A high-end tour operator with a specialist focus on family footballing holidays, Football Escapes has gone from strength to strength since it arrived on the scene in 2016. Co-owned by sporting superstars Rio Ferdinand, Bobby Zamora and Mark Noble, and run by founder and MD Sam Hubert, in early 2024 the award-winning business began a new partnership with Firebird to take its growth even further. How is the journey going? Sam Hubert reveals the experience so far, including his working partnership with Firebird Director Chris Thompson.
“We wanted to create a Disney-style magic – the magical element was football”
Football Escapes was formed when Bobby Zamora and I spotted a gap in the market for family holidays. When children get too old for kids clubs, parents lose that structure and routine, and have to think up ways to entertain them. Our vision was to work with the Premier League footballers we knew to create a football holiday like no other. Something with a Disney-style magic but where the magical element was football. Kids could train in the morning and make friends with like-minded people while they were on holiday; kicking about with stars like Michael Owen, Peter Crouch and other major favourites.
Not long after we started, the concept expanded much further than kids’ entertainment. The grown-ups wanted to join in too. They were watching, playing, having parents’ games. We saw we were creating a Football Escapes community: families returning again and again to holiday with their new friends in different places.
We expanded through word of mouth alone – until now we’ve had zero marketing budget, which often surprises people – but we easily doubled our revenue. It was great to watch the business grow. At the same time we found we were getting less and less time to breathe. We knew it wasn’t sustainable, and also knew we could go much further with expert support. People whose main specialism was growth in the travel sector, to complement our team’s specialism of football. That’s where Firebird came in.
“Growing organically is great, but eventually you need support to reach the next level and keep growing”
In February 2024, after multiple meetings with the Firebird team, who saw the huge potential in what we could do and where we could go next, Firebird Director Chris Thompson joined us as our Chairman and Non-Executive Director. Before that point I’d been doing everything – honestly everything: finances, contracts, all sorts. Chris’s main focus for me, after spending many years as a successful MD himself, was to relieve me of lots of those time-consuming jobs I had been doing, freeing my time to do more of the important strategy side.
When you’re an entrepreneur, running a start-up business, there’s generally a lot of management that’s happening on a whim, and not much structure in place. You grow organically, which is great, but you eventually hit a point where you need extra support to reach the next level and keep growing.
Right now, with guidance from Chris and Firebird, we’re changing to incorporate much more structure in what we do. It’s all about housekeeping: building a positive work culture, getting the standards right, putting a structure in place that allows our employees to flourish and gives them enough trust to perform their roles.
Chris has come in to change the way we are working. He’s setting the expectations of what is needed from everyone inside the business. We’re setting up internal team leaders, and making sure our infrastructure supports what we’re trying to do.
“For the first time, we’re now putting marketing, HR and crisis plans in place”
It’s an exciting time. Our retention rate is phenomenal but our brand awareness could do much more. We’re currently one of the best kept secrets in the holiday sector. People who are referred to us by their friends come back again and again – so our efforts now include reaching more families outside of that; we’re starting to think about marketing and paid advertising for the first time.
As part of that we’re doing a whole new rebrand, and will have a new website launching later this year. We’ve reviewed our consumer info and lead generation, and discovered we need to work on promoting that we’re a football holiday provider rather than a football academy, so we’re making our messaging clearer. We’re also expanding into America and, thanks to Firebird Director Matt Purser, we’ve obtained an ABTA licence, to boost consumer confidence in our products. We’ve completed crisis training and now have a crisis management plan in place, as well as a new CRM system. We’ve also got proper HR support for the first time, and are looking at employee benefits. None of these things were part of our business before.
Another important element Chris is working on with us is automating much more of our processes. As a luxury business we’ll never want to give up our personalised touch – our average booking is around £10,000 and it’s really important our customers receive the bespoke service anyone expects for that kind of money. At the same time, by keeping most of our processes manual up to this point, the way we’re growing has risked straining our small team. Thankfully we’re learning there’s a lot of great tech out there to help, and ease the workload as our booking numbers grow.
“We’re planning to broaden our luxury remit even further”
For Football Escapes as a team, our confidence comes in knowing that Chris has “been there and done it” from a travel and business capacity. And for me, what’s been really helpful is having him as a knowledgeable person in my corner to bounce ideas off.
He might sometimes joke that he’s not a “football person” but for us that feels like a benefit: as our Chairman and Non-Exec he doesn’t need to know about footballers and teams. Fundamentally we’re a luxury tour operator, with football as the hook. Chris’s expertise as a former MD of Ski Famille for 15 years was selling luxury holidays, with skiing as the hook. The two are very similar, and his experience is teaching us a lot.
In the next 3 to 5 years we’re planning to broaden out the company’s luxury remit even further. Football will still be our main focus, but the idea of “escapes” will become an even more central part of things: holidays designed not just for one person in a family who’s a big football fan, but for siblings and parents who want to do something different alongside that, whether it’s tennis, dance, cooking, or another option from a range of experiential opportunities. It’s what most families want, we’ve found: an active trip with a rewarding bit of structure; a feeling of achievement every morning.
Overall we feel very positive about what we’re doing. We know there is huge potential. We know Chris and the team at Firebird see it too; that’s why they've come and supported us. The secret is out and it looks ready to spread. I’m excited to watch things grow further.
Director of Firebird Chris Thompson, who joined the board of Football Escapes earlier this year, shares Sam Hubert’s enthusiasm – and believes the time is just right for their partnership to have the maximum impact. Below, he gives his perspective.
“The Football Escapes team have done amazingly to get to this point. They’re very receptive to what matters now”
Sam and his team have done amazingly to get to the point they are at now. Operationally, the service they deliver to children and families is exceptional: they do a fantastic job of keeping things inclusive, making sure kids are having a riot while parents relax.
There’s understandably always a lot of excitement about the opportunity of expansion, but many business leaders forget to pause, take a breath, and make sure the foundations are properly in place first. Getting those elements right can take a lot of work – including lots of work that sometimes feels dull – but that’s all massively helpful for the growth of the business long-term.
What’s really great with the Football Escapes team is that they were fully prepared from the start to embrace those less exciting elements, and have always been receptive to why this matters. Recently we’ve been able to help management identify new key roles – key people to bring into the next stage – and we’ve also been able to give the team confidence to invest in things like an enhanced booking system and a new website, both of which go live later this year.
I may know little about football but I know a brilliant business when I see one. Football Escapes has bags of potential, and a lovely product that enables families to have hassle-free fun. It’s great to be involved in helping them share that unique offering to even more people in new destinations over the next few years.
Sam Hubert is the founder and MD of Football Escapes, the premier football-coaching holiday provider. Football Escapes offers trips to luxury resorts worldwide, led by an unparalleled roster of footballing legends – including England heroes Peter Crouch, Michael Owen and Fara Williams. More at www.footballescapes.com
Chris Thompson is a Director of the Firebird Partnership, with almost 20 years’ experience of leading and growing businesses in the travel and tech sectors. His focus is on creating strategy, building teams, and devising processes that are both efficient and value-building.
Learn all about Firebird at www.firebirdpartnership.com
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