From Ticketing Manager to CEO: Fredrik Söderberg's Journey with AIK

"Don’t chase your dreams. Build your dreams." This could be the motto for the latest episode of TicketingPodcast.com, where we sit down with Fredrik Söderberg, CEO of the renowned Swedish football club AIK.

If you’re looking for in-depth perspectives on ticketing and its importance for your football club – look no further. This episode has everything you need and more. Fredrik’s unique career trajectory, from heading the ticketing department to leading one of Sweden's biggest top-tier football clubs, provides an extraordinary perspective on the intersection of sports management and ticketing.

What to Expect:

Fredrik Söderberg's career at AIK began in the ticketing and marketing department, where he honed his skills in managing fan engagement and ticket sales. His deep understanding of the ticketing landscape laid a solid foundation for his eventual rise to CEO. In this episode, Fredrik shares insights on how his background in ticketing benefits his current role, emphasising the importance of strategic planning and innovative marketing.

Key Highlights:

1. Strategic Ticketing Insights: Fredrik discusses how AIK's approach to ticket sales has evolved, focusing on marketing automation and creating a sense of urgency among fans. Learn how these strategies have doubled their season ticket sales since 2018.
2. Balancing Business and Passion: Transitioning from a ticketing manager to CEO, Fredrik emphasises the delicate balance between maintaining financial health and fostering a passionate fan base. His insights into AIK’s strategic planning and community engagement are invaluable for anyone in sports management.
3. Future of Ticketing: With advancements in technology and the rise of marketing automation, Fredrik explores the future of ticketing. Discover his predictions on how data-driven decision-making will continue to shape the industry.

Why You Should Tune In:

Whether you're a ticketing manager aiming to climb the career ladder, or a sports executive interested in innovative strategies, this episode is packed with actionable insights. Fredrik's journey is a testament to the critical role that ticketing plays in the broader scope of sports management.

Listen Now:

Don’t miss out on this enlightening conversation with Fredrik Söderberg. Tune in to TicketingPodcast.com and gain valuable knowledge on the future of ticketing and sports management. 

TicketingPodcast.com is powered and sponsored by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Not many football CEOs have a background in the ticketing department, but Fredrik Söderberg, ceo of the Swedish top chair side AIK, does. He began his career as the club as head of ticketing and marketing. How does this unique background benefit him from the current role as CEO? That's one of the many insights we'll explore in today's episode of TicketingPodcastcom. Stay tuned. Hello everyone, welcome to TicketingPodcastcom, where our guest today is Fredrik Söderberg, ceo at the Swedish top tier football club, aik. Welcome to the show, fredrik. Thank you very much. So first question how do you pronounce your club?

Speaker 2: 0:49

Well, I always pronounce it the way it should be pronounced in Swedish, as AIK. Yeah, I put pride in that, but obviously when you talk with English speaking people, of course AIK is very close at hand. So it's fine for you to say AIK, but I will always pronounce it I-K. Stand by my pride there.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Sounds like a good plan. Well, let's go with that. So I mean, first of all, it's great to finally have a Swedish guest on this show. We're going to learn some Swedish, at least some letters, today, where we've had both Denmark and Norway present previously.

Speaker 2: 1:26

How's life in Sweden these days, fredrik? Well, it's good. It's very hot, we're not used to it, and we're enjoying the Euro football without Sweden participating, of course, which is a bit sad, but we're enjoying good football shows. So, yeah, so life is good.

Speaker 1: 1:40

Great and you're CEO of one of Sweden's biggest football clubs and also one of the clubs with the most dedicated followers. However, your career didn't start at the AIK, did it?

Speaker 2: 1:54

Well, first of all, I started out in media business and after a while, I made a career change in about 2011, where I started working with sports events. About 2011, where I started working with sports events and I was promoted to the natural venue, friends Arena, which was newly opened in 2012, basically to be product manager for sports events. During my time at Friends Arena, a lot of the events were co-promoted or self-promoted, so I kind of had a responsibility of business development, which included ticketing revenue and strategical planning for ticketing, which was something that I got really fond of. So, basically, when I left Friends Arena in 2018, and I was assigned as head of ticketing and marketing at Oikua, it was a natural move for me because ticketing was very close to my heart and it's something that developed over the years from a strategic point of view to work as a business asset for events.

Speaker 1: 2:51

So events are events. Right, You're bringing people together and that creates a lot of great stories and good experiences. But just to follow up on that, what do you think is the biggest difference coming from Friends to AIK in terms of the industry?

Speaker 2: 3:04

I mean sports versus events, concerts and whatnot well, look, all of a sudden you're a promoter, I mean, you work with the content, which is a huge different. Of course, working in stadium business is more infrastructure. That's the biggest part, and then it comes to the branding. I mean Oiko as a club it's more of a movement than a business company, and and I that for most football club I would say so it's a total different mindset. When you look at normal business, you kind of have a production in order to earn money, but in football or any ideologist business, you make money in order to have a production. It's like the other way around, and that's something that I find really interesting interesting.

Speaker 1: 3:46

It's a massive brand and loyal followers.

Speaker 2: 3:49

A big community yeah something else than just making money yeah, yeah, imagine that.

Speaker 1: 3:55

I mean, when you realized that it was an opportunity to become a ceo, what did you think then? And um, how's it turned out the way you expected it to be.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Well, first of all, as I've said, I was head of ticketing and marketing for two and a half years and then I was promoted to deputy CEO and that included more of a business overview for all business aspects, not only ticketing, which is, in Noiko's case, basically the core revenue stream that we have, but also sponsorship revenue, merchandise revenue, hospitality, et cetera. And after a while, a CEO left and I was interim CEO for a while and another CEO was assigned and when he left I was a permanent CEO. So I had the time to develop myself as a CEO during that interim CEO time, which really made me think if I could cope with the job. And I really then understood the difference between being a deputy CEO and full-time CEO, because it's something completely different.

Speaker 2: 4:54

You always talk about the CEOs being very lonely and it's true in so many aspects that you have all the responsibility. For me that's a security, because I know I can then stand for all the decisions being made in responsibility for me. That's a security, because I know I can then stand for all the decisions being made in the club. That's a good part, I believe. I cannot look at anybody else but myself in terms of the result, how the decisions making are going, etc.

Speaker 1: 5:15

That's something that I'm I'm comfortable with and I agree 100. We have a lot of listeners. Who's working in ticketing here right? Obviously Obviously ticketing podcast. Any advice for ambitious ticketing managers who would like to climb the ladder and become a CEO one day?

Speaker 2: 5:32

Well, always put yourself in your current CEO's position. What does he want from the ticketing side? Is it just revenue streams, because basically he can get that from the CFO? Normally it's the strategical planning how can we develop, how can we business develop over time? That's the most important part, either for the CEO or for the board. So if you want to become a CEO from the ticketing manager position, I would say you need to have business development as a mindset. What kind of action list can we take in order to develop the ticketing business over time and put objectives for like 2030,? We should be in this position and this is the way we're going to do it, that's, present a plan. I believe that's something that appeals very much to either a CEO or a board.

Speaker 1: 6:20

Great advice. Great advice and Julie noted.

Speaker 2: 6:37

So do you spend a lot of time in the ticketing office these days me than any other department, unfortunately, I try to restrain myself, but uh, yeah, I am involved in in ticketing business, especially on the business development side, because that's my strength, I believe. But at the same time, from a leadership point of view, you want people to uh develop themselves, you want to bloom, so they need to have their own responsibility and they need to come up with the ideas themselves and being able to make decisions for themselves. And uh, we're in a current very good state at oqo for ticketing point of view.

Speaker 1: 7:05

So no, I think it's. Uh, it's also, I mean, good advice and a superpower. To have been a ticketing manager before, I'm sure when you make the decisions, yeah, so any fields in ticketing where you think that aik are innovators or doing things differently, I mean, why are you in a good state as you're saying? I mean something special that you're doing.

Speaker 2: 7:28

Yeah, I would point out three parts of it. First of all, it comes to season tickets, because we had a very strategical plan for seasoning tickets. When I came aboard in 2018, that was the area that was lacking. Basically, we were about 8,000 or 9,000 season tickets sold sold. I mean, we have a venue for about almost 50 000. So you can see that there's a lot to do in that area, and what we started to do is that we, first of all, we change the sales pace of seasonal tickets.

Speaker 2: 7:57

We launched the seasonal tickets in mid-september. The swedish league season is from late march to mid-november. So when we launched the season tickets for next year in September, that was quite a revolution, because nobody really did that, including ICOA. We used to sell season tickets from just right before Christmas, something like that, but this opened up a new window, a much longer window, for us to sell. What we also did is we changed our digital strategy, going from more image content in marketing to all in on marketing automation. So what we've done is that. You know, for us, knowledge or branding is not an issue, it's converting. That is the issue, because we have about 500 000 people in sweden claim to support aiko, so there's's quite a good fan base and what we need to do is to convert these supporters into purchasing tickets or season tickets. The easiest way to do that, the most efficient way to do it, is through marketing automation.

Speaker 2: 8:57

So, by changing the pace of season ticket sales and adding marketing automation and then adding a tone of voice which was much more sense of urgency, fear of missing out, those three ingredients made us raise the season ticket level. Up to now, it's just under 17,000. So we doubled it since 2018. And we had two years of pandemic during that time. So when you raise the season ticket level, when you launch game tickets, you start on a different level because you always count the season tickets within the first ticketing figures that you market.

Speaker 2: 9:34

So if we face an opponent that normally doesn't attract that many people, it's a huge difference for us to start out at 9,000 tickets sold than to 17,000 tickets sold, because if you start out at 17,000 tickets sold, you sell about 1,000 tickets in the first day, or something like that. All of a sudden, we're up in 18. All of a sudden, we're up in 20,000 tickets sold, and then people are getting a little bit stressed because, okay, this is something that you don't want to miss. It's the fear of missing out coming into people. It's the fear of missing out coming into people. It's a little bit stressful. So that's been the success story of ICO, I believe, is that we have these three ingredients with raising the season ticket level, working with marketing automation and digital strategy, and also using the tone of voice of fear of missing out.

Speaker 1: 10:17

Yeah, so, fair to say, you've increased the sales window and by that you've built a solid base and you've built the momentum for the rest of the sales that creates the fear of missing out. Exactly that is good execution. Right, yeah, we talk about innovative, but this is just innovative execution and good processes. Yeah, so if you look back, you started in ticketing before 2018. Yeah, what's the most important changes you've seen across the industry? You mentioned marketing automation, but any other things you've seen?

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yeah, I believe that there's a higher level of development in the ticketing system these days than it used to be.

Speaker 2: 10:57

When I started out, things were pretty fixed, you know, and especially for a market like Scandinavia, and especially for a market like Scandinavia because we were basically not on the top of the list of the markets that the ticketing system owners wanted to put effort and assets into to develop it, because it was such a small market compared to America or Canada or the UK. So that's something that I really believe changed is that there's a much higher rate of development from ticketing systems and a lot of new players on that market has come and proved to be very innovative too, which I think is a good thing. One thing that also changed when I started out, the secondhand market, the unregulated secondhand market, was a huge problem for us, and I don't see that problem so much anymore. Basically the verdict on Viagogo from a couple of years ago, but also because a lot of stadiums have developed applications in order to secure that through the QR codes, etc. Which I think is a good development as well.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Right. So it's following the rest of the world, right In terms of how quickly things are developing. How do you see it moving forward? I mean, what's the next big thing? What's the next wave? What should we look for?

Speaker 2: 12:05

I think that developing that data demographic will be much more of interest for the ticketing system than this today. From where I stand, you need so many different systems these days that you need a CRM system that can take care of your data from a demographic point of view, and then the ticketing system in order to execute the ticket sales. But I believe that in the future we will see much more merged systems that can take care of both your sales process, your marketing process, but also to execute the ticket sales and do the ticket planning. So that's my forecast for the upcoming five or 10 years in ticketing system development.

Speaker 1: 12:41

Yeah, I agree. I mean also the strengthening of APIs around you can connect things together. And you mentioned match day revenue, right? Yeah, I mean we're talking e-commerce, online sales versus point of sales, and why not connect everything so you buy everything in one place? Exactly Interesting discussion. So switching attacks a little bit. Speaking of how you work together with the ticketing department, I think it's very interesting. Speaking of how you work together with the ticketing department, I think it's interesting. How is the ticketing department involved in budgeting and forecasting? I mean, when you plan the next year and the year after that, how do you involve the ticketing team?

Speaker 2: 13:15

We have a sit-down with the ticketing manager as well with the partnership manager and the merchandise manager, to do the budgeting and the forecasting. When it comes to budgeting, we look at every single game. The ticketing manager comes up with their own forecast and what they believe in how many tickets you should sell to every single game, which you know it's very hard to predict, of course, but as an overview, it's very helpful for us. It's very helpful for us. Then we have a business review four times per year where we check our status and see where are we in comparison to the budget and to the forecast. As I mentioned before, it's that for my co-op, the ticketing revenue basically is the core revenue stream that we have, both in terms of turnover but also in terms of margin. So it's the very foundation of our commercial revenue streams. I would say so it's a very, very important part of our business ticketing department. So they're very much involved.

Speaker 1: 14:10

Great. I also been discussing with some ticketing managers over the years the connection between marketing and the ticketing department, and you said the head of ticketing and marketing. I guess you have an sla with yourself then. But in these cases, I mean, marketing generates demand very often, right, but you have a very strong brand and that marketing can have very good ideas on things, but then it's not easy to execute for the ticketing manager. Have you come across these kinds of issues?

Speaker 2: 14:36

yeah, ironically, the first thing I did as a deputy ceo was a split the role in two. I had one marketing manager and one ticketing manager, but that's because I want the marketing department to be a support department for the other commercial departments. But the ticketing manager and the marketing manager work very, very closely. They basically have the discs next to each other. They're working as a team all of the time. So for me it's, you know, even though they on paper are in charge for different budgets, different staff, etc. For me it's just one team working together now, that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So, moving over to the club oiko, what does this abbreviation stand for? And I think you have to give both the English and the Swedish version.

Speaker 2: 15:22

Of course, oiko is an abbreviation for Swedish Allmänna Idrottsklubben, which is the easiest translation, that is, the public athletic club. I would say Public sports club. It started out as a multi-sports club in the late 19th century, in 1891. And football was a part of the club from 1896 and forward. Today we have 14 different sports under the umbrella of oikua, but football is by far the biggest one. I would say football is bigger than all the other 13s combined in terms of revenue. But still Oiko supporters put a pride of following sports, all kinds of sports, under the name of Oiko. Football is definitely number one in that matter.

Speaker 1: 16:10

So how big is the club? First, I mean, how many tickets do you sell? You mentioned half a million fans. But a little bit of learnings about Swedish football.

Speaker 2: 16:22

What's the biggest clubs? We have three clubs in Stockholm Oikua, jorgaarden and Hammarby. We have Malmö FF, which is from the southern Sweden, and together with EFK Gothenburg, efk Göteborg, the two clubs that probably on the sports side, have been most successful, but in terms of attendances, oikua is number one ahead of hammerby. So those are the two clubs when it comes to average attendances. We held this position for many times during the existence of the swedish league. We've been number one in average attendances 41 times. Hammerby has been very successful for the past decade, I would say from 2015 and forward. They've been very, very successful. We've been runners up for a couple of years, but since last year's and this year as well, we will maintain us number one again.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Nice sounds like a healthy competition for sure oh yeah, it's.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Uh, it's quite fun and unique the average expectations we have. Last year we ended up in just beneath 26 000 25 700, and now we're looking at about 29 000. The season is 12 rounds and now we're looking at about 29,000. The season is 12 rounds in, so we're looking at 29,000 right now. In terms of revenues, we have a revenue of between 6 and 7 million euros, I would say. In comparison to other Scandinavian clubs, I believe that FC Copenhagen is ahead of us. But apart from that, a couple of clubs can be ahead when they participate in the European Cups, which we haven't done for a couple of years now, which definitely affects our total revenue. But if you look at league games, we're by far number one in terms of ticketing revenue. Great.

Speaker 1: 17:51

No, it's super cool and also cool to get your experiences, and this year you're doing quite well, aren't you? When it comes to the season ticket sales. I mean, how many have you sold?

Speaker 2: 18:02

Our forecast is that we will definitely end up on the north side of the 7 million euros, which is over 80 million Swedish kronor. So we're doing fairly good, great.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So I mean, tickets don't sell themselves, do they? No, you mentioned a little bit of fear of missing out, Can themselves, do they?

Speaker 2: 18:24

no, you mentioned a little bit of fear of missing out. Can you tell us a little bit more on that? How do you work with that? How do you communicate when it comes to her missing out? One of the most interesting case I used to explain this is when we faced encomare ball from slovenia in qualification to, uh, the champions league in 2019. We had problems in the past with selling the european qualifications game for whatever reason. The ticket sales didn't reach our targets.

Speaker 2: 18:45

And we're facing Maribor and we started with change of perspective, because normally we just announced and tried to market like now it's 8,000 tickets sold, now it's 9,000 tickets sold. What we did was that we limited the area of the venue very much. The venue has three tiers and we limited that just to the bottom tier, which, with some securities restraints. It had a capacity of about somewhere between 17 000 and 18 000 spectators and we were looking at the same numbers that we usually do, like eight or nine thousand. Then we started changing perspective and announcing how many tickets were left instead in different sections, like the hardcore supporter section is like okay, now it's only 2,000 tickets left, and that was about 1,500. Now it's 10,000. Now it's below 1,000 left.

Speaker 2: 19:32

And all of a sudden we started to see the sales increase and three days before game day we had 14,000 tickets sold and we really started pushing out the figures how many tickets are left, and you know like now it's only 3000 tickets less than the total venue.

Speaker 2: 19:50

This section is sold out, this section is sold out, and we sold 3500 tickets, I believe, in 24 hours, and I had people calling me from the vacation saying like look, I'm on vacation, but I want to cancel my vacation because I don't want to miss the game, so how can I secure tickets?

Speaker 2: 20:07

You know, I can really feel the anxiety of people missing out on tickets, and that was a fantastic experience for us, because normally that game would have sold about 12 000 tickets and now, with this strategy, it sold 70 000 tickets. And we thought what if we have this strategy in much bigger games, and then this one, when it comes to stockholm derbies, for instance, and then when it comes to last game of the season or the first game of the season, and by doing that we've been seeing that we increased ticket sales, in some cases 30 or 35 percent, which is amazing super interesting because I get a lot of emails right from different clubs that I have an interest and and very often it's like we've sold 10 000 tickets, we've sold 15 000 tickets, but you choose to turn it around and you say this is the tickets left.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Yeah, that's an interesting take right, because you turn it around to create that fair missing out. We had mutts I don't know if you know him, but from the norwegian top tier club ascobon on this podcast and he was talking also about the fair missing out and they're utilizing that actively in their marketing campaigns in general when it comes to football clubs. Do you think they're good when it comes to marketing or do you think it's room?

Speaker 2: 21:23

for some improvements big or small, definitely improvements Because this is also a culture. Part of it Is that everybody can agree on that. What's happening on the sometimes have the lack of understanding, perhaps, for the quality that needs and the competence that needs in order to do good marketing, and that is something that you need to understand. It doesn't take care of itself. I still hear good sports results equals good ticket sales, and Oiko had one of the first seasons sport-wise in the history of the club last year and we never sold as many season tickets. Actually, we broke the record our internal record of the number of spectators at the venue and we sold out our general admissions standing section 15 out of 15 times, so every home game was sold out on our core fan base section. So there's a myth that good sports results equals good ticket sales, but still I hear this myth coming from board members or CEOs in many different clubs a lot of times. So I definitely believe there's a room for improvement in understanding the values of good marketing when it comes to football.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Couldn't agree more. So let's discuss the women's side of things, because you have a women's team as well. Can you tell us a little bit about that, how you work with it and how the numbers are and how you work with increasing those numbers?

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, unfortunately the numbers are very poor. I always had a philosophy that the club in itself. We can set the fire going, but how long it will burn it's up to the supporters themselves. We can be the infrastructure, but the supporters themselves need to be the ambassadors in order to increase ticket sales. And when it comes to the women's team, so far Oikosport hasn't really really turned their heart into it yet.

Speaker 2: 23:17

And the biggest competition there is basically time. I would say it takes a lot to invest in a football team. It takes a lot out of your family, out of your job, out of everything in order to invest full-time for a football team. Not many people have that time to invest in two teams. So I believe that number of tendencies for women's football now it's a way beneath thousand people per game. So we have a long way to go, but I believe that the ticket sales will raise over time.

Speaker 2: 23:47

But right now I say that you know there's a long way to go for women's football in order to come up with that tendency. But we need to believe in it, we need to work with it all the time, because we do have hardcore supporters as well at those games. They're just much fewer but we have them and work together with them and see how can we attract more fans, more supporters. Right now, there's a supportive podcast just dedicated to our women's football team, for instance. That's a very interesting cooperation, uh marketing channel for us, for instance, I think that's right, I mean's right.

Speaker 1: 24:18

I mean you have to, first of all, you have to look at this long-term right. Yeah, you have to think of it as building a new company inside your own company, right, and make that grow and utilize the growth and then build momentum both ways. So definitely a huge potential. So, if we look a little bit on Scandinavia you've probably seen mean off the pitch recently published a list of who they think are europe's top 10 clubs when it comes to financial sustainability. Yeah, their ranking is based on a weighted model and corporate in every time margin, return on assets and equity ratio across 245 top tier clubs spanning the last three fiscal periods of 2020, 2021, until 2023.

Speaker 1: 25:04

And what's super cool to see is that the top 10 list sees the Norwegian club, bode Glimt on top, which you probably know, and out of the 10 top clubs, there's three Norwegian clubs, two Danish clubs and one club from Sweden. There's also three Italian clubs there and one English club, and that is Manchester City. I mean, six out of 10 clubs listed is remarkable for Scandinavia. If we pull our countries together, right for once, it's pretty cool. What are Scandinavian clubs doing differently to everyone else when it comes to this specific topic of financial sustainability.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Yeah, it's a really interesting question and I believe one thing that is fundamental is the ownership structure, even though I know a difference, for instance, from Denmark, but even so, even in Denmark it's much more long-term ownership than I believe it is in many other regions, especially in Southern Europe. I believe that it's within the Scandinavian culture to work in general with sustainability, in general with sustainability, so perhaps it's in our blood to somehow think sustainable out of a point of view that we're not chasing a dream. We're building a dream, if you understand the difference. Also, I would say that we've seen clubs being atop of the European hierarchy For instance, efk Göteborg or Rosenborg in Norway has been very far ahead and then have a cutback, a setback in their financial position. And perhaps we learn from those mistakes on a reach that success. But to develop the team If they focus on development all of the time and not so much in reaching the objectives as fast as possible. I think that's the reason and perhaps that's the way business works in general in scandinavia it's an interesting take.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Um, definitely, the ownership structure is completely different, right? Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this develops, also moving forward. I mean, there's a lot of changes in uk now, for example, there is. Yeah, maybe that will have some impact moving forward and maybe the scandys will drop out of the list. Who knows?

Speaker 2: 27:31

Let me just make that point on the ownership structure is that if you have like the 50 plus 1% rule that we have in Sweden, in many ways in Norway as well, if you have that structure, then there are other values than just reaching a high score right now. That attracts to the members. So the ownership model for these kinds of clubs are always long term, even though we're always want to win. The ownership is always like because you cannot have a short term investor that pumps in a lot of money into the club in order to gain a short end result. So the structure itself makes that impossible.

Speaker 1: 28:06

Yeah, I think it can definitely be one of the key reasons, for sure. So great discussions, frederik, and thank you so much for your insights. We have some traditions in here in this book that you probably know about. I'm wondering one thing, two questions really. I mean, first of all, what's your match day ritual, right? And the other one is that has it changed since you became CEO? And if it has, we need to know both. Right, you're taking your ritual and also your ceo ritual yeah, it definitely has changed.

Speaker 2: 28:36

I'm not a slave under superstition, but I'm a slave under being very, very nervous during games. So before I was a ceo, I would say that I walked around in the aisle of the stadium more than I was in the stands because I was too nervous for the results. But when I was assigned as CEO, I wanted to make a statement from a leadership point of view, so I took the seat just above the bench down the pitch side, because we had a terrible year sports-wise last year. So we were looking after half the season, we were looking at relegation, and then we got it together and the autumn we approved a lot. So we ended up in number 11, I believe, out of 16.

Speaker 2: 29:17

And I started sitting on the seat just above the bench because I wanted to show that I was a part of everything. This was my responsibility. It was more like a statement, basically, and I've been there ever since. Sometimes I've been in a hospitality suite or something if we have a sponsor that I need to take care of but during most of the games I'm at the same seat. But it's not a superstition, more like a ritual, and it's hard for me to leave as well because I need to cross so many people on that row, so I'm basically forcing myself not to leave during games and no matter the result you'll be stopped right no matter the result, I'm sitting there, that's it that's great.

Speaker 1: 29:55

So I mean, second, tradition is to sum up the key takeaways. I mean there's lots of key takeaways from this conversation, so we might as well ask you, frederick, to sum them up.

Speaker 2: 30:04

Two or three key takeaways from the conversation well, I have to get back to the strategy that I was talking about earlier. Focus on creating a monumental season ticket sales because it will help you in marketing. Focus on marketing automation and have a digital strategy. And also the tone of voice should be fair of missing out or sense of urgency.

Speaker 1: 30:24

Well, that sums it up. Thank you so much, frederik. It's been a privilege to having you as our guest, and I do wish both you and IK all the best for the upcoming season. If any of our listeners would like to get in touch or contact you except sitting around the bench, what do they do, fredrik?

Speaker 2: 30:44

Well, I'm active on LinkedIn and I'm somewhat active on X, formerly known as Twitter. Also, I'm definitely always reading emails. It's my first name, my dot shore name, at AIKFootball. In one word, dot SE Sounds great.

Speaker 1: 31:02

Thank you for that. So thank you so much, fredrik, for today. Thank you for having me. You've been listening to TicketingPodcastcom, where today's guest has been Fredrik Söderberg, ceo, and, before that, head of ticketing and marketing, which is now two separate roles at the Swedish top tier site AIK. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to our sponsor, ticketgo, for powering this podcast. My name is Carl-Erik Marburg. Until next time, have a wonderful day.