Football Fun Factory at the 2o24 BFA Conference and Awards!

Last Thursday was quite a day for the Football Fun Factory as during the day myself, James, Jonny, Kiefer and Darryl attended the British Franchise Association Conference and in the evening we were joined by Oli and Adam along with Jon and Becky Radford for the prestigious BFA Awards ceremony as we all got dressed up to the nines to celebrate all the wonderful work that goes on in the industry. And to top it all off the FFF was nominated for Franchisor of the year in the expanding category and Jon was nominated for the Community Focus Award for his fantastic work in his local community in Exeter.

It was a brilliant opportunity to network with so many brilliant organisations and individuals from the franchising world to share learnings and challenges and further develop our own business. We also had the chance to listen to some superb speakers, both in breakout rooms and in the main auditorium. One of them was superstar businessman and podcaster Stephen Bartlett, but more about that later!

One of the main takeaways from the day was what a supportive industry the franchise world is with so many people giving up their time to share experiences and so happy to support one another. Since becoming a member of the BFA some months ago now we have been able to immerse ourselves into it on a much deeper level which has also enabled us to build some fantastic relationships and have also been proud to be recognised for the work of our Head Office team and superstar Head Coaches.

Back to the conference and despite many the definite highlight of the day was headline speaker Stephen Bartlett, having read his book and listened to a number of his excellent podcasts this was something I was really looking forward to and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The way that he gets his points across and articulates ideas was mind-blowing, and it certainly gave us a number of golden nuggets to think about and look to implicate in our own business.

It was then on to the awards ceremony after a quick change into our tuxedos for the black tie event and if I do say so myself everyone scrubbed up pretty well! And it turned into a quite momentous evening with our very own Jon Radford scooping the Community Focus Award and Franchise of the Year which was voted for by all the winners from the evening in a live vote. The feedback Jon received from the judging panel for all the work himself, Becky and the rest of their team put in to make football accessible to children, going above and beyond to support the local community was something quite special and I think made everyone so proud he was part of our team and the awards were without a doubt completely deserved.

The only thing left to do then was to dance the night away after what had been a truly memorable day!