Fandom Unpacked

The Year in Fandom: How Sports, Culture & Entertainment Leaders Build Fans

• Situation • Season 1 • Episode 22

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If you care about how fandom really grows, this year-end review is your field guide. We pulled threads from dozens of candid conversations across sports, Broadway, music, family entertainment, and venue operations to reveal seven clear themes that separate fleeting hype from durable community.

We start with growing audiences: the U.S. Open’s free Fan Week proves sampling converts, while the Formula 1 Exhibition shows how taking the show to the city unlocks new audiences. That same logic challenges Broadway to think bigger than fixed seat counts, with live capture and streaming as discovery engines that feed the box office rather than compete with it. And we dismantle lazy assumptions about women’s sports with The Gist’s blueprint for reaching underserved fans by widening the lane, not narrowing it.

Legacy, when handled with care, becomes a growth asset. PBS and Feld Entertainment explain how to honor nostalgia while delivering something new enough to belong to today’s audience. Opera lovers remind us what lifelong loyalty sounds like when a performance clicks and imprints for decades. On the artist side, the economics of touring and social access make fan relationships the main stage; from the GRAMMYs’ vantage point to music cruises built for connection, the artists who treat fans as partners build careers that last.

Technology runs through it all, with AI emerging as the new discovery layer. The job now is to make your content machine-readable so it surfaces where people ask for it, while keeping tech focused on enabling human care. Hospitality over scripts is the mandate: Southwest’s trust-in-people approach, BroadwayCon’s simple meetups that turn strangers into friends, and D23’s daily listening across superfans show how authenticity scales. Finally, we go inside the venue: “street-to-seat” design raises expectations on speed, choice, and sensory experience, and local identity, like New Orleans pride at Pelicans games, turns moments into memories.

Walk the lot. Time the lines. Watch the fans. That’s the habit we’re taking into next season, along with a commitment to keep the conversation practical, human, and loud. If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with a colleague who builds audiences, and leave a review to help more fan-first leaders find us.

 A big thank you to all of our guests, including Nicole Kankam, Jonathan Linden, Jacie deHoop, Robert Diamond, Alex Birsh, Ruthie Fierberg, Amy Wigler, Jim Moseley, Melanie Broussalion, Eric Bornemann, John Loken, Jeff Cuellar, Janette Roush, Andrew Recinos, Andrew Harvell, Melissa Anelli, Michael Vargo, Tina Heney, Elisa Padilla, and Mel Barry.

Recorded December 2025
Hosts: Damian Bazadona, CEO & Founder, Situation & Peter Yagecic, Founder, A Mind at Work Consulting

Damian Bazadona:

Peter, if there is one thing I took from this last year of interviews, it's that it is a very exciting time to be in the business of fandom.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, it is, Damian. I mean, everybody that touched this project this year, from our guests to our guest hosts to our listeners, everybody came to the table with a level of enthusiasm that was honestly really inspiring.

Damian Bazadona:

And after going back and listening to all of the hours of footage of interviews that we had gone through, I am beyond excited that we finally can introduce our year-end review.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, me too. I mean, it was a big lift, but what occurred to me as we listened to everything was that even though everybody had a kind of unique take on fandom, there were things that resonated and kind of kept coming up over and over again. And I think what we what we're excited to share with our listeners today is bringing some of those threads together so that we can make that point even stronger. People they heard originally one-on-one, they're gonna hear them together today.

Damian Bazadona:

It's like the highlight reel of like the greatest minds in live entertainment.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, or like our year-end rap that everybody's doing. But but this is really one that's worth listening to, I promise. Hey, it's Peter. I'm Damian, and this is the Fandom Unpacked Year-End Review. All right, Damian, our first theme is building audiences. Why did you want to start there?

Damian Bazadona:

Well, for the last 20 years running situation, our entire focus as an agency is on helping live experience brands build audiences. And I thought what was so exciting about so many interviews we had was how so many of the interviews went to a place of talking about their own excitement, their own efforts towards building audiences, expanding the tent, expanding accessibility. That was a theme that I thought came out time and time again.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, because in addition to loving their fans, they are also responsible for selling a lot of tickets to those experiences.

Damian Bazadona:

This is why I loved our conversation with Nicole Cam Cam from the U.S. Tennis Association. She runs a marketing for the U.S. Open. Here she is.

Nicole Kankam:

Our biggest opportunity for fan growth that we've been investing in is something called Fan Week. And so at the time when we were introducing a free product that maybe could have been on par to our main draw product, there were definitely folks on the revenue side that were concerned that we were giving away our product for free, that we were promoting a free product that people would choose over the main draw. And, you know, it was a hefty investment that we were making, that we were not generating immediate revenue from, that there were concerns across the organization on whether that was a wise investment. But I can sit here and say that it absolutely has paid off. You know, what we saw in those early years is that actually people came to Fan Week and then wanted to come back to main draw. As a matter of fact, two-thirds when we surveyed fans to Fan Week, two-thirds of the audience that were coming for Fan Week said, I'm coming back for main draw. And only half of those had already bought their tickets.

Peter Yagecic:

Oh yeah. She trusted her gut uh uh and put fans first and it it paid off.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, and to someone who goes, I think I've gone every year for the last uh 15 years probably, um, you could just feel the growth of that event. And it's it's exciting. So so let's go from tennis to a let's call it the other end of the spectrum, the rapidly growing world of F1, the smell of the rubber, the sound of the cars, the speed, all of it, the fact that people have to get up in the middle of the night sometimes to watch these grand prizes because they're happening on the other side of the planet. Yeah, I really enjoyed our conversation with Jonathan Linden. Uh, he's from Roundroom Live, and as you remember, the producer of the Formula One exhibition, which effectively takes F1 around the world and into cities so people who can't get to the race can get closer to the action.

Jonathan Linden:

I think there's a reason that it's become so popular. It's very exciting. It's it's sort of it can be overwhelming of just how loud it is, and sort of if you get close enough, sort of the the smell of the tires and the crowds. The the challenge is obviously these races are in and the Grand Prix are in different time zones, and it can be a challenge if you're in one spot. Sometimes you're watching these in the middle of the night. Uh there's something sort of interesting about uh, you know, I have to keep strange hours to follow this amazing sport that I'm interested in. Um, but it's um, you know, it's it was one of the features of the of the exhibition and experience of how do fans get an opportunity to truly enjoy F1 if it's if it's a little tricky, uh depending on where you are, to see all the Grand Prix on TV.

Peter Yagecic:

I mean, I think they were so smart to bring the experience to fans wherever they were, even if you never get to see a Grand Prix in person. Damian, did did you get a chance to see the exhibition? Yeah, I did. I think it's actually quite awesome and and very smart.

Damian Bazadona:

And and the idea of bringing the experience to the fans, I think is genius. And I think it is a perfect vehicle to opening doors.

Peter Yagecic:

It makes me think of Jacie deHoop, who founded The GIST. Uh The Gist, for those who don't know, was founded to lift exposure to women's sports. It's a whole media network. And they are literally not just opening doors, they're creating whole new pathways for an underserved market. Here's JC.

Speaker 14:

When we first came up with the concept, it was really born out of a pain point that myself and my co-founders experienced ourselves in just loving sports, but not necessarily feeling like it loves you back, not feeling like we had friends and particularly other female friends to talk about sports with, to connect through sports with, to watch sports with. We had heard a lot of like, we've tried that before. Women just aren't interested in sports. As there's been this tremendous growth in women's sports over the last few years, I think that female fans equaling women's sports is a bit um really like reductive. And I think that those two are often really conflated. Women love women's and men's sports, and men love women's and men's sports. In fact, male fans are really what's driving a lot of the growth in women's sports right now.

Peter Yagecic:

All right, I want to switch gears for a second from sports over to Broadway. It's an area that you and I have both worked in for many, many years. And uh, I thought that our conversation with the folks that cover the Broadway industry, the folks writing the news about Broadway, um, they were pretty consistent about the need to raise awareness on building new audiences.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, I think what's unique to Broadway is the their economics, their their finances are published weekly. So there's an urgency to how do we build new audiences when people are looking at financials that say, oh, the grosses aren't b aren't what they're supposed to be, right? You have your big hits and you have everybody else.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, it's not just hypothetical. They actually get a report card every week on how they're doing. Yeah, so there's there's urgency to it. I'm not quite as close to it as you are, but in our interview with Rob, uh Alex, and Ruthie, that was kind of our first go at a round table style interview for Fandom Unpacked. And, you know, the topic just kept coming to the top. Here's here's what uh Robert Diamond of Broadway World and Alex Birch of Playbill had to say.

Robert Diamond:

The more places to talk about Broadway the better, and the more people talking about Broadway the better, and the more places that people are talking about Broadway, the more likely they are to buy a Broadway ticket.

Alex Birsh:

How can we start to make you fall in love? And and how can we make sure that we can show you that this is in fact a show for you, and ultimately the overall message whatever you think Broadway is, it's not all that. Because you have a show for you out there, you just don't know about it yet.

Damian Bazadona:

I think Broadway has been a little bit slow to this conversation, and I think Ruthie Feerberg's point about the topic of streaming has probably never been more relevant.

Ruthie Fierberg:

I think we should be live streaming Broadway shows. You can't add seats to a Broadway theater. You can't do it. So how are we going to grow? I think you should be capturing, I think you should be specifically live streaming.

Peter Yagecic:

I want to move us on to the next theme that we heard a lot about, which was legacy. Uh Damian, I know you have kids. Um, I bet you're watching stuff now with your kids that you watched when you were a kid. How does that legacy of fandom impact you and your family life?

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, there's a fair number of brands that my kids interact with now that I grew up with. You know, the world of let's just say PBS. Oh yeah. You know, and so I find the conversation, which came up in a lot of our interviews. We talked a lot of what would say legacy brands. I just found it completely fascinating the challenge that's on their plate, how they connect with the past and kind of use that legacy to kind of connect towards new audiences.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, and I I think nobody talked about that more interestingly than Amy Wigler over at PBS, you know, really talking about the power of nostalgia.

Amy Wigler:

Your memories of PBS take you back to a time, it's it's visceral. We use nostalgia a lot to for fandom. It really is a wonderful thing. I want people to love us for who we are now. I want to lean into their love that they had for us in the past to remind them to check us out now. The biggest issue with a legacy brand is you will always love it for what it was, and what it is will never be what it was.

Peter Yagecic:

I want to stick with nostalgia for a second because Jim Mosley from Feld Entertainment, he really had a lot to say on that topic as well. They're the producers of an incredible slate of family entertainment from Disney on Ice to Monster Jam, and they're all across the country. Uh, and here's how they manage Legacy.

Jim Moseley:

Parents who are taking their kids to our events today probably saw events when they were kids. So there's a sense of emotion that definitely surfaces. And we want the parents to feel a sense of nostalgia for what they remember when they saw our show as kids and how they felt. But we want them to leave the show today that they're seeing with their own kids, feeling like they both just saw something completely new that none of them will ever forget.

Damian Bazadona:

Listen, to the credit of Feld Entertainment, um, I and as a parent who has lived through buying tickets to their events in in multiple cities across the country, I think this is a big part of their success. Their continued ability to reinvent themselves for future audiences.

Jim Moseley:

I think it's important for us to regularly remind ourselves that our audience isn't static. We can't rely on the same fan showing up the same way year after year. And so we have to think about our approach to everything: our productions, our creative, our marketing campaigns, our merchandise and retail presence. We have to think of all of that every day to make sure it's all aligning with a world that is is just always quickly changing.

Damian Bazadona:

Peter, when you think of brands that win on nostalgia, like what comes to mind?

Peter Yagecic:

Well, that's a good question. Um Well, I I think as a category, sports has got to be part of that equation because I think whatever sports team your parents loved, chances are as a kid you ended up loving them too.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, true. And my house is slightly different in the sense of we grew up as like NFL fans. Uh my brother's a huge Cowboys fan. Don't ask me why. I'm a huge Giants fan. Don't ask me why.

Peter Yagecic:

Well, I don't think you have to explain it, but I think you do have that loyalty that you feel. And, you know, when you're talking about loyalty, I don't think any group of fans are more loyal than opera fans. Here's Megan Goria from our team here at Situation and Melanie Brusallian from the LA Opera.

Meghan Goria:

You often hear about opera and classical music fans kind of in the same breath as theater fans. Um, but to my mind, they're they're almost more like sports fans, right? Like they have their favorite players, they travel to see the big games.

Melanie Broussalian:

Opera fans are super rowdy and super um, which is I think something that not a lot of people realize. Um, and they're very vocal about whether they love something and whether they don't love something. Anybody who has been around opera opera people, myself included, is they will talk your ear off for for hours about their this one performance that they saw 50 years ago. You know, they're there it lives somewhere deep in your soul in a way that I think very few things actually actually can do.

Peter Yagecic:

And later in that same interview, here's what Eric Borneman, our buddy of LA Opera, had to say that I thought really encapsulated that point.

Eric Bornemann:

Opera, when you know, we we always say it's it, you know, it's greater than the sum of its arts because it's, you know, the best of music, the best of theater, um, the best of design, the best of uh dance sometimes, everything put together. So when when when everything is firing all cylinders and it all clicks, it is that really transformative uh art form that you really can't get elsewhere.

Damian Bazadona:

All right, let's get to our third theme about artist connection. Peter, when they say never meet your heroes, when you think of your own personal fandom, like how does that resonate with you?

Peter Yagecic:

Well, I I think that's a very sad expression because I frankly want to meet my heroes. Like if I had a chance to meet Chapel Roan, uh, I might sell a kidney to do that. I mean, I would hate it if she turned out to be a jerk, but you know, I guess then at least I'd know. But if she's great, then you know, I might not have a new friend in a better seats at her concert.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, when I think of heroes, I think of the artists and musicians I grew up with. This whole topic takes me to our conversation with the Grammy Awards. You know, remember our conversation with John Loken of the Recording Academy, the folks that actually produce the award show, and the whole concept and the changing role of artist engagement and where that sits kind of front and center in their strategies. Here's John.

VO:

New York City makes me always be yourselves right now.

John Loken:

The world I grew up in, you would buy a ticket to go see a band that you loved at a stadium or an arena. And there was such a distance, right? There was such a kind of a mystery. Um, and we thought these people were gods, right? And again, it same in sports. Um, whatever you're a fan of, there was this real sort of separation between the life of that deity, right, and me as a commoner, as a fan. And all of that, I think social drives this, right? All of that has been erased.

Damian Bazadona:

It's so true. And it's also quite amazing if you think about how much has changed. But when you follow the dollar, I suppose it makes sense.

John Loken:

Artists recognize that fans pay their bills. I think as the live side of the business has really come to dominate how at least that top sort of 1% or 5% of artists makes their money, they absolutely shout out to the fans because these are the people that buy tickets. And, you know, 75% of the income for these folks is derived from live touring and sponsorship. And all of that is fan-driven. So I think if anything, we're just going to see that kind of trend increase where it's just more and more about the people that got you there. And they recognize that.

Peter Yagecic:

You know, listening to John, I'm reminded of our conversation with Jeff Cuellar over at Sixth Man Cruises. These are the folks that create these artist-themed cruises, and they know firsthand what really works and what doesn't work when it comes to artists engaging fans.

Jeff Cuellar:

The fans that will allow you to have a career for as long as you have a career. Um, that once they dig and they understand that, you know, that right there, I would say is is, you know, mission critical, as I mentioned, for us to go for. Because if they're excited, then they're going to be communicating with their fans, like, oh my God, like we came up with this ridiculous idea that I can't wait for you to experience why you're on the event.

Peter Yagecic:

All right, Damian, theme four. You know, I've been waiting for this one, technology. Um, I have to say that in every one of the interviews that we had, it came up in some way, shape, or form. And I think the elephant in the room as a subtext was AI. It was just everywhere. Are you seeing that a lot with our clients at Situation?

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, and we're leaning into it with them. I mean, I feel like this is an exciting, it's nerve-wracking, it's gonna change. There's good energies and bad energies, but you pull it all together, AI is gonna have a substantial impact on the way that we can interact and communicate and and I think grow fandom if we lean into it.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, the fans are definitely using AI. And I think most organizations feel like they have to do something, but they're not really sure what that something is. Um, I really loved when we talked to Jeanette Roush over at uh Brand USA. She heads up AI and innovation over there, and she painted a pretty clear practical path uh of what we should expect.

Janette Roush:

You know, there's going to be a number of different paths for how people use AI, but I think the primary way is that we're going to have on our phones the one chat bot that's kind of our main source. So if it's chat GPT, then it's chat GPT. It knows everything about you that you've ever had a conversation with it about. But it means when it gives you recommendations, they are much more targeted to me figuring out and kind of unlocking how do we get our productions, our sports teams, our live events to surface in these large language models. I think that's like the big hill for all of us to climb right now.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, it is a big hill to climb, but just like a real big hill, it's a muscle that you have to build. And I think the more you use that muscle, the easier it'll be to navigate those challenges. Another technologist that we talked to this year was uh Andrew Racinos from over at Tessatura. They are a leader in the arts and culture space.

Andrew Recinos:

From a product development perspective, we really do come back to the foundations of helping our organizations build that community, create those fans, and center their customers. So that means to us, um, technology should not be replacing meaningful human interaction. It should be enabling it. Having to call the box office to do something you wish you could do online. That's what we're here to eliminate. One of the connections that are meaningful is wanting to call the box office because you're trying to decide between, you know, two different shows, the Sondheim or the Lloyd Weber, and you want to talk to somebody about sort of the the ups and downs, the benefits of each.

Damian Bazadona:

Okay, let's get to theme five, which we're calling being very human. I have to tell you, I just love the line from Andrew of not replacing human interaction, but enabling it. I gotta say, that guy's very quotable. I know I know I'm a rambler, by the way, and impossible to edit.

Peter Yagecic:

You're not impossible to edit, but as the primary editor of the podcast, there might be some truth to what you just said.

Damian Bazadona:

That is very kind. Um let me ramble, let me ramble ourselves into the next conversation in the airlines industry with the good folks that we had at uh Southwest Airlines. And I'm sure you remember the idea of that kind of not replacing human interaction could not be more clear here. Here's Andrew Harville from Southwest.

Andrew Harvell:

I think at the end of the day, we are a, again, we're a hospitality company that that just happens to fly airplanes, right? Um I think one of the most fun parts about hearing about a lot of our flight attendant training, customer service, hospitality training is that, yeah, there isn't a script of like here's the eight jokes that you can say, here's eight jokes that you can't say. A lot of it comes organically from the operation. So you hear stories about. Flight attendants that kind of share fun jokes that they did, or kind of it organically works and kind of makes a mind of its own. And our team does such a great job of saying, like, here, you know, here's our kind of core brand pillars, um, but really have fun with it and be yourself. Customers are not dumb, fans are not dumb, right? When they feel disingenuous money grabs happening, that can instantly break a lot of trust. And that's the last thing that we, you know, any of us would want to do as we're looking to kind of continue to build out our companies. So I think that's one thing that we all continue to come back to is asking ourselves, is this is this something that's a genuine experience for the customer and something that would keep their trust, right?

Peter Yagecic:

Hey, Damian, do you remember the conversation we had with Melissa Anelli over at BroadwayCon? I thought she had a lot of great things to say about being authentic and genuine. And as someone who has been to BroadwayCon, I can tell you Melissa and her team totally get it.

Melissa Anelli:

Fans, in my experience, can spot authenticity, you know, a mile away. They can tell if they're just being marketed to as a sort of grab for them, or if they're interacting with a brand that really wants and values their input and their love. It's really just a matter of really believing in what you're doing. And where brands are concerned, I would say that you gotta get nerdy with them. All of our events start on the first day with meetups. And that sounds like such a silly, not maybe not silly, it sounds like such a basic thing, but it's so important because everybody needs to find their people. And a lot of people attend alone. And so we hear from people all the time, I'm coming alone, will I make friends? And it has never been the case that at the end of the event we haven't then heard from them. And to say, uh, actually, I now have 10, 10 friends that I met at this event.

Damian Bazadona:

Am I right that you began your career in Disney Parks?

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, that's right. I was a backstage technician working in uh Orlando, Florida, and it was a great, great place to kick off my career. Uh and you know, listening back to Melissa and Andrew, I think that one thing that Disney does exceptionally well is customer service, uh, having that customer being the front and center force that is the number one priority.

Damian Bazadona:

In hindsight, what was different about Disney that you just don't see from other organizations that we work with now?

Peter Yagecic:

When you work for Disney, you are treated like an adult who's empowered to make decisions. If a kid drops an ice cream cone on the ground, you're expected as a cast member to go over and get them a replacement. It's that simple. There's no bureaucratic red tape that you have to cut through. You just make it right.

Damian Bazadona:

Well, I saw you light up in our conversation with Michael Vargo, who oversees the D23 fan club. It's as though you spoke a similar language just inherently.

Peter Yagecic:

Oh man, I don't have a favorite, but that was definitely in the top of my favorite conversations.

Michael Vargo:

Disney fans are everywhere and they're part of um Disney every day. We have very highly engaged, highly passionate, highly motivated fans that are that want Disney every day in their life. And I think that's a big differentiator where you have a more of a casual fan that might go to a theme park with their family once every few years. Our D23 members go to the theme parks daily, weekly, monthly. We listen to our fans. And that's what's so great about D23. And it provides a platform for us to really engage with the fans and hear from them firsthand. You know, they uh we know the movies they love because they go see them over and over again. Uh, you know, we actually send them onto the red carpets at times where we uh invite them to some of our Hollywood premieres. So they really get to be a part of that whole experience. We never want to neglect or ignore our fans. I think it's so important to hear their voice and keep them engaged with the company throughout the year and really look at all of our content and all of the experiences that we do from the fans' perspective. What are they looking for? Give them more of what they want. We want to really go bigger and better and deliver on what the fans are craving.

Damian Bazadona:

All right, Peter, with the time we have left, I really want to get to our sixth theme in this, which is enriching the in-venue experience.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, where you see a thing is such a huge part of your experience of it. I was so excited to hear such deliberate focus from the folks that we talk to who work on the venue side about how they're making the experience better.

Damian Bazadona:

As both a professional and a fan, it was just exciting and invigorating to hear so much conversation around how do we improve the fan experience inside the venue. And I think that that has not been taken seriously enough by a fair number of kind of major live entertainment entities. And it was just really refreshing to hear our conversation with Tina Heaney of the Oakview Group on what they're doing across the globe.

Speaker 19:

I think the venue experience itself is, in a broad sense, is missing higher level expectations from the fans. The tipping point is when travelers or fans uh, you know, who have visited multiple airports or venues start recognizing when choice is not available and quality is not available. And then the expectation game is raised. And I think we're seeing that uh at airports, thankfully, for folks who travel as much as I do. But now we're also starting to see it at venues. And maybe we have for the last couple of years, and that's a real opportunity when fans start saying, no, I do want more for my experience.

Damian Bazadona:

And I feel like I see this at Sports Illustrated Stadium with the New York Red Bulls. And it came out in our conversation with Elisa Padilla.

Elisa Padilla:

If you're in your car or you're getting off the path, we're thinking about what is the energy that people are feeling, what are they seeing, what are they smelling, what are they gonna touch? So for us internally, we call this the street-to-seat experience. We believe that your experience starts from the second you touch our property. But if you feel really good about coming here and your your club, specifically for us, the New York Red Bulls are responding to, you know, and are listening to you and are working tirelessly to really work on every single barrier that you may be encountering. I think that, you know, people pay attention to that.

Peter Yagecic:

Damian, what do you think when I say the big easy?

Damian Bazadona:

Oh my God. I love New Orleans, truly. Like the music, the food, the sports.

Peter Yagecic:

Like, I don't know, I don't know how you can not like New Orleans. Oh, it's a fantastic city. And I loved our conversation with Mel Barry from the New Orleans Pelicans. You know, simply being in their venues, you really couldn't miss the New Orleans of it all.

Mel Barry:

If you love New Orleans, it'll love you back. And so it feels like this transfer of energy where you're like, you are loving what's happening so much and you just feel it wash over you too. I think like that's the goal. Like if every game could have that moment where you're like, this is it, you know, like this is why I'm here. You know, one of the coolest moments we had, and it it was unfortunate, but a couple of seasons ago, we made a real strong run at the playoffs and we were eliminated at home by the Suns. And as our team um walked off the court, standing ovation. Like everyone was just like, you know what, we like fought and we showed up um in ways that people didn't think we would, you know. Um, and so like I literally am giving myself goosebumps, but like it was just such a cool moment because we were, we were done, right? We we were like at our peak at that moment in terms of fandom because we were all so proud of what we had done.

Damian Bazadona:

You know, what was so refreshing about so many interviews we had was the dedication and passion our guests bring to the craft. It's inspiring to hear them. Oh, totally. Like it reminds me kind of why I'm in this business. You know, the live experiences business, it's it's exciting. And to close us out, to share our final theme, theme number seven, is just showing up.

Andrew Harvell:

One thing that I like implore with my team and a lot of our peers is just going out and seeing the operation firsthand. I think from a corporate employee, that that's the most important thing to see how customers, uh, guests, fans are actually experiencing the product firsthand, just create so much empathy for headquarters employees wherever we're at, whether that's an office building in New York or by an airport in Dallas, like I am. Um, I I think that's just hugely important to continue to have a pulse on that, not just see it through surveying, right? Like we talked about surveying is hugely important for us to get that kind of macro level data, but it's also so important to get out there and experience it yourself.

Kristina Heney:

This is what I say to young marketers or or marketers starting out in live entertainment specifically. Because live entertainment is so personal and visceral, there's a risk that marketers could focus on the show or the game. And what I tell them is don't focus on the show or the game, focus on the fans, watch the fans. They will tell you everything you need to know about if you're winning in the game of fan experience and how you're going to create repeat and loyalty and drive that. And don't just sit in the seats, walk outside and see what the experience is in the parking area and on the line to get in, stand at the bathroom and see if there are bathroom lines. How long is it taking someone to get back to their seats to get a you know, a bottle of water or something to eat? All of those things are the responsibility of a marketer in a live and exper of a live experience. And because it's because live entertainment is so visceral and personal, you could really make the mistake of thinking your experience or your view of the of the product or the artist or whatever is that of the masses. And in actuality, it could be it could be the other way around. So watch the fans.

Melissa Anelli:

A mark of a success for me at every single event I've ever done is about Saturday night, uh, late on in the evening or late in the day or whatever time it's ending, that's kind of like day two. Um, I kind of just walk around a little bit and I just take it in. I just watch people. I watch people laughing and connecting, and sometimes we have a concert or something, so they're dancing, et cetera, et cetera. And that is always for me the fuel that keeps keeps going for the year. Because you know, you work for a whole year on this one, on this one event, um, this couple of days and have to go great. So I'm I'm actually feeling like these touchstone moments are going to become even more important as our world gets more and more isolated because of technology.

Andrew Recinos:

I just think I see that when organizations really live their mission, right? They can quote it chapter and verse and they can live it and their values. And when they have steady, consistent leadership, and when they put the bulk of their effort on their customers in their community, on their fans, to use the the name of this podcast, that the financial sustainability follows.

Peter Yagecic:

All right, Damian, I hate to say it, but I think we're at time.

Damian Bazadona:

Uh I think so too. Um, but I will say this has been totally soul fulfilling, I have to tell you. Spending time with the, what, 20 guests or so that we've had over this whole run has just been completely inspiring. It sort of reinforces my love for the work that I do.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, and everybody came to the table with such a great positive energy, not just the guests, but everybody that they work with that helped get those guests to the table. It was such, such a treat.

Damian Bazadona:

All right, I'm stoked for season two because season two's a coming.

Peter Yagecic:

I hope everybody goes over to fandomunpack.com because we're gonna definitely need our listeners' help to make sure season two is a success.