The big interview: Freemans Event Partners

The Freeman family has built a unique business in major sporting and leisure events, one that has stood the test of time for 50 years, chief executive officer Stephen Freeman tells Jane Renton...

Stephen Freeman snr was named Senior Executive of the Year at our recently held 2023 Contract Catering Awards, and deservedly so. He has helped to build Freemans Event Partners into an enviable sports and leisure group with some eight distinct divisions; one that is synonymous with some of Britain’s greatest sporting and leisure events, including at Wembley Stadium, Silverstone and Twickenham. He also gets my own personal journalistic award for telling it like it is; a welcome feature of perhaps of running your own family show, where frank-speaking over Sunday lunch is preferable to corporate obfuscation.

He became managing director in 2007 and then chief executive officer in 2015. He is, after all, the eldest of his siblings, while John and Zoe are also directors of the group. His father – Stephen snr, who established the business with his wife back in the late 60s by acquiring a mobile fish and chip van that had been in operation since the 30s – still remains active in the group as chairman.

His parents initially operated their business from the back of their home in Quedgeley, Gloucestershire, slowly adding to their fleet as they became a regular presence at local music festivals and fairs. Young Stephen’s elevation to the top job was more by accident than design. “There wasn’t a vote,” he recalls. “I was just leading conversations with banks and property companies and so forth, which were the stories of that particular time.”

What is evident, however, is that the hospitality gene, as well as entrepreneurial spirit, runs deep in the Freeman blood. Young Stephen clearly recalls accompanying his parents, aged 10, to Knebworth Park in 1986. The legendary group Queen were due to perform to a crowd of 120,000 people and his parents would be working flat out in their catering business.

“Mum and dad parked me, my brother John and a few accompanying chums in a specific area of the park, where they left us with strict instructions to behave,” he remembers. “They took it in turns to check up on us. On one of their inspections, they were amused to discover us all busily flapping our arms in time to Radio Gaga.”

On their final return to collect the boys at the end of the evening, they were surprised that the plentiful stocks of sweets and bottled water, left in the children’s care, had mostly been sold. “People kept asking us for water and stuff and we obliged,” says Stephen.

Those fledgling capitalist skills have since been put to good use. Since 2005, Stephen, John and Zoe have been embarked on a steady expansion of the business, which has continued since Covid. Last year, after the return of live events post-pandemic, business grew by 20% to some £69m and is likely to grow by a further 9% in the current year to £75m.

It seems that there are relatively few events, sporting, musical or otherwise, that Freemans has not played a significant role in at some point. The company has now operated at more than 400 of the UK and Europe’s most high-profile regional, national and international events and festivals.

These have included Mandela’s 70th birthday party concert, which was held at Wembley Stadium in 1988; the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park in 2005; and various royal events, including royal weddings, jubilees and funerals. Freemans was also involved at the 2012 London Olympics and the Commonwealth Games last year.

Not only are many of its contracts long-term – such as Silverstone, where Freemans has been involved for some 40 years – but also with other venues and events including Wembley, Twickenham, Goodwood, The Jockey Club, Victorious Festival, Creamfields, Boomtown, Parklife and the London Stadium.

Its divisions, which include catering, concessions, bars, logistics and technology, offer cutting-edge cashless payment systems and thermal screening and density control solutions. These, along with its burgeoning brand partnership business, have all combined to make Freemans a one-stop-shop for major UK and increasingly international events.

The business works with all the major catering companies, including Sodexo, which has got the contract for the Paris Olympics next year, Compass, Elior and Aramark. “We work with them rather than compete with them,” explains Stephen. “Many of the things we touch, they’re not interested in. It’s not part of their footprint, so we work with most of the national caterers.”

As previously alluded to, the event hospitality business has been booming of late, as Stephen says: “There's so much opportunity in the event world at the moment. It’s ridiculous.”

But there is no room in his business philosophy for complacency, as inflation continues to make inroads into his particular world. “I really believe it is going to hit the cost of everything,” Stephen predicts.

Fish and chips will retail at £14.50 a head at many of the events he manages this year. That’s £60 for a family of four on top of the entry ticket price. Last summer at Silverstone a pint of lager was retailing at £6.40, while today at Wembley Arena, a pint of Budweiser will cost you £8.95. Rising fuel, transport, food and labour costs may all be contributing to these escalating prices – but it’s not the whole story. “Is there profiteering?” Stephen asks. “Yes, I think there is. It always happens when you get rapid inflation.”

And worryingly, these sharp price increases are already having a discernible knock-on effect, particularly in horseracing, where ticket sales are already adversely impacted. In France, for example, the price of a Rugy World Cup ticket costs on average £450. “All these rises are going to be a stumbling block for the next two years in the event world,” Stephen says.

Labour shortages and rising pay were factors he had already discerned well before Covid, as European workers drifted back to the continent after Brexit. “We knew this was happening, so when Covid hit, the people we did not furlough were those involved in recruitment,” says Stephen.

The casual market for labour, however, has since eased, as he says: “What I'm seeing is Wembley Stadium fully up and running now. I was at Tottenham on the same weekend and it was also fully up and running. I don't think the casual labour market is as tough as it was.”

But wages and hourly rates have been rising markedly, and Stephen says that this is “significantly affecting the operation and ultimately driving up costs, driving up retail tariffs and damaging the customer experience”.

His strategy for the years ahead is to mitigate the risks ahead as far as humanly possible, while also maximising the very considerable opportunities that exist in his market. Key among his plans are to fight inflation and profiteering by beefing up Freeman’s in-house procurement division and through development of inclusive pricing at events; expand overseas; extend its burgeoning brand development business across all events, with clearly defined benefits for all parties; and greater investment in longer-term contracts – and several of these are already at an advanced stage.

“Despite the profiteering, we believe there are major opportunities over the next 12 to 24 months to get a handle on some of this through our procurement to ultimately control end user prices,” Stephen says.

In a similar vein, Freemans also predicts that the big thing over the next five to 10 years will be the development of inclusive tickets by venues, where food and beverage will be rolled into an all-in ticket. “We believe venues will start to include F&B in the ticket price,” says Stephen. “You’re starting to see this at one or two events in America already, and we’ve done it in the past on a very small scale, but we see this really taking off in the coming years.”

Overseas expansion also beckons. While Freemans has worked on an ad hoc basis at events in Germany and Hong Kong, it is keen to establish a more regular presence in Europe, most likely initially in France.

“There is a significant market in what we do in the UK not being serviced correctly there,” explains Stephen. “We already operated in Paris in 2018 for the Ryder Cup. Plus we’re also looking at things for the Paris Olympics next year, particularly how we support Costa, which is now our brand partner, there directly, along with some of the national caterers.”

Freemans has also been asked to go to Rome later this year, to help service the Ryder Cup in September. “We’ve got about 55,000 American and UK citizens and a much smaller percentage of Italians, so we’re tailoring all the menus and equipment to suit whatever is required in that high impact environment,” says Stephen.

This unique understanding of the events world, combined with a birds-eye view of every aspect of its operation, and above all a key understanding of what customers, clients and even his own associates really need and want, will surely enable Freemans to endure and thrive in the current environment, if not the next 50 years of business. It’s clearly time to keep on telling it how it is.

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