Fanweave: a labour of love from leadership
If you’re here, then you’re probably already interested in the Fanweave platform and its many benefits. But for argument’s sake, let’s start with the basics…
Fanweave is a new and powerful end-to-end marketing platform providing unprecedented visibility and access to fans and their networks.
Fanweave’s prime offering is a new and unique “fan-to-fan” marketing channel; where businesses, brands and artists can directly see, mobilise, thank and reward their biggest fans for their support. But to truly understand what sets Fanweave apart from its competitors, and to appreciate the full value of its fan-to-fan mentality, look no further than its background and senior leadership team.
With combined backgrounds in the industries of both music and sport and a wealth of experience between them, professional expertise is not in short supply among Martin Heath, Simon Bazalgette and Paul Fisher.
Among other accolades: Martin found early success pioneering electronic label Rhythm King, before the digital revolution encouraged him to innovate combining pop culture and technology; Simon founded GVS – an advisory, investment and business services firm operating in the sports, leisure, media and entertainment sectors – and was one of the founding directors of digital broadcast network, Music Choice Europe; and Paul was Chief Executive and Managing Director of Jockey Club Racecourses. Read more about the team’s professional backgrounds here.
But more than just prowess, what this trio shares is a genuine, earnest and raw commitment to what it is to be a true fan of something.
Fan perspectives
A self-professed lifelong diehard music fan, Simon credits his work with Music Choice for broadening his appreciation and understanding of a range of genres. He was also involved with Camden’s Roundhouse, on the development board. The Roundhouse, as well as just being a top venue for performers, acts as a charity for training up young people in the performing arts.
All of Simon’s sons are involved in music, either as musicians or promoters, and he himself has his own mailing list of 50-60 like-minded fans called the “random gig generator”.
Describing his heavy involvement in the industry, Simon says it has always been an area of passion, but specifically always from a fan’s perspective – even everything he has done from a business point of view
“I love to see creative people doing great stuff, and to help and support them and see them do well.”
– Simon Bazalgette
As for Paul, while he says sport and music have been the two main passions in his life he admits that “if you take a look at my school reports, maybe I wasn’t always the best at other subjects – but I was always wanting to be outside playing sport.”
Both areas of passion often start for their fans in this way, as early as school days, which perhaps might explain the level of affinity many music and sports fans feel with those areas.
Paul has been particularly taken with the additional opportunities technological advancements have provided sport and music events.
A football match that previously 40,000 people could see live, can now be watched by millions around the world on platforms or in settings that closely mimic the real deal.
This level of personal investment from a fan perspective is key, since the heart of Fanweave’s work is giving the power – currently wielded by big corporations – back to the artists, the creators, the clubs and their fans.
The collaboration between Martin, Simon and Paul relies on a shared vision of creating a platform that will actively improve their beloved music and sports industries, and indeed extend to other sectors and platforms.
“Giving that knowledge back to the fan, missing out the big corporations in the middle and giving the fan direct access to the club or artists through the Fanweave platform… to me, that is sport and music at their purist level.”
– Paul Fisher
The worlds of music and sport overlap in the nature of the importance of their fandoms. Fanweave presents a huge opportunity to give a lot of knowledge back to the clubs, the artists or sports stars, about who their true fans are, while providing the fans themselves the chance to regain control over their own data.
Paul says that “a fan by its very nature is an engaged customer.” It seems obvious when put plainly, yet to date both the sport and music industries have in many ways neglected to harness the power of their fans, or mobilise them as a network.
Why Fanweave needs to exist
Social media and communications is the outcome of the last 20 years of the internet, so naturally it’s a very powerful medium. One major advantage that the evolution of social media has created for music and sport, is the wide access to idols it has created for fans. This automatically creates greater engagement. Then of course there is the access to huge numbers of fans globally, which just wouldn’t have been doable pre-internet.
But the problem is, every social media platform competes for attention, creating data that’s proprietary to them – so their data never goes anywhere else but to advertisers. For the people and brands trying to use them, they only ever get the data from that network and its influence.
Founder Martin’s question was; “how do we create something that would integrate all these different applications together to give one view of truth to clients, and also to the fans themselves?”
In order to do that, Martin had to build something that would be able to operate across multiple social networking platforms, giving the broadest possible reach for people to communicate, and for clients to be able to understand which channel was producing best results.
Utilising this unprecedented marketing intelligence is vital in Fanweave’s mission to give the power back to the people, as it were.
Putting the power back in the hands of creators and fans, and increasing two-way communication between the two, informs everything Fanweave is setting out to do.
This is about so much more than capitalising on a gap in the market or a savvy business opportunity – both of which Fanweave also is. It is about three innovative thinkers taking a lifelong commitment to being fans, in every sense of the word, and focusing that on giving back. When speaking with all three of Martin, Simon and Paul, one thing above all else is resoundingly clear; Fanweave is a passion project, a labour of love, created for fans by fans.
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