the success that we've seen so early is hard for us to be like, "How do we make it better next year?" We started with a pretty high NPS score and so it's a champagne problem to have, but our marketing team is definitely all over it and they definitely lean into the post-event data to iterate from.

Rachel Andrews:

I want to ask about the B2B to B2C space and what's the best piece of advice. If someone's looking to jump, like I always look at Coachella brands and I'm like, "God, it would be so freaking cool to plan a Coachella activation or do one of these things." It's such a different world, but it is an inspirational world for me. What would a best piece of advice you would give to someone that wants to maybe jump from one side of the ship, from the B to the C?

Paulina Giusti:

It's the same fundamentals. The skillsets are there. They're very transferable. Perhaps the one thing I would just suggest is going into the role assuming you know nothing about B2B. Just pretend it's something in the back of your mind and approach B2C with just a clean POV, if that makes sense. I did feel like sometimes I was leaning so hard in my experience of B2B that it wasn't letting me just take a clearer look at what's possible in B2C. And so I think know that you can always lean on those skills and lived experience, but just go in with open arms and embrace a lot of the differences. Because like I said, they aren't many when it comes to sort of the tactical planning, but it makes you think about things differently.

While I didn't have experience doing security lines or security planning or working with the local police department and Homeland Security, all of that was a whole new world to me and a part of me was, "But I can always lean back." We leaned into emergency protocols and whatnot in the B2B space. I just need to think back on the table stakes of it all. If you lean into the information that's being brought to you, it doesn't have to be comparative, it can be complementary.

Felicia Asiedu:

You kind of mentioned at the start that the event has grown where you're seeing B2B coming into the space. How is that working out? The biggest thing I've gone to and I'm invested in is Cannes. I could relate to what you're saying and that is changing. Last year it was 50% B2B, 50% B2C in the actual fest. So how is B2B entering your space?

Paulina Giusti:

I have two perspectives on this. One being business gets done where there are cool things happening. When you're bringing in B2B entrepreneurs and leaders of the space, you can have an adjacent social experience or call it fan activated experience. I think that brings value to the business conversation. We're working with some of the top brands, we're partners to some of the top brands. How are there other ways for us to have business conversations that aren't necessarily on the show floor, but perhaps in the morning with a smaller private stage and then a networking reception and maybe a couple private meet and greets with some of our top talent. So, as you think about it, it's really to just enhance already existing business but just in a different way. And so it's done at a lot of B2C events, these third-party organizations like the Paddock Club at F1, it's this elevated experience, but it's predominantly attended by a lot of brand sponsorships and B2B conversations and it may not be promoted as such, but I think that's the service it provides.

There's the transient experience of Fanatics Fest New York, but then what is the business experience of that as well? And we have partnerships with other organizations that have existing, call it summits in the industry that we're pairing down and taking some of that programming and featuring it on some of our stages. I think there's already a lot of really good sticky content, really cool content that we're featuring and some really unique experiences. At the end of the day, there's so much happening the week of Fanatics Fest. We have SBs, the Dodgers are in town against the Yankees, there's a huge WWE experience and then FIFA World Cup. So tying all of that together, it would be a huge miss to not bring the B2B relationship-building, transactional business conversations, it would be a miss to not reflect that in our programming.

Felicia Asiedu:

And it doesn't feel forced. It's natural and organic.

Paulina Giusti:

Yes. It's invite only. It's a very curated list of business owners, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and there's a lot of crossover. A lot of former athletes are now entrepreneurs. We have a lot of talent that are coming in that own businesses. So it's a unique cross opportunity for those worlds to collide in a business-to-business type of way.

Rachel Andrews:

That's like a whole nother podcast of how to activate B2C events, right? I feel like there's so many ways you can do it. All the fringe events that happen or bringing your customers with you to a VIP experience. So it's a customer-relationship building aspect of it. There's so much that can be done. Well, I think, Paulina, we could talk for hours just because we love you and there's so much you could cover, but I think we're going to end there for today. I think just as a recap for our listeners, is there any final thoughts you want to bring to the table for our folks listening?

Paulina Giusti:

I gained some of the best skills and created some of the best relationships during my time at Cvent, so it's really special for me to come back and have these conversations with you. I attribute a lot of the success of where I am right now to that experience, and anyone who's thinking about dipping their toe in the water of B2C, I think go for it. It can feel really daunting. It can feel like it's a really sexy experience, but at the same time, it's very much a parallel career to what so many of you are already doing in your B2B worlds. And if anyone ever has questions, I'm happy to answer LinkedIn questions or if you want to reach out to me on email, happy to do so and keep the conversation open and going.

Rachel Andrews:

When is Fanatics Fest? Where is it?

Paulina Giusti:

Fanatics Fest New York 2026 is at the Javits Center in Manhattan. It's taking place July 16th to the 19th. It is a family-friendly event, highly encouraged those with little ones to join. There's something for everyone, lots of panels, podcasts, meet and greets, photo ops, select merch drops and if you're in the collecting community, it's a really awesome collectors' event. We have over 250 dealers joining us this year. I should also mention all the leagues will be there, all of our league partners who are going to be putting on amazing experiences. So hope to see you all. I wish I had a special promo code that I could drop. I'll do a follow-up with that.

Rachel Andrews:

Love that. Thanks for joining us today. It's been awesome. I will shameless plug, you guys should fly, our attendees, you should fly from Cvent Connect in Nashville straight to the Javits Center in New York since they're back-to-back events. So you could just go from on fan to the next from your B2B to B2C experiences. Had to plug that. But thanks P. for joining. We miss you on the podcast and we're glad that we had this full circle moment together.

Paulina Giusti:

Thanks guys.

Rachel Andrews:

Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you on the next one. Bye.

Alyssa Peltier:

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu:

Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates, and some extra doses of inspiration.

Camille Arnold:

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.