UP264 Anatomy of a Saint

Who, or what, is a Southampton (Saints) fan? It's a trickier question than it first appears, because when the sports business conversation moves to describing fans, it often refers to them as a homogenous blob of cliches and replica shirt wearing stereotypes. In reality, obviously, they are a collection of individual people, with different reasons for supporting a club. This makes pleasing them difficult. And this is the job of today's guest Sarah Batters, Director of Marketing and Partnerships of Premier League club Southampton.Do the normal marketing tropes of funnels and customer acquisition strategies apply to the tribal nature of sports fandom? And is a Saints fan also a Saints Women's team fan?With Sarah is Asa Sherrill, Senior Vice President of Product and Design at InfrontX, the digital media consultancy whose clients include PGA TOUR, Verizon, NASCAR, FOX, Chelsea FC, AS Roma, the International Ski Federation among many others.This is a build on a previous episode, Elements of Value, which is referenced in the conversation. You can find that here: But Does Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs Work On A Wet Tuesday At Stoke?Don't forget, if you can get to London in the evening of Wednesday September 21st we're holding our first live event, Wise UP, the Unofficial Partner Web3 Brainstorm at The Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal Football Club. You can buy tickets to the event HERE. To find out more about it, subscribe to the Unofficial Partner newsletter, that goes direct to thousands of people across sport every Thursday.  Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.