BennyBoy Events founder Ben Shamashang was at London’s Insta-worthy Bloomsbury Lanes bowling alley when he had a “lightbulb moment”. Couldn’t this space be used a little better? What if a DJ was playing R’n’B, Dancehall, and Hip-Hop, with the bowling and karaoke carrying on into the night? In 2017, The Bowl was born.
“We create an adult playground vibe,” he says. “Our aim is to bring back our guests’ youthfulness, energy, and fun side. It’s one thing putting on a club night where people spend a load of money and pop bottles, but it’s another thing to create an experience.”
The unique blend of “party and play” experiences has been a winning formula for BennyBoy Events, who started locally and have since expanded into a global brand with events in Paris, Cologne, and Amsterdam.
The Bowl – held at Bloomsbury Lanes every Friday and All Star Lanes (White City) once a month – is their flagship event, with seasonal themes to keep the events fresh. Meanwhile, Swing My Way at London’s Putt Shack uses the same formula to “fuse party vibes with mini golf”.
“When you’re doing these activities, you actually get to actually talk to people, which is not really a thing in clubs nowadays,” explains Ben. “We create an experience where people can connect with each other and reconnect with their youth, which is the party and play element that we really push out.”
The experiences haven’t just caught the attention of partygoers, but also venue owners themselves. While the BennyBoy Events team is keeping details under wraps for now, another activity-based London venue has approached them to bring their party vibes to create an event in their space. This latest addition to their jam-packed roster will launch later this year.
As if that’s not enough, they’re also gearing up for their third summer in Ibiza, where they’ll bring their Mon Cheri brand back to Eden for the all-important Saturday night slot. The night sees them bring their signature Afrobeats, Hip-Hop, and R’n’B to the White Isle — genres that aren’t traditionally celebrated on the dance music-obsessed party island.
“It’s one thing putting on a club night where people spend a load of money and pop bottles, but it’s another thing to create an experience.“
Ben Shamashang, BennyBoy Events
Another secret to their success is their smart ticket pricing, add-ons, and promotions through Eventbrite’s ticketing system.
Depending on the event, the team offers multiple ticket options from early bird to VIP packages, which include tables and pre-ordered premium bottles of spirits and mixers. They include savvy promotions to drive demand among their loyal customer base such as free birthday tickets including entry, drink, bowl, and karaoke, while women benefit from 2-for-1 tickets at most events. The team also offers add-ons, such as shisha bundles, which are priced by the hour or for the entire night at a better rate.
💡 Pro tip: BennyBoy Events isn’t the only Eventbrite organiser finding success with offering VIP experiences. Our annual forecasting guide, TRNDS 2024, revealed that attendance at VIP events grew GLOBALLY by 18% on Eventbrite between January to September 2023, compared to 2022 – with no signs of slowing down.
When it comes to event listings, BennyBoy Events is doing all the right things by including plenty of information, images, and video — in fact, traffic to listings pages for events with video is 74% higher. They also use Eventbrite collections for their flagship The Bowl event allowing customers to browse a range of dates that suit them, as well as promoting future one-off themed events.
Co-founder Ben’s events career started almost two decades ago when he pounded the streets as a nightclub promoter and soon realised he had the skills — and crucially, the network — to skip a few steps on the ladder. He began contacting venues to run his own nights with the goal of creating spaces where his community could have fun and meet new people. It was only after a couple of successful years that he realised he actually had a business.
Fast forward 16 years and Ben now runs BennyBoy Events with co-founder and younger brother Gaëtan Shamashang. They have brought in long-term friend Idris Odusanya to further contribute to the creative and day-to-day operations across the board.
By focusing on “party and play” experiences, they attract a crowd with a diverse age range who are looking for a night out that doesn’t focus solely on alcohol and loud music. “You can have people as young as 18 who have just started going out, drinking or dancing, and then you can have people who are 35,” Gaëtan says. “That’s what’s really great and unique about the experiences we do.”
While the vibe at the events is fun-loving and laid back, planning behind the scenes at BennyBoy Events is clever, considered, and executed with meticulous attention to detail. When it came to brainstorming ways to go even bigger and better for 2024, they rented an office space and hashed out plans until the early hours of the morning when plans were fully in place.
One of the resulting events was a Valentine’s Day dinner for singles, complete with live music, a three-course meal, and an after-party. “[We were] able to tap into our pre-existing database and say ‘well, hold on we’ve got a percentage of ladies and guys, in certain age groups that are asking for something like this’,” explains Idris.
The biggest challenge was marketing an event with a more specific target audience than usual. “It was to target people who are actually looking for love, and a lot of people aren’t actually that open about it,” says Gaëtan. “We had to find a way to be informative, but in a digestible way.”
They researched how other events are marketed on social media. “Because there was a food element, we looked at how the food bloggers share information about venues and where to eat, and we took that and added our own twist to create content that would fit on TikTok and Instagram primarily,” Gaëtan adds.
Their savvy marketing skills draw on their experiences from the pre-digital era, when their main form of marketing was word of mouth and handing out flyers.
“It’s very useful to have come from that period of no Instagram or TikTok when it was all word of mouth,” Ben says. “Everyone’s so caught up in the digital world that we sometimes go ‘Hey, let’s take it back a step. How can we use the tactics from back in the day in the digital world so that we can still stay relevant?’”
In the early days, they relied on friends shouting about their events and while there’s no doubt that still happens, their ambassador scheme — launched in 2016 — sees influencers do the same thing on social media. “We started connecting with them to keep the brand young and on-trend,” says Ben, conscious of the fact BennyBoy Events’ survival will hinge on its ability to keep getting new generations through the doors.
💡 Pro tip: In order to make smart marketing decisions, you need to understand what’s working best for your event. Using Eventbrite’s unique tracking links will help you keep track of where ticket sales are coming from, so you know which marketing channels are the most effective for you.
Ben didn’t have an end goal in sight when he entered the events business, but the trio certainly do now.
BennyBoy Events has long been a cultivator of culture and community for its loyal eventgoers. So much so that their events have attracted some home-grown and international stars and led to collaborations with brands such as Barcardi, Nobu, Universal Music Group, as well as curating bespoke VIP experiences for celebrities.
The trio is currently in the process of growing the corporate side of their business, where they organise events for the likes of Island Records and brands at Paris Fashion Week — taking on every single step of the process, from conceptualising ideas to pulling them off on the night.
They held their first two fashion week events in Paris last year and they’re going even bigger for 2024, with two Milan stints and a return visit to PFW already booked in.
“We want to create a whole Fashion Week experience so that we can bring our community with us to the cities as well as tap with our existing communities in those places,” says Gaëtan.
Also on the to-do list is growing Mon Cheri in Ibiza – “we want to make it so that people come to the island to attend, instead of finding it there” – as well as the international versions of the Bowl.
“We’re essentially building a semi-franchise,” says Gaëtan, before offering an example. “We create the same party and play experience we do in London, but the Amsterdam way and with the UK touch. That combination is something amazing.”
And with so many events planned for 2024, it’s undeniable that audiences agree.
