The firm’s hotels & hospitality team already works with a number of sports venues including Lord’s, Twickenham, Manchester City, and Cheltenham and Epsom Downs Racecourses through its customer benchmarking programmes “Meeting Benchmark Tracker” and “VenueVerdict”.

BDRC also partners with Stadium Experience, a collaboration of 36 football clubs set up to improve conference and event facilities at grounds, and sponsors the Football Hospitality Awards.

Mark Long (pictured) said: “Our new Sports & Sponsorship division responds to a growing demand for consumer research and insight for this fascinating sector. The Holy Grail for many major sports venues is generating non-match-day revenue and this is just one area we can help clients maximise through our proven customer experience and service benchmarking programmes.”