In Focus: Meet Fourth Wall – The Fan Engagement Experts
Fourth Wall are a tech-led fan engagement provider who help sports clubs and associations by supplying the tools and services they need to grow and monetise their fanbase.
Who are Fourth Wall?
We provide deeper brand experiences across a whole series of touch points, from ticketing and stadium access control technology to next-gen fan engagement and subscription management platforms, tailored membership delivery solutions and a totally bespoke merchandise offering that covers everything from product design and manufacture to fulfilment and distribution.
We are unique in the fact that all our services are under one roof and delivered by a team that have spent many years working within sports clubs, mostly at Premier League level. We have a real understanding of the challenges faced by clubs, which has led us to develop an eco-system of services to solve problems we know exist.
Who do you work with and how do you help your clients grow?
We have 50-plus clients across a whole variety of professional sports, such as Premier League football clubs, domestic and international rugby associations, and first-class county cricket clubs. Each client uses a different mix of services to solve their technology, engagement and ticketing challenges.
When creating Fourth Wall in 2010, we set out to become a one-stop shop for clubs and organisations, offering a complete ecosystem of solutions via a comprehensive range of essential services. Our expert in-house team cover all disciplines – tech, strategy, creative, content, marketing and merchandise and we even have a dedicated in-house customer services team to alleviate bottlenecks found across high-demand fan services.
Our tech is unrivalled by the very fact it has been created to solve specific problems within sports clubs. With vast expertise in building total end-to-end solutions, the team has spent years focusing on developing membership and ticketing systems that take services online to not only lessen admin demands, but also help engage, understand, grow and monetise their fanbases by delivering deeper brand experiences and solving legacy problems in ticketing and stadium access.
Another core area of Fourth Wall’s ecosystem is our dedicated merchandise solution. We’ve been supplying sports clubs across the globe with high-quality and relevant products for over 15 years, creating everything from special commemorative pieces to membership and hospitality welcome packs, hard and soft goods for retail and even one-off partner acquisition pieces to engage potential club sponsors. From ideation and design, though to manufacturing, warehousing and fulfilment, our end-to-end merchandise solution takes the stress out of engaging fans with physical products.
Why have you invested so heavily in creating your own technology?
Many clubs, sporting organisations and large venues still struggle to harness the best in technology to make their lives easier and get the most out of their relationships with fans. We identified huge gaps in the market for tech solutions that could future-proof these problems and solve the many pain points, making it simpler, easier and more efficient for operators to run their membership and loyalty schemes, coordinate event and matchday ticketing, and engage, harness and monetise their fanbases.
Working inside clubs for so long, we have been in many of these frustrating, time and admin-intensive situations ourselves and understand the issues faced. Combining our knowledge, experience and tech expertise has enabled us to develop specific solutions, eliminating margin for error, increasing security and saving admin time to help clubs capitalise and make more out of their fanbase.
A key USP is that our tech never stands still, we’re always working to enhance our offering and develop solutions to the problems our clients are dealing with.
You’ve talked about enhanced engagement and using technology for building communities; what does that mean?
Our membership technology is unique in its approach to driving next generation engagement and rewarding interaction. The platform is packed full of features, such as a bespoke loyalty and rewards programme, social feed with fan-to-fan and club-to-fan content sharing, live chat, closed and public groups to create topical communities, immersive gamification, content delivery engine for editorial, video and podcasts, live map with check-in functionality to drive and reward footfall to club and partner locations, event ticket sales functionality, dedicated channels for supporters’ clubs to run their own areas, a bespoke e-commerce solution and a multi-channel customer service solution.
Our unique fan profiling tool allows us to build a picture of the user and identify what they’re interested in at the point of sign-up, giving the club and its partners valuable data to tailor the comms and experience for the fan.
The live social feed not only creates a safe space for supporters to share their own content and experiences but also delivers a new partner activation tool whereby the sponsor can create a unique two-way communication with the fans, whilst tapping into the loyalty programme to reward the user for their interaction. Partners can create challenges, competitions, chat groups, polls and so much more, enabling them to form a bond with the fans rather than just being a logo on an asset.
The built-in loyalty and rewards programme gives fans something back every time they interact, driving higher levels of engagement and greater dwell time. Reward points can be used against a whole host of benefits, such as discounts, content and competition unlocking, digital and physical collectibles, access to experiences and so much more.
Tell us about your ticketing technology and how it differs to others?
Our ticketing technology consists of a ticketing enterprise, ticket delivery mobile app and venue access control systems. As with all our products, they have been designed to work together seamlessly, or as stand-alone solutions that can integrate into a client’s existing tech estates. Designed by a team with decades of largescale ticketing experience, Alloc8 is driven by a deep understanding of the fans, as well as the key business users inside clubs.
Our technology supports functions across the organisation, underpinning sales, service and safety operations. As well as recruiting directly from the heart of the industry, Alloc8 works closely with a network of leaders, subject matter experts, industry authorities, fans and focus groups from every level of sport.
Ticketing Enterprise – Our experience offers us unique insights into the limitations of traditional ticketing, allowing us to focus on fresh solutions to age-old problems. Flexible subscription ticketing, multi-team and multifacility campus delivery, real-time interactive data visualisations, online accessibility services, intelligent travel and car park management, a powerful discounting engine and in-built fan communication tools are some of the features that set Alloc8 apart. Logic-driven wizards guide business users to mitigate human error, and a focus on repeatable models, streamline sales and service operations.
Ticket Delivery & Transfer – Mobile App – Alloc8 offers unrivalled ticket management, security and transfer capabilities, also serving as a communications tool between fans and event operators. Whilst fans receive real-time service updates and personalised promotional offers directly through their ticket wallet, safety operations teams get real-time location insights to help inform security deployments and coordination. Bolstered further through soft ticket check functionality and anti-touting features, our app adds significant data-driven value to event operators, while delighting fans through enhanced user experience.
Venue Access Control – As campus operations are becoming more commonplace, we set out to build a solution designed specifically to manage multiple venues with often shared travel and parking facilities, running concurrent and sequential events. From the back office, you can also send unique video sequences and sponsorship images to on or offsite hospitality, car park, fanzone, museum and stadium entrances in real-time. Perimeter, primary and secondary access is managed by a combination of handheld PDAs, tablets and fully integrated turnstiles supporting rotating QR, RFID and NFC tickets, feeding deep crowd-flow insights directly to interactive event control dashboards. Our turnstiles also have CCTV cameras and facial recognition options.
For more information visit: www.fourthwallcreative.com
Email: info@fourthwallcreative.com
Tel: 0151 353 7310
