Fever is a live entertainment discovery platform that helps creators and their events grow through data and technology. To date, it has invested in popular global original experiences from the Stranger Things: The Experience and The Bridgerton Experience to Harry Potter Forbidden Forest and Candlelight, the world’s largest classical music concert series. In 2018, Isabel Solano was hired to lead Fever Originals.
This is a division dedicated to creating and bringing to life unique experiences in-house. Fever Originals is now the main economic engine of the company.
In her current role as global VP of original experiences, Solano leads a global multidisciplinary team of more than 200 with whom she manages relationships such as Warner Brothers, Netflix, Sony, Universal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or Amazon Studios, as well as co-productions with entertainment partners such as Moment Factory and Thinkwell.
Founded in 2011 in Madrid by Spanish entrepreneur Pep Gomez, Fever is now co-led by fellow Spaniards Ignacio Bachiller Ströhlein, Francisco Hein and Alexandre Pérez Casares. In January 2022, the innovative entertainment platform raised €200 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s growth investment fund.
This round, regarded as the largest ever in the live entertainment tech category, brought Fever to unicorn status.
Solano joins blooloop to explain how the company is disrupting the industry.
The start of Fever Originals
Solano’s background is in business and law.
“I don’t think I have the typical career path of most of the people that I’ve met in the industry,” she says. “I’m a lawyer; I studied economy and law. I started my career at Amazon in a pure tech role, initially on the retail side. I had a bunch of different roles. In my latest, I was leading a team running one of the verticals doing business in Italy and Spain.
“I was about to leave Europe to come to the US for my MBA.”
She was right at the end of this process when she met the founders of Fever in 2018:
“They had heard about me. We met, and they told me about the concept they had about using data and technology to produce events for the very first time. It was something that had never been done before.”
The founders, inspired by Netflix’s use of extensive data collection and analysis to make informed decisions about content creation and strategy, had applied a similar model to the entertainment sector:
“They shared the whole crazy idea with me,” Solano says. “But it was just an idea. They asked me, ‘Hey, would you like to launch this new business?’ At first, my reaction was, ‘Oh, no.’ There was no I was going to give up my MBA in the US for this. It was such a crazy idea.”
Growing the business
On reflection, she changed her mind:
“Then I thought about it. I was already going to be one of the youngest people in the class for the MBA. I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, and I’ve always felt attracted to the startup world. I decided to give it a try. In the worst-case scenario, I could always come back to my MBA plan.”
She joined Fever five and a half years ago:
“I joined as the head of Fever Originals. But to be honest I was the head, the project manager, the intern – almost the cleaning staff! I was doing everything because I had no one in the team. I had to build the team from scratch.”
Growth, however, was rapid:
“Within a few months, this was a big portion of the business of the company. I started hiring people, growing the business, and launching in various countries. Right now, we are a team of more than 300 people spread all around the world. At this point, I this is my baby; I’m not going anywhere.
“It has been a great adventure, and I’ve loved it so much.”
The Fever Originals business model
The business model is unique, in the entertainment and leisure space. It is, she comments, a beautiful industry. However, it has traditionally been one that is characterised by a lack of data and technology in decision-making processes.
“When you’re deciding, for example, to do an experience such as a light trail, how do you decide on the different parameters: the city, the specific neighbourhood, the length of the experience? What is CapEx versus OpEx investment? Are the royalty conditions good enough?
“Often, it was essentially an act of faith. The creative side was there, but otherwise, it was pretty much like a bet. Sometimes it was really difficult to understand, OK, this is going to be zero risk. I’ve seen big experiences with really strong IPs fail.”
It was at this time that Netflix was fine-tuning its incorporation of data in the production process of its content:
“One example that I like to give is that when Netflix started, one of the ingredients that they found would maximise the probability of success when shaping content was the background narrator voice where one of the characters is telling firsthand how they feel, what’s happening, what’s next, et cetera.
“It’s an element of much of their content. And, actually, there is an interesting case in Harvard Business School about this. We wanted to be able to do the same; to identify those ingredients that maximise the probability of success when we’re shaping experiences so that we combine that information coming from the data with creativity to give the result the best chance of success.”
Using data to make informed decisions
As a result:
“We were able to develop a risk mitigation model that would maximise the probability of success of our investments.”
In the matter of those investments, she adds:
“When Fever Originals is building experiences, we’re talking in terms of millions. So, we need to make sure that they stand a good chance. Often, it’s a matter of simple things. You can have an experience that is great in terms of quality and IPs, but because of one or two elements, it’s just not fulfilling its potential. It might be because of the neighbourhood, the opening hours, and the pricing elasticity.
“You need to know whether you should invest $200,000 on a carpet, say, or if there is a better element of the experience that you should invest the money in that will give you a better return on investment.”
Astra Lumina
Fever Originals, she explains, is in the business of producing experiences. The strategy is to partner with best-in-class content creators, and to empower them, helping them throughout the production process with data from the decision on the concept until the very end of the journey.
She gives an example:
“We did a beautiful experience last year, Astra Lumina, in LA, in the South Coast Botanical Gardens. It’s a partnership with Moment Factory. We produced that experience together and brought it to market as partners. It’s a co-owned project, where we split responsibilities. They have beautiful creativity, and we were the ones running all the operations of the experience, the ticketing, marketing, and all those financial decisions.
“With both sides both working together, the result was amazing. That’s a good example, but of course, we have many others.”
Working in partnership with Fever Originals
Fever’s preferred model will always be partnerships. At the start of the process, Solano explains:
“Often, we will know them and be aware of their work already, and will see that they have bigger potential than the one that they’re reaching now.
“I have a beautiful example that reflects our mission perfectly. We found these Spanish partners. They had some original pieces from the Titanic and were planning to put on an exhibition. We met them, and they showed us their content. They explained that they wanted to do an exhibition about the Titanic, but were thinking about doing it in Malaga, a town in the south of Spain. They had a contact in the town hall there and thought it would be a good opportunity to test the market.”
“We said, ‘OK, let us give it some thought. We’ll analyse everything.’ So, we did a very deep dive analysis, after which we came back to them and said, ‘We’re coming with you. We’re putting money here. But we’re going to do it a little bit differently. We’re not going to Malaga; we’re going to London, and after that, we’re going to do a whole tour of the East Coast in the US.”
After sold-out runs in London and NYC, Titanic: The Exhibition is due to open at the second city of its East Coast tour:
“It’s so funny,” Solano comments. “These guys had some pieces that were somewhere in a village in the north of Spain, and they were thinking about going to Malaga. They end up in Manhattan. I think it’s beautiful – and it really shows what our mission is, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Stranger Things
Building a company through a global pandemic was a challenge:
“I think it’s at times like that you really see how amazing your team can be,” she says. “Between 2019 and 2021, we were able to multiply the size of the business by 10. You can imagine the effort that went into that: it was wild, especially at the beginning. We were a little bit scared; because we were global, we were already starting to see what was coming in Europe.”
“One of the things that we were able to do, though, was to adapt most of our content and formats to make them more COVID-friendly and to keep operating. We were able to take advantage of the fact that our portfolio of experiences was very well geographically diversified, and we did very well.
“One of the biggest milestones during COVID is that we were able to open Stranger Things: The Drive-Thru Experience here in L.A. We started conversations about that one in June, and were opening the doors in October, as an experience in which hundreds of people were working.”
A resilient team
It was, she contends, a glimmer of hope for the industry:
“So many people were being laid off, and there were plenty of furloughs. The fact that we were operating, surviving, and generating a lot of employment was a positive message for the industry.”
“While I know that many people were trying to switch their experiences to online formats, we focused on working out how to create safe spaces and bubbles so we could, respecting all the regulations, still offer something to the market where people could come out, and have an experience. They were sick of being at home. We were actually actively hiring during COVID.
“I think it proved that the team was very resilient, and had great energy and attitude, which is what is needed to succeed.”
Trends in touring entertainment
Working with hundreds of partners around the globe and building the biggest platform for experience discovery in the world that comprises a comprehensive and exhaustive database affords the Fever Originals executive insight into emerging trends.
She comments:
“In terms of trends, I would say the general thing, first of all, is static versus dynamic. That’s really important 10 years ago, people were consuming live entertainment far more passively: going to a museum and just seeing and reading stuff, and walking around. That’s not really working anymore.
“People expect things to be way more dynamic and interactive. We have a Van Gogh experience that has been touring all around the world. One of the things that people like the most is a room in which people are actually able to paint, to put colour in some of the Van Gogh paintings, which are then projected on on the walls. It’s not super-sophisticated, but people were really engaged with that, and they were loving it.
“People expect interaction; they expect to be part of the experience.”
Edutainment
Educational components are a further element she identifies:
“People expect something more than just having fun from an experience. They want to learn something, to leave knowing something that they didn’t know previously. Edutainment is really trendy.”
Fever’s creative experience for children Chaos Lab, in Melbourne, Australia, encapsulates this:
“It’s a messy museum, and while it’s more for kids, it also has content for adults, so it’s a family experience. It’s all about learning about science touch and play and interactivity.”
It goes without saying, she comments, that the technology component is key:
“It’s such a big part of our lives that it’s a no-brainer; people just expect something with a technological component.”
Fever Originals and sustainability
Sustainability is another emerging priority:
“For us as a company, sustainability is a very important point. We reflected that priority in our Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience that we started in Manchester, then brought to other places, most recently Belgium.”
“In it, we recreate the Forbidden Forest, but part of the beauty of the experience is that we are dedicating money to planting trees. As part of their ticket, people could make an extra donation so that we could plant even more trees. It was beautiful to see how people were engaging with that, and how it made them feel good: they were consuming entertainment, but also giving back, helping to the extent they were able.
“Giving those options to people is so important.”
A bright future
So what’s next for Fever?
“Expansion,” Solano responds:
“We are in hundreds of cities already around the world with our content but I would say that there is still much to do in Asia Pacific. We’ve recently opened a big office in South Korea as well as in Tokyo, Japan. We’ve just opened in Argentina, and a couple of months ago we opened a very cool Hot Wheels experience in Chile.
“Regarding geographical expansion, we’re pretty much everywhere in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but I feel like there’s still room to grow in Asia Pacific and Latin America.”
