A Brief History of Stag Dos

A Brief History of Stag Dos

The BBC dates stag parties back to 1970s and 1980s. But the Big Bang happened in 1996. When Google first emerged so did specialist stag party planning companies. Freedom can claim to be first, with adverts in FHM and GQ magazines and a website in 1996.

Before the creation of the stag universe, we only had regional adventure companies such as Acorn Activities and Anglian Activities devoting a page of their brochure to stag dos. With limited competition they establish a niche, however evolution waits for no man or stag and the theory of natural selection meant they died out before the turn of the century.

Enter a new frontier from 1997, a quick succession of stag organisers, including Red7 and Maximise. But poor customer service resulted in some spectacular failures (aka Stag Supernovas) along the way, Big Weekends in 2005, Brilliant Weekends in 2007, Release Travel in 2012, Go Experience in 2019 and then COVID in 2020 saw the death of Red7 and Hen and Stag Ltd.

At Freedom the stag is king, so we are constantly making life easier and removing the hassle of collecting payments using our individual payment system. New activities are in our blood, from bubble football to goofy games, zombie boot camp to kidnap the stag.

But what does the future hold? Freedom marketing team are working on a stag package literally out of this world with an intergalactic flight courtesy of fellow entrepreneur Elon Musk.

As the CEO of Freedom for over 20 years, what about my future? Well having survived over 30,000 stag weekends you'd expect the doctor to be putting me down with liver failure, activity overload or fancy dress personality disorder. But my plan for Freedom is to continue expanding the stag universe, expect more locations, free activities and extreme adventures. If Carlsberg did apps, then it might come close to what we have planned, the ultimate best mate that leaves all the hassle with Freedom but gives you all the credit.

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