Mumbai: CA Osasuna is continuing to grow thanks to a forward-thinking model and the desire to place club members, supporters and sponsors at the centre of all social and commercial activities. This was clear to see with the recent launch of several spaces inside their stadium, called El Sadar, where a series of innovative services are being offered to supporters. There are hospitality areas, for staging events and for experiencing matches of Los Rojillos in an exclusive way, and there are new VIP seats to make games even more special. By implementing these changes and by redeveloping the stadium as a whole in 2021, the club is clearly looking to offer fans and partners even more exclusive experiences, and this should make the stadium a profitable venue 365 days a year.
With this, CA Osasuna is following the trend of many LALIGA EA SPORTS clubs in seeking to offer a better service to supporters and to sponsors. In this case, they’re doing so by providing almost double the number of hospitality areas in order to meet the ever-increasing demand for VIP seats at El Sadar, which is helping the Navarre club to achieve economic goals. As the club stated: “With the El Sadar redevelopment from a few years ago, we are working to expand and improve the hospitality areas available at the stadium, as we understand that the demand for this type of space is increasing. The proof is that we have practically doubled the capacity of this type of area and the current occupancy 0rate is over 90 per cent. This has allowed us to improve the experience that many fans have at our matches and to considerably increase the profitability of the stadium. We realised that we should include all of the stadium operations, those of matchdays and of non-matchdays, under one banner, which is ‘Osasuna Experience’.”
At CA Osasuna, directors are aware of the importance of building loyalty and improving the service they provide to fans and partners. They believe that, when it comes to sponsors, it’s important to be able to offer them exclusive spaces and experiences within the club facilities, so that these companies can organise business days or events where they can invite their own partners and customers. This forms part of the ‘Osasuna Experience’. The club explained: “It’s important for us that our sponsors do not see us simply as a space for advertising on the shirt or on a board. That model is no longer as successful as it was a few years ago. Nowadays, our sponsors are interested in being able to link their sponsorship to experiences that they can offer to their clients or commercial partners, such as being able to come to the stadium to watch a match, enjoy a tour or simply attend an event.”
For Los Rojillos, it’s especially important to be able to make use of the venue on days when there isn’t a football fixture. They said: “It’s vital for the club to be prepared to offer these types of experiences, otherwise we’d be shutting ourselves off from the modern concept of sponsorship. That’s why the use of our rooms and hospitality areas isn’t limited to matchdays. Instead, we offer spaces that can be used 365 days a year to adapt to what companies demand nowadays. For a sponsor, it can sometimes be more useful to hold an event at El Sadar on a working day for their best clients or salespeople than to have an advertising board at the ground.”
Moreover, CA Osasuna recognises that fan loyalty is very high and that offering new VIP experiences, as with the ‘Osasuna Experience’, only enhances the image of the club in the eyes of the fanbase. The club added: “Since the redevelopment of the stadium, which now has around 23,500 seats, we can’t take on more members and currently have around 3,000 people on the waiting list, and we can only offer a small quota each season. This season, for example, the renewal rate was over 99 per cent.”
Furthermore, occupancy rates for the hospitality spaces are also very high. The club concluded: “The private boxes we have for companies are all sold out and there are businesses on the waiting list. There are also several areas where the VIP seats are sold individually and we also have an occupancy rate of around 90 per cent there, while the rest of those seats are put on sale for each match.”
