Last weekend, UEFA officially released the theme song "Fire" for this year's European Championship, and as the song title suggests, this summer, the passion for football will ignite every inch of Germany. From the square in front of Cologne Cathedral to the Roman Platz in Frankfurt, fans will come together to celebrate this football extravaganza.
However, how do you get the tickets you want? Where else can I go after watching the game? These issues have become the focus of attention for fans. Major platforms, including the official one, have also launched packages, wanting to get a piece of the pie in this grand event.
Similarly, UEFA's various ticketing planning and business cooperation around the European Cup are also worth learning and thinking about in the industry.
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Text / Yang Yumeng
Editor / Guo Yang
01 UEFA's true identity: top ticket seller
The opening match of the European Championship will be played on June 14, 2024 at the Allianz Arena in Munich, and the 24 top teams will soon be gearing up for the Delaunay Cup.
But for fans, the competition for the European Championship began as early as October last year.
As one of the important sources of revenue for the European Cup, how to maximize ticket revenue is obviously UEFA's top priority, and UEFA, which is well versed in "hunger marketing", may be the world's top ticket seller.
As in previous editions, more than 80% of the 2.7 million tickets for the 51 matches of the European Championship will be available to the public and fans of the 24 teams. In addition, UEFA has provided 7% of the tickets to broadcasters and sponsors, 4% to the hospitality programme, 4% to the German Sports Board and 3% for itself, its member associations and its guests.
Among them, the draw for the first round of tickets for Euro 2024 has already taken place between October 3 and October 26, 2023. Ticket prices range from €30 for the cheapest group stage to €1,000 for the most expensive ticket to the final, with only 380,000 seats on sale in the lowest fare category in total.
The popularity of the European Championship was confirmed in the first round of draws, with UEFA saying that more than 20 million requests were received in the first round of sales, and more than 1.2 million tickets were sold, including more than 2.2 million tickets for the final, 33 times the capacity of the 74,000-seat Olympic Stadium in Berlin.
For this tournament, UEFA has also optimised the allocation of tickets based on the feedback received after previous European Championships. Those who failed to apply in the initial draw are automatically entered into UEFA's 'Fan First' programme list and will be alerted to the availability of new tickets.
The official second-round ticket draw begins on 2 December 2023 after the group stage draw, and fans will need to select their team to draw the same number of seats for each participating national association, the vast majority of which will be provided to fans of that team.
During this phase, UEFA sold 1 million tickets and received more than 30 million ticket applications from 206 countries. It's worth mentioning that a new Prime seat category was introduced in this release, which is more than double the highest price of Euro 2020.
The remaining nearly 500,000 tickets will be added to the ticket draw in March '24, after the play-offs of the remaining three participating countries have ended.
The enthusiasm of fans and the strong demand for tickets have directly contributed to the boom in the second-hand market - according to The Athletic, after the first round of draws, one platform claimed to have 20 tickets for the final, each priced at 43,500 pounds (400,000 yuan), which is 49 times the face value.
The shrewd UEFA clearly doesn't want scalpers to make money, and the official ticket resale platform went live in early March this year.
Surprisingly, however, the strong demand for tickets from fans was not met, with only 39,398 tickets resold through the UEFA platform in the first phase, the lowest ever recorded for a European Championship. At the same time, more than 250,000 fans lined up on the official platform, and all tickets were sold out within hours.
Source: UEFA official website
Soon after, UEFA opened its resale platform again and previewed the "ultimate ticket grab" in early May, with more than 100,000 tickets resold on the official resale platform, tickets sold after the stadium configuration was confirmed, and a large number of restricted view tickets sold at discounted prices, on a first-come, first-served basis.
According to many fans who participated in the final ticket grabbing, "It is 10,000 times more difficult to grab than any concert, and there is nothing left when I enter the website."
UEFA announced that if there are remaining tickets on the eve of the tournament, an announcement will be made on the official platform. In addition, reserved tickets for the knockout stage will be sold based on each team's qualification for the respective tournament, which will go on sale from June 23, the start of the knockout stage.
Source: UEFA official website
Since the first batch of ticket draws began in October last year, UEFA has been selling tickets in batches to keep fans in check. Fans who can't get low-priced tickets can only turn their attention to the expensive and unreliable second-hand ticket market, or expensive but better hospitality tickets.
02 It's not that second-hand tickets can't afford to buy, hospitality tickets are more cost-effective
Three years ago, the European Championship, which was delayed for a year, ushered in "suffocated" fans, but at that time, the impact of the epidemic still existed, UEFA's original plan to sell 3 million tickets fell through, and each stadium had to control attendance between 25% and 50%, and only Hungary's Puskas Arena was 100% open, which made the already tight ticket shortage even worse.
At that time, the expensive VIP box with "guaranteed seats" was considered by UEFA for priority capacity policy, and it also received complaints and dissatisfaction from many fans.
However, even so, hospitality tickets are more reasonably priced and experiential than second-hand tickets. The high price and uncertainty of the second-hand ticket market have discouraged many fans, and hospitality tickets not only provide a better viewing experience, but also come with many value-added services, and have gradually become the first choice for many fans.
On the well-known second-hand platform viagogo, it can be seen that the first-class seats in the finals have basically reached the price of more than 3,000 euros, which is more than three times the original price, and the ticket price in the Prime area, which is similar to the hospitality ticket, is more than 8,000 euros.
Source: viagogo
Sports marketing company SPORTFIVE and digital sports experience platform FORTIUS have joined forces to create the 2024 Hospitality Experience AG, which is the official UEFA Hospitality Ticket holder.
图源：Hospitality Experience
Instead of buying a ticket, fans can customize their own products in a variety of ways, such as the "Choose Your Choice Series", "My Team Series" or "Venue Series", as well as the "Final Series", which includes the semi-finals of Dortmund and Munich and the final in Berlin.
At the same time, different stadiums and games are also equipped with different levels of seats and boxes, etc., and different boxes are equipped with different catering services, so fans can match their favorite product categories according to their budget. In addition, there is VIP access and exclusive parking services, which greatly enhance the viewing experience.
图源：Hospitality Experience/看个比赛
The author has experienced the entire World Cup in Qatar, and the most painful thing is the long walk in and out of the stadium every time, and the fans with hospitality tickets can go directly to the nearest parking lot to the stadium through the VIP channel, and of course, the food in the hospitality area also left a deep impression on the author.
However, behind the high-quality service, the price is also quite "beautiful", with the lowest single ticket price of 1,250 euros (9,773 yuan), which is about 40% more expensive than the 2022 World Cup; The most expensive single ticket for the final reached 15,000 euros (117,000 yuan).
图源：Hospitality Experience
In order to better serve Chinese fans, in China, the Watch a Match App has been designated as the exclusive sales agent of the 2024 Euro 2024 Official Hospitality Program in Greater China, selling the 2024 Euro 2024 Official Hospitality Program. This is also the first time that the European Cup has sold a real hospitality product ToC in China.
The contents of the packages vary, but the localized operation and sales services also save the fans the trouble of "translation", and at the same time, they are equipped with services such as hotels and visas for fans, and they also provide a one-stop solution to several services necessary for travel.
Source: Watch a game
Krypton also consulted with him about the sale of hospitality tickets, but the other party said, "There is a confidentiality agreement with HE and cannot be disclosed at this time."
In addition to the official partners, various European Cup viewing groups have also been recruited since the end of last year, and the main content is also watching the game + tourism. Hardcore sports, for example, includes different itineraries for the group stage and semi-finals, with different pricing depending on the number of games and itineraries.
Source: Hardcore Sports
Krypton learned from it that there are basically more than 20 people registered for each group stage, and more than 10 people are currently registered for the finals & semi-finals, and it is expected that all of them will reach 80-100 fans. However, the organizers also told Krypton that the biggest difficulty faced by the team this time was not actually the ticket, but the visa issue.
According to Krypton, as of now, Germany's Schengen signing appointment has been scheduled for late June at the earliest, and it is basically impossible to catch up with the group stage, but there is still the last hope for fans who want to catch up with the final knockout and finals.
However, the high ticket price has also made many ordinary fans sigh that such a European Cup seems to be getting farther and farther away from fans.
03 How to change the bottlenecked European Cup?
In the new era of entertainment with experiential consumption as the mainstream, a form of on-site sports consumption like the European Cup, which fully integrates entertainment, socialization and spectatorship, will surely attract more new and old fans to experience it and become a new way for them to show their social status and enjoy life.
For UEFA, the planning and operation at the ticketing level have played a flower, and the reason behind it is also because the development of the European Cup has fallen into a bottleneck in recent years.
Since 1992, Euro revenue has grown from €41 million to €1.9 billion in 2020, a growth rate of 463%.
However, from the growth chart, it can be found that the 2012 European Cup did not achieve growth compared to 08 years, until the 16 European Cup expanded from 16 teams to 24 teams today, and the European Cup once again achieved a significant increase in revenue, of which the ticket level revenue increased by 97.7%.
However, despite this, ticket revenue still accounts for a small share of the entire Euro Championship revenue, accounting for only 14% of Euro 2016 and 7.9% of Euro 2020 due to the pandemic. It's no surprise that OEC is now looking for ways to buy tickets and thus increase ticket revenue.
In addition to in-depth development in ticketing, revenue improvement at the commercial level is also a key direction for UEFA.
So far, this year's European Championship in Germany has 13 official global sponsors, including leading Chinese brands such as Adidas, Lidl, Hisense, Coca-Cola Zero, VisitQatar, Alipay+ and BYD.
Five official state sponsors, including Deutsche Telekom, Bitburger, Deutsche Bahn, Ergo and Wiesenhof, have further increased UEFA's event revenues.
It is worth mentioning that Deutsche Bahn is the official sponsor of the European Championship, and during the European Championship, fans with European Championship tickets can enjoy free public transport in the host city and region from 6 am on match day to 6 pm the next day.
Previously, UEFA Championship CEO Martin Kallen said that Euro 2024 in Germany this summer will be the most commercially successful. "Our goal is to generate more than 2.4 billion euros in revenue."
However, this figure pales in comparison to the estimated $7.5 billion in revenue earned by FIFA through the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Under this pressure and competition, UEFA has other plans.
As early as 2022, many foreign media such as "As" newspaper have revealed that UEFA is considering expanding the European Cup again, from the current 24 teams to 32 teams - the expansion of the scale of the event brings more games, more expensive broadcast rights, and more commercial opportunities, which is obviously the real purpose of UEFA.
Source: UEFA official website
Although the expansion plan is still being discussed, it shows that UEFA, which is in a bottleneck, is constantly looking for new breakthroughs in order to further generate revenue.
Against the backdrop of challenges and pressures from traditional competitions, UEFA has demonstrated unique business acumen, through innovative ticketing strategies, expanded commercial partnerships and refined fan services, which have also made the European Championship a unique attraction and commercial value among global sporting events.
In short, Euro 2024 is not only a top-level football competition, but also a business feast, so let's look forward to the arrival of this grand event.