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Jaime Byrom of Beyond Hospitality on what football fans can expect from its premium offerings at Euro 2028 in the UK and Ireland, which go on sale next week.
The US might be seen as sport’s most mature commercial market but, when it comes to hospitality offerings, it still trails the UK, according to one of the sector’s top providers.
The boss of Beyond Hospitality, which has the exclusive contract to provide premium experiences at Euro 2028 in the UK and Ireland, says Brits are accustomed to higher levels of service and benefit from stadiums that facilitate the very best food and drink offerings to accompany their padded seat.
“I think that probably the UK is probably the most developed market in the world from a hospitality perspective,” says Beyond’s executive chairman, Jaime Byrom.
“Sure, in the USA you’ve got a lot of demand for what they call VIP tickets, but it’s all about the seat location and less about the service, so I don’t necessarily equate it.
“In the UK, it’s all about service, access to restricted areas, and the provision of services. You have to provide a service level that is commensurate to clients’ expectations.”
Conditional tickets for Euro 2028 final
Euro 2028 packages that Beyond will put on sale next week range from “immersive and theatrical dining experiences” run by celebrated chefs in luxury lounges and boxes at £3,500 a head to “fan hospitality” options starting at £900 per person.
While providers often have to bring in their own equipment and chefs to deliver the required standard of catering, the venues hosting Euro 2028 – including Wembley, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Cardiff’s Principality Stadium and the Aviva in Dublin – are set to make Beyond’s job significantly easier.
Byrom calls it “a very unusual situation”, adding “all that’s giving us the opportunity to really raise the bar by capitalising on what is an infrastructure that we typically don’t find”.
Beyond Hospitality expects to sell out the vast majority of its packages before the 24-team tournament kicks off in June 2028, with buyers from the British Isles forecast to take 60 per cent.
Demand should be helped by the 1 September on-sale date coming a year before general admission tickets are released by Uefa, and innovative “conditional final” tickets that are automatically refunded if your team doesn’t get to the Wembley showpiece.
“It’s probably the one product that after 40 years in the business I’m excited about,” Byrom says. “You don’t have to buy a whole strip of tickets, you basically say ‘if my team makes it to the final, I must be there’.
“This way you can do that and, at the end of the day, only two teams will play. So there will be far more refunds than guests to host, but at least those privileged ones will have paid the [original] price, not an inflated price.”
Beyond Hospitality pledges no dynamic pricing
For similar reasons, Byrom is not a fan of dynamic pricing, which has provoked huge consumer backlash including at this summer’s World Cup.
“We make it clear to our customers that we don’t practice dynamic pricing when it comes to reductions in prices,” he says.
“It’s a benefit to the customer who knows that he’s not going to find himself having paid more than perhaps he could have paid had he delayed his purchase. We do have the option to increase prices but I’ve never been involved in any project where we opted to capitalise on that.”
Byrom has spent 40 years in the industry, the last two decades of which have seen an increase in demand and a change in customer profile from mostly corporates to those simply willing to spend more for an elevated experience.
That trend has accelerated post-Covid, leading to more variety of hospitality options and ever-more-imaginative products at the top of the “aspirational pyramid” – from Fulham FC’s swanky Riverside Stand to Michelin-star chefs at the World Darts Championship.
“The relevance of hospitality is is ever increasing, for sure,” he says. “I think the level of sophistication is going to continue to grow.
“When Beyond delivered the final of the [2024] Copa America, we invited Sexy Fish to provide an overlay on top of our normal catering arrangement. You’re forever having to think of what you can do to increase the quality of the experience of your customers.”
