Fandeavor: Get Backstage VIP Experiences at Sporting Events

Kira M. Newman Dec 31, 2012 Tweet

Yesterday, if you were so inclined, you could have attended a football game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys. You could have stayed in the Cowboys’ team hotel and met one of the players. You could have done this for $800, which is about the same price as a 15-yardline seat.

Las Vegas startup Fandeavor sells one-of-a-kind fan experiences like these to NFL games, Bowl Games, and college sports. They partner with teams to give fans inside access to pre-game practices, post-game press conferences, parties, and the players themselves.

Below, cofounder and CTO Dean Curtis explains how they made their vision come to life.

Tech Cocktail: What was the inspiration behind Fandeavor?

Dean Curtis: We saw firsthand the incredible access that corporate sponsors receive for their sponsorship. We felt this could change the way fans go to games if it was possible for fans to have this incredible access.

Tech Cocktail: Tell us about a challenging moment for Fandeavor.

Curtis: We rely on our partners to activate (or fulfill) the majority of our experiences. One of our partners was not delivering the assets that we had told the customer they were going to get.

We dealt with it by removing some of the assets in the experiences on the site that were not being consistently delivered by the partner. We then engaged with our customers directly to apologize and offered refunds. We are also going to change our partnership with that particular team so that we can still deliver great experiences next year.

Tech Cocktail: What’s one quirky fact about your office culture?

Curtis: Coffee is an important part of our office culture. Every single day, we grind our own beans and brew our own coffee. We seek out rare or high-quality beans when we travel, and bring them back to the office to share with everyone.

Fandeavor was a showcased startup at our Tech Cocktail Week mixer in Las Vegas.