Football fans eyeing premium experiences at Euro 2028 in the UK and Ireland will get the chance next week, when Beyond Hospitality's exclusive packages go on sale — including "conditional final" tickets that are automatically refunded if your team fails to reach the Wembley showpiece.

Euro 2028, the 24-team men's European Championship, is being co-hosted by the UK and Ireland across ten stadiums, with the final set for Wembley in London — a return of the tournament to British and Irish soil decades after Euro 96 was staged in England.

The United States may be regarded as sport's most commercially mature market, but when it comes to matchday hospitality it still trails the UK, according to one of the sector's leading providers.

Beyond Hospitality, which holds the exclusive contract to deliver premium experiences at Euro 2028 in the UK and Ireland, says British fans are accustomed to higher levels of service and to stadiums that support the very best food and drink offerings to accompany their padded seats.

"I think that probably the UK is probably the most developed market in the world from a hospitality perspective," says Beyond's executive chairman, Jaime Byrom. "Sure, in the USA you've got a lot of demand for what they call VIP tickets, but it's all about the seat location and less about the service, so I don't necessarily equate it.

"In the UK, it's all about service, access to restricted areas, and the provision of services. You have to provide a service level that is commensurate to clients' expectations."

Conditional tickets for the Euro 2028 final

The Euro 2028 packages Beyond will release next week span a wide range: "immersive and theatrical dining experiences" run by celebrated chefs in luxury lounges and boxes at £3,500 a head, down to "fan hospitality" options starting at £900 per person.

Hospitality providers often have to bring in their own equipment and chefs to meet the required catering standards, but the venues hosting Euro 2028 — including Wembley, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Cardiff's Principality Stadium and the Aviva in Dublin — are set to make Beyond's job significantly easier. The host venues are largely modern, purpose-built or recently redeveloped grounds whose premium infrastructure — corporate boxes, lounges and high-end kitchens — is already in year-round club use.

Byrom describes it as "a very unusual situation", adding: "all that's giving us the opportunity to really raise the bar by capitalising on what is an infrastructure that we typically don't find".

Beyond Hospitality expects to sell out the vast majority of its packages before the 24-team tournament kicks off in June 2028, with buyers from the British Isles forecast to account for 60 per cent of sales.

Demand is likely to be boosted by the 1 September on-sale date, which comes a full year before Uefa releases general admission tickets, as well as the innovative "conditional final" tickets that are automatically refunded if the buyer's team does not make it to the final at Wembley.

"It's probably the one product that after 40 years in the business I'm excited about," Byrom says. "You don't have to buy a whole strip of tickets, you basically say 'if my team makes it to the final, I must be there'.

"This way you can do that and, at the end of the day, only two teams will play. So there will be far more refunds than guests to host, but at least those privileged ones will have paid the [original] price, not an inflated price."

Beyond Hospitality pledges no dynamic pricing

For similar reasons, Byrom is no fan of dynamic pricing, an approach that has provoked significant consumer backlash, including at this summer's World Cup. Dynamic pricing — where ticket costs shift with real-time demand — has become a flashpoint across live events in recent years, drawing scrutiny from regulators and consumer groups as buyers complain of prices jumping mid-queue.

"We make it clear to our customers that we don't practice dynamic pricing when it comes to reductions in prices," he says. "It's a benefit to the customer who knows that he's not going to find himself having paid more than perhaps he could have paid had he delayed his purchase. We do have the option to increase prices but I've never been involved in any project where we opted to capitalise on that."

Byrom has spent 40 years in the industry, and the last two decades have brought rising demand along with a shift in the customer base — from mostly corporate clients to individuals simply willing to pay more for an elevated experience.

That trend has accelerated since Covid, producing a wider variety of hospitality options and ever-more-imaginative products at the top of what Byrom calls the "aspirational pyramid" — from Fulham FC's upscale Riverside Stand to Michelin-star chefs at the World Darts Championship.

"The relevance of hospitality is ever increasing, for sure," he says. "I think the level of sophistication is going to continue to grow.

"When Beyond delivered the final of the [2024] Copa America, we invited Sexy Fish to provide an overlay on top of our normal catering arrangement. You're forever having to think of what you can do to increase the quality of the experience of your customers."