Benevolent corporations: FT Alphaville needs YOU

This is a big year for FT Alphaville. We turn 20 years old in October, which we plan to mark with general merriment, new swag, more pub quizzing and another Art of the Chart show.

To maximise how many people can partake in these events, we aim to continue charging a pittance for tickets. But to make that work, we need sponsors. We hate to be so blunt about it — we’re not particularly . . . commercial around here — but our feeling is that if you have your hand outstretched you might as well be straightforward about it.

Here are the events that need support:

The FT Alphaville Pub Quiz

We’re looking for new long-term relationships with sponsors who are able to commit to supporting two to three quizzes (examples here and here and here etc) a year across London or/and New York City. Or even further afield, if that’s of interest. This show can go on the road, for the right amount of cough commitment. As we once wrote:

If your company is:
— finance-adjacent (even very loosely)
— enthusiastic about quizzing as a general concept
— eager to get your brand in front of a lot nerdy nerds in real life and online
— keen to have a guaranteed table at future quizzes . . . then this is the perfect opportunity to scratch all those itches, while also basking in the reflected glow of all the attendees’ happy faces as we mentally torture them via trivia.

What do you get? Your name on all the posts about the quiz, several big fat THANK YOUS at the quizzes themselves, your logo on the quiz sheets, clues, a couple of tables for colleagues and clients, a massive banner on the door, a warm fuzzy feeling, and even a chance to write a round (if that’s your thing).

Want to leave some weird branded swag on the tables? Go for it. Keen to throw in extra prizes on top of our champion’s mugs, tees and glory? Yes please. Really, we’re pretty flexible, as long as the sanctity of the quiz is respected.

FTAV’s Art of the Chart

Our inaugural chart show last year was such a smash success that we’re bringing it back — and this time we’re turning it into a kind of 20th birthday party for Alphaville.

In case you missed it (tickets sold out EXTREMELY quickly), Alphaville took over St Bartholomew the Great* for two nights and, together with the FT’s Alan Smith and his insanely stacked data visualisation team, packed it full of a couple-dozen stunning charts of financial phenomena, economic ephemera and political shenanigans. The kind of stuff that should hang in the Tate, if its curators had any sense. There was also a wine bar, and a virtual reality stand. After the event, all the charts were auctioned off to raise money for the FT Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign.

We’re still making plans for this year’s follow-up, but last year we had a sponsor for the main show, and someone was so taken with the idea that they paid for a private viewing for clients the evening before. This is something we can do again. Hell, we’re love to do a three-day event if there’s enough interest, given how many people turned up last time.

So if any of this interests you and you control the corporate purse strings, please get in touch with me at robin.wigglesworth@ft.com and I’ll hook you up with our colleagues on the commercial side (wisely, they don’t let us actually touch any money ourselves). Alternatively, if you don’t control the corporate purse strings but know who does, now’s the time to crack out that kompromat folder and get lobbying.

*London’s oldest surviving parish church, which you may know from films like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and the upcoming FT Alphaville: Chartmaganza II — More Charts, More Wine.