The Sport Finland network gathers businesses under the Finnish country brand and promotes the development of new solutions and business opportunities. Awesome Crowd is an example of a business that has made use of the network to open a door to the Spanish market, enabling it to start collaborating with a renowned Spanish football club.
- We were able to open up communications to Spain with the help of Sport Finland. In the spring of 2024, we were part of a delegation on a trip organised by the network, and there we met representatives of a well-known Spanish football club and were able to get them interested in what Awesome Crowd could offer, says CEO Sari Hallikainen.
In September 2024, Sport Finland travelled to the World Football Summit trade fair, where Hallikainen could continue discussions with the club. The club representatives shared their views on how Awesome Crowd should develop their product, and said they could continue the discussion if Hallikainen was able to implement the measures they required. Currently, Awesome Crowd is working on an AI enhanced gamified wall installation for sporting events and brand flagship stores, as well as listening carefully to ideas from Spain.
- This has been a very straight-forward kind of discussion: there is no need for idle chit-chat between two professionals. All we need to prove is the product is good and tested. For a small business, this is a dream come true, as football is pretty much the king of sports, says Hallikainen.
Internationalisation is often a lengthy process
Making an international breakthrough is a prolonged process that takes a lot of work. Hallikainen has applied for European Regional Development Fun (ERDF) funding for a project to develop event marketing services applicable in the international sports market. The objective is to focus especially on the retention of young fans and social responsibility messaging through sponsorships. For example, in Spain, racism is a major issue in sports, so social responsibility messaging plays a particularly vital role.
- We have sought to interview as many clubs and junior players as possible, to get an idea of what they want and build our concept in that image, says Hallikainen.
The intent is for Hallikainen to next again pitch her idea to the Spanish football club, and get more feedback to enable further development. Apart from Spain, Hallikainen has also been refreshing her old contacts in the US. She is delighted that her contacts have been interested in hearing what's new with Awesome Crowd and they are looking forward to the company's return to the US.
- The Sport Finland network allowed us to launch a systematic effort to take our business global. The network let me make contacts that allowed the business to start ramping up with regard to internationalisation as well. The support I have received and all the positive people at Sport Finland have helped me on the way.
- I have felt I am surrounded by people who know what they are doing and want the best for one another.
Hallikainen has been active in the sporting field for 25 years now. She feels that, as a woman, she has had to work twice as hard as men would.
- I have been told, right in my face, that women should stay out of this business.
In spite of that, Hallikainen believes constructive dialogue is the way to resolve problems. There has also been progress, as the number of women in the world of sports has increased and people have become more aware of the issue. Hallikainen says she has seen this in person: when she first visited a trade conference in the USA in 2016, there were little if any women to be seen. In 2022, the situation had changed significantly.
Who dares wins
Hallikainen knows that going international requires daring and confidence in one’s own work.
- I’m sure there are businesses who can internationalise easily and without complications, but more often than not, you can end up in some pretty tight spots. You need to dare to fail, and to go against the grain of public opinion. My biggest failure has been that I didn’t trust my own gut, but what others were saying, which slowed the development of our business. But on the other hand, failure is what teaches us the most.
These days, Hallikainen says she consciously seeks to go out of her comfort zone and always be aware of what that teaches her. In Finland, many people are afraid to make mistakes – even though they should not be.
Awesome Crowd’s path to internationalisation has also been dotted with successes.
- The biggest one is probably that we are here, right now. Even a couple of years before, we had no idea what was going to become of this whole business. So, it is a big success that we have got this far and dared to develop ourselves and our international business..png?width=1200&height=400&name=Sport%20Suomi%20logokoonti%20%20(17).png)
The Sport Finland network is based on a joint leadership project by the cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, and Kuopio, implemented between April 1, 2023–December 31, 2024. The purpose of the network operating in the context of promoting wellbeing is to facilitate knowledge-increasing co-development innovation processes between different sectors of society and internal cooperation related to research, development, and innovation (RDI). The foundation of the project lies in ecosystem agreements between the state and Innocity cities, i.e., university and university centre cities, with funding provided by the Pirkanmaa Regional Council, which grants support for lead responsibility projects from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), according to the objectives and specific goals outlined in the Innovation and Skills in Finland Finland 2021–2027 program.
