Fanville’s Diary
By Ery Dimitrantzou and Nicholas Bardis
Fanville is a website and application that extends the football experience into a wide urban experience, providing information on entertainment and activities. Through the application, the city unfolds in front of the eyes of the visitor, who can find reference points and places for entertainment in the city which has visited to see a football match. There one may notify the presence in areas visited and through the chat he will be able to interact with other fans. Apart from the experience of the city, the site is storytelling oriented, presenting players’ proposals and original stories, while also giving information on the operation of the football groups.
How did Fanville get started?
The basis for the creation of Fanville came just before Christmas 2016, where Antonis Psarianos thought of a site which gives useful information to football fans traveling across Europe. At the beginning of 2017 for the course of “Leadership and Entrepreneurship Journalism”, headed by Ms. Betty Tsakarestou, the idea of Fanville began to be implemented. Our team consists of six people: Antonis Psarianos, Ery Dimitrantzou, Marios Mantzos, Nicholas Bardis, ROZIE DROSOU and Julianna Efstathiou. After a few meetings outside of the course we decided to form the site, the parallel existence application and their content.
Our meetings
In the first meeting (16/1/2017) we worked mainly with the business model canvas and added the sections of the site. The categories that we host on our site are: Cities, Stadiums, Clubs on social, Story n’ Play and Family trips, which in turn are divided into several subcategories. We, Ery and Nicholas, undertook the category of cities. Through articles we present information about the cities where the matches are played, places someone can go to entertain himself and sport activities, in which he could participate some of the days of his trip. From museums and galleries to bars, restaurants and sporting events held in each city, Fanville is the must have multimedia guide for any football fan traveling around Europe.
In this section, the user will have the ability to select a city, Greek or European, in an existing list and he will be able to learn about life there, the happenings, places and everything must be done if he visited. At the end of each article will be given several tips about what someone needs to be careful about and where to focus its attention while also are given useful numbers that can someone use in an emergency.
In the second meeting (17/1/2017) we worked further the business model canvas and we focused on the value propositions and revenue streams. The unique element Fanville has to offer is the experience of the city and the narration of this experience through interesting articles and unpublished interviews with players. Regarding the financial support of our effort we thought to turn to advertising as the best possible choice. Also, we received feedback from 15 people to improve our original idea and make Fanville as most pleasing as possible to the potential users.
The same approach was initiated in our third and last meeting (23/1/2017), in which we defined as key partners football teams and partners involved in city branding, managing thereby to secure first-hand the necessary information, both inside stadiums and out of them. At the same time, we proceeded to the creation of the website and creating an account on instagram.
The current form of Fanville and the next steps
After a brief presentation of Fanville, the model it follows and the services provided, in the context of a hypothetical startup weekend during the course on January 23, we completed the final version of the site and the description that can be seen when someone visits it. We also pushed our first article in the category Story n’ Play. Besides the above was also created and designed the logo that will head the social media.
The next goal of the group is to create the application, and to put into practice its own functions that will make Fanville unique to its existence. We will also create separate accounts on Facebook and Twitter for more interaction in social media networking. Finally, we will try to get in touch with people who can financially support our idea and promote it in the market.
Our experience
Through the preparation of this project we came into closer contact with some of our fellow students, we exchanged thoughts and worked together on a common idea. Besides, we wade into the world of entrepreneurial journalism and learned the basic steps on how to convey an idea to paper as well as how to do it efficiently. This specific sector of the economy is in recent years in the spotlight and all the knowledge gained from this lesson and project will help us to be able to “survive” and become calculable opponents as competition is big, there is a plethora of ideas and time n’ money to implement them are just a few. We do not know yet if Fanville will succeed in the course of time, but we know exactly what steps to follow to in the future to implement another business idea.
