Was the first year a success?

Blog #3
Five events, thousands of people & plenty of mistakes later - here are my honest reflections on whether our first year in business was successful.

Introduction

My only focus for year one was simple: is there product‑market fit for large‑scale social cricket events? Ie: could this idea actually work as a business? 

The easiest way to measure that was attendance. If 1,000 people came to an event, I’d call it a success. By that yardstick, three out of five events hit the mark, with an average attendance of over 1,000. On paper, that suggests we achieved product‑market fit.

But numbers only tell half the story.

Attendance: Proof of Concept

Our goal was 1,000 attendees per event. We fell short at Brookes (550) and Edinburgh (900), but Durham (1,300), Newcastle (1,500) and Exeter (1,800) far exceeded expectations.

Exeter was a particular success. I’ll never forget the launch of the general admission tickets. I was at home with my parents, casually putting the event live before cooking supper. Ten minutes later, curiosity got the better of me and I thought I’d check how many tickets had sold, 10, 20? I refreshed the page: 200. Refresh again: 250, we were all watching in disbelief. By the end of the evening, over 400 tickets had sold.

It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had - for about 5 minutes, until quickly turning into an overwhelming feeling of responsibility. Suddenly it all felt very real. That night I lay awake staring at the ceiling, my brain running through every possible disaster. For the first time, I felt the true weight of running something this big.

The world has a way of keeping you grounded as four days later came Brookes - an event which was far from where I hoped the attendance would be. I had a gut feeling that it would be a problematic location: teams had dropped out, the ground had pulled out, the dates clashed with exams, payments were late, but by the time I thought to act, it was too late. That lesson stuck, and I applied it to Cardiff before it became another misstep.

Event (Dis)organisation?

If attendance proved demand, organisation exposed my inexperience.

The truth is, my preparation wasn’t where it needed to be. No checklists, no systems, just me juggling everything. I didn’t really know what I needed to do as I’d never taken the time out to learn, by being so focused on getting people to the event that I hadn’t thought about what may be needed to run one! 

Post-Match photo with Hamish (Head of Event) Bombombini Crickitini cc vs Young Turks cc

The first chaotic event was pretty tough to experience at the time, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. But even in that moment of despair looking on, I knew it was the wake-up call I needed. In hindsight, it was probably the most important event of the year as every scenario that went wrong, we were then able to put right in one of the following events.

The lucky thing was that most of the organisational problems were invisible to customers, or easily fixable - by our final event it finally felt like we knew what we had to do, I was even able to take a step back to play in one of the matches with my mates who were still in 4th year!

Now, with those lessons in the bank, I’ve started building the missing foundations: checklists, processes, advice from experienced event managers. I’m even exploring freelance staff to strengthen the team.

Customer Experience

Feedback from attendees was largely positive, helped by the novelty factor and the lack of anything similar to compare it to. But I know we were only scratching the surface.

An action shot from the Edinburgh Event, where we were very lucky with a bluebird day!

The marquees weren’t yet the slick hospitality vibe I imagined. Bar queues and patchy wine service needed to be improved. The weather didn’t always help either, which reminded me that the events need to feel special even when it’s grey or windy.

The cricket itself was another challenge. In London we’d had four pitches; at these events we were limited to one. This creates a difficult balancing act between the amount of cricket played, the time taken and the number of teams. By our final event, adding two qualified umpires sped things up and improved the flow, but it’s still an area to refine.

Next year, this is the part I’m most excited about. We will have a greater budget to not only improve the running of the event, but to start creating those “you won’t believe it” moments which people tell everyone about. I would like the events to feel polished, professional, and unforgettable.

Final Thoughts:

So, was year one a success? Not perfect. But absolutely. Because it proved this idea can work - and laid the foundations for everything to come.

Going forward, success won’t just be about numbers. It will be about delivering the most enjoyable social sporting events possible, building on the customer experience and event organisation.

For me personally, success will also mean learning to delegate, so I can focus on improving the series as a whole while exploring new opportunities.

My go to phrase of the summer when asked how they went was: “All things considered… they went well”, the considerations being that I’d never organised a large-scale event before, let alone five in a month! After a summer of working on the business, I’m now looking forward to taking all of our learnings from the first year to build on the success of our first year!