One view of Charlton v Hull...
Not my words. Those of an "Experience Designer" I follow on LinkedIn. Link to the full article at the bottom.
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Sports May Be the Most Overlooked Opportunity in the Experience EconomyThe burger wasn’t very good. The urinals had us shoulder to shoulder. And plenty of fans brought their own sandwiches and tea into the stadium.
Honestly?
It was exactly the experience I was looking for.
Because sometimes experience is not about the adding of things. Sometimes it is about the removal of them.
The removal of distance. The removal of polish. The removal of screens, buffers, and comfort that keep us detached from the moment.
That is part of what sport still gets right.
While attending London Experience Week, I made sure to go to both a Premier League match and a Championship match. The Premier League match showed me scale. But Charlton Athletic vs. Hull City showed me something more important: how proximity — to place, to ritual, and to other human beings — creates the kind of escapism that many experience designers are still trying to manufacture.
And that is exactly why I think sports may be one of the most overlooked opportunities in the Experience Economy.
The audience is already there
The case for sports tourism is not theoretical.
Research highlighted in the AMARIMA Vault makes that clear. According to Amadeus, flight searches to Boston surged 1,000% during the 2026 FIFA World Cup window. Mastercard Economics Institute found that during the Champions League final, German visitor spending in London rose 61% year over year, while Spanish visitor spending jumped 148%. Expedia reports that 57% of travelers say they are likely to attend a uniquely regional sporting experience while on a trip.
In other words, the audience is already there. The willingness to travel is already there. The spending is already there.
What is still often missing is the deeper conversation about why certain sporting experiences create attachment, memory, and loyalty — and what destinations, clubs, and experience designers can learn from them.
When sport makes you feel local
When I travel, I want to feel like a local.
Not performative-local. Not curated-local. I want to feel like I briefly stepped into the rhythm of a place as it actually lives.
That is what Charlton Athletic gave me.
I took the train, walked past the homes, and made my way down the lane between houses toward the stadium. That walk alone told a story. This was not an entertainment complex isolated from daily life. It was woven into the neighborhood. The stadium emerged from the place itself.
I bought my matchday scarf and felt the literal buzz in the air. The match mattered. Keeping it short and simple: Charlton needed the result to stay in the league, and Hull had every reason to push upward. The stakes were real, and everyone around me knew it.
That combination — neighborhood, ritual, tension, anticipation, and shared movement toward one place — created something much bigger than a game.
It created entry into a world.
The Experience Economy was already there
If you are familiar with Pine and Gilmore’s Experience Economy, Charlton hit an incredible sweet spot across all four realms: Entertainment, Educational, Esthetic, and Escapist.
Entertainment is the obvious one. The match was excellent from beginning to end — competitive, tense, always alive.
Educational showed up in the way the club shared the success of a team from years ago. That matters. It means the visitor is not just attending a match, but being introduced to lineage, memory, and meaning.
Esthetic came from the place itself. The stadium is called The Valley, and at first I could not quite understand why. Then I sat down, looked above the stands, and saw homes and apartment buildings around it. It sat in the valley of the neighborhood. Suddenly the name was not branding. It was geography, identity, and belonging. The walk in, shoulder to shoulder with excited supporters, only deepened that feeling.
And then there was Escapist, which may have been the strongest of all. I had arrived from a conference with professional commitments, a schedule, and all the mental clutter that comes with that. But from the pre-match to the ninety minutes to the pints afterward, I had fully escaped. Not numbed out. Not distracted. Escaped into presence, ritual, and shared emotion.
That is what the best experiences do.
Why smaller environments often win
There is something powerful about the physical proximity of an older, smaller ground.
The seats are smaller. The concourses tighten. Even the restrooms, with the old troughs instead of neatly separated fixtures, remind you that this is a communal experience before it is an individualized one.
Nothing is asking you to stay detached.
You are near people the entire time — close enough to hear their jokes, frustrations, hope, and relief. That nearness creates something many modern experiences struggle to manufacture: a real sense of shared presence.
And maybe that is the point.
Sometimes the best experiences are not built by adding more. Sometimes they are built by removing what keeps us detached.
Distance. Polish. Screens. Comfort. The little layers that separate us from other people and from the moment itself.
In that sense, escapism is not always about being given more.
Sometimes it is about having less in the way.
So is there still a role for experience design? Absolutely.
Yes, and this is the part that excites me.
None of this means experience design has no place in sport. Quite the opposite.
It just means the goal is not always to pile on more things until the event becomes overproduced. The goal is to shape the pathway to escape more intentionally.
There is still room for:
- pageantry
- music
- visual design
- storytelling
- rituals of arrival
- club history
- neighborhood connection
- transitions before and after the match
All of those elements can deepen the experience.
But they should serve the same larger purpose: helping the visitor move from observer to participant.
That is why the visitor journey matters.
Not just the ticket. Not just the seat. Not just the final whistle.
The full journey matters: discovery, anticipation, arrival, entry, atmosphere, memory, departure, and what lingers afterward.
Then comes the discipline to evaluate it again and again:
What deepened connection? What broke immersion? What felt local? What felt generic? What created belonging? What turned attendance into loyalty?
That is where experience design becomes strategic rather than decorative.
What Charlton got from me
This is the part destinations, clubs, and tourism leaders should pay close attention to.
What did Charlton Athletic get from me?
A new loyal fan.
I bought a scarf. I will likely buy a kit. I will play as them in the FIFA video game. I posted about them on social media. I am writing about them now.
A club I had no previous connection to created a genuine one.
That is not a small outcome.
They did not just sell me a ticket. They created affinity, advocacy, merchandise revenue, digital reach, and the possibility of long-term loyalty from someone who entered as an outsider.
That is what happens when a sports experience works on a deeper level.
It converts attendance into attachment.
The opportunity
Sport already has what so many experience creators are trying to build from scratch:
audience, emotion, ritual, stakes, belonging, and willingness to pay.
So the opportunity is not to convince people to care.
The opportunity is to design more intentionally around the care that already exists.
For destination leaders, clubs, cultural strategists, and experience creators, that means not replacing tradition, but elevating it. Not making sport more artificial, but making the surrounding journey more meaningful, memorable, and place-based.
Because when it works, a match does more than entertain.
It makes a stranger feel like they belong.
And sometimes, that is enough to create a fan for life.
Comments
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For fucks sake23
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Was a good read and interesting angle. Those indoctrinated into Charlton by family often have no choice, it is in our blood from birth. There is a place to ‘sell’ the excess capacity to those looking for an experience.7
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We’ve paid for that, surely.4
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He didn't comment on TC.25
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An interesting article and thought- provoking.
But in the photo attached to the article he's got a half and half scarf on!2 -
In 20 years time he'll be cursing the day he ever set foot in the ground.......
" why can't we beat them ? 1-nil up going into injury time. All you had to do Nabby Sarr jnr was to head the ball clear ffs ! Never going to set foot in the Rusty Toolbox again "
"Palace Premier League Champions for a 3rd consecutive year......why them & not us"23 -
to me this reads as
1 - someone who went to the game, already thinking about how to shoehorn things from the day to fit the story he had already written
2 - typical LinkedIn bullshit14 -
LinkedIn content makes me want to gouge my eyes out12
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That guy definitely gets a full body wax and new suit fitting every 4 weeks.6
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The only thing he would have needed to change to make it accurate to The Valley from a preprepared cut n paste would have been the opening sentence!MrOneLung said:to me this reads as
1 - someone who went to the game, already thinking about how to shoehorn things from the day to fit the story he had already written
2 - typical LinkedIn bullshit0 -
Sponsored links:
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In fact, my Liverpool supporting Brother in law who went to the Chelsea game remarked how good his burger was!1
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And to think some of you moaned about Charlton Aesthetic...10
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And the whole section on how the ground is in a literal valley.EugenesAxe said:
The only thing he would have needed to change to make it accurate to The Valley from a preprepared cut n paste would have been the opening sentence!MrOneLung said:to me this reads as
1 - someone who went to the game, already thinking about how to shoehorn things from the day to fit the story he had already written
2 - typical LinkedIn bullshit
and that the burgers are rubbish (they are OK at some other grounds)0 -
LinkedinLunatics2
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What the fuck is an ‘experience designer’?4
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It's basically a flux capacitor.ValleyGary said:What the fuck is an ‘experience designer’?11 -
He's a Yank, say no more1
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Bazzballers will be "linking in" as we speak.1
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ValleyGary said:What the fuck is an ‘experience designer’?
An Experience Designer is someone who plans and shapes events or interactions so people feel a specific way and remember the experience, not just what happened. Like thinking the burger wasn’t very good, the urinals had people shoulder to shoulder or plenty of fans bringing their own sandwiches and tea into the stadium.
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This is the first sentenceBalladMan said:
And the whole section on how the ground is in a literal valley.EugenesAxe said:
The only thing he would have needed to change to make it accurate to The Valley from a preprepared cut n paste would have been the opening sentence!MrOneLung said:to me this reads as
1 - someone who went to the game, already thinking about how to shoehorn things from the day to fit the story he had already written
2 - typical LinkedIn bullshit
and that the burgers are rubbish (they are OK at some other grounds)0 -
Sponsored links:
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Verily we traipsed through the gritty realism of south east london, along Floyd Road past the inflatable easter decorations still forlornly reminding us of one sacrifice greater than the one we were about to make. And then is stuck me as a bigger gentleman jostled me at the piss trough and pissed on my hand. 'Eureka, i can dress this up as 'authentic' in a pipe, slippers and being gunned down by the nazi's way and make a load of money while watering down the very essence of what I am selling until it is no longer sufficiently authentic being overrun by new money and tourists and then I can move onto the next victim of my vampire experience creation'
What a time to be alive.4 -
This is why I avoid LinkedIn unless I need a job1
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My work are always banging on about how everyone needs to post more on LinkedIn to raise profile, etc.
Then you read stuff like that.1 -
If this is a real article and not AI drivel, the key takeaway is that Chizz follows experience designers on social media. What a hipster4
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Kind of how I felt, but then… On one level it was “What a load of pretentious bollox”, however, despite the verbiage and buzzwords, there’s truth in there, and stuff the club could use to attract attendance and build support.se9addick said:For fucks sake1 -
Just me that quite enjoyed reading that, then?
It was fun to read how an outsider (probably genuinely) experienced a trip to the Valley with little previous experience of the context7 -
And then everyone stood up and applauded5
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What a load of ballcocks.1
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I had some street food from the fans bar and it was delicious. I do think the Valley when it has 20k plus creates a special atmosphre. I know an Arsenal fan who went to our play off games who commented that he has never experienced that sort of atmosphere at Arsenal. The article writer clearly felt something even if it may have been diffrent to what we were feeling.1
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If he’d turned up to most of the other matches he’d have been bored senseless and wanted to gouge his own eyes out to get away from the shit he was watching5
