by Troy Kirby
event), but they will keep the product, re-upping its membership, without considering that it is no longer a burden to purchase.
Sports marketers have focused on push factors, but in the wrong way. They have used premium item giveaways as push factors to drive attendance to games. Social norms within the industry have conditioned sports marketers to believe that, without premium item giveaways, there is a diminished push factor for prospects to attend the product. But even premium item giveaways, such as Bobbleheads, are no longer bulletproof, as these giveaway attendances have waned with too much over-exposure. So the sports marketer playbook has been watered down, making those within its ranks lazy.
That push factor has eliminated current methodology and buyer measurement. It has damaged the ability to establish as well as build a franchise’s crowd numbers with the right fostering group of advocates. The crowd numbers are inflated and cannot be judged correctly. It leaves only a per cap revenue mark which cannot be judged against the actual audience. But the sports marketer has likely not built into their skill set the ability to crowd build if they have relied on cheap, easy ways such as free tickets. Especially when the old reliable push factors such as free tickets or bobbleheads don’t attract the attendance numbers that they used to.
Building an audience is an applied science. Especially an audience of buyers. Make no mistake about it. It is not merely the ability to generate a crowd, but to keep its captive attention for a two-to-three hour window of time. For sports entertainment, it is truly a remarkable feature. During that time frame, the point of the entertainment is to have an attendee make a decision to attend the product multiple times in the future. Relying on the game, without an in-game promotional experience, is a costly endeavor which places all of the trust and value into an on-field product which has a 50 percent likelihood of not panning out.
Only in sports would a fallacy be generated that works in no other industry: the idea of an enticement being offered up-front prior to the initial sale. Yet, because events expire, tickets are worthless the moment that the event is over with, and there is a mad rush by sports marketers to flood the marketplace in order to fulfill some dire obligation to build a fan base. The trouble with this scenario, and others, is that it develops the “paper city” model like Phoenix. It becomes a place where no one is buying, the entertainment product is devalued overall, and event attendance is viewed as a mundane event without urgency.
The comical underlying issue with diehard sports fans is that they are, in a lot of cases, some of the most fickle attendees of a sporting event. While diehard fans pride themselves on promoting the notion that they will attend every game through rain, sleet or snow, they too have their limits.
Especially when the team isn’t winning on the field, or the stands are empty. Diehards are only diehards if they are seen by others. If the other seats are not filled, the diehards won’t show either, because they are there to be the leaders of the subculture created by the game environment, not simply as residents of it.
Sports should be a component of the “Fun Business.” The idea of sports entertainment is entirely built upon the extraneous atmosphere of delivering fun to the consumer. Several of the components of this fun business should be exclusive to the live event attendance. It cannot be made available while watching the game at home, in a bar, or with an iPad, where the beers are cheap, parking is available in the driveway, and there is no impact on the franchise’s per cap. Do the sports marketers understand that they are in the fun business? Especially if they are not trying to have fun while selling it? If generating revenue was the main desire of any sports marketer, they would likely not be in the industry – they would be at Wall Street. That isn’t why they first got into the field. Yet the sports industry breeds marketers who don’t want to distract from the game, because they are sports fans themselves.
Entertainment, including sports, is junk food. It's not necessarily good for you, but you want to consume it. That’s why no one notices how much time evaporates when they are having fun. Only when things have calmed down, when the fun has stopped, does time begin to slow as boredom creeps in. Entertainment is not as good for a person as other things; such as running six miles on a treadmill or reading Robert Frost's poetry. But while those things can be found to be enjoyable, they don’t have the firepower of junk food entertainment options.
College athletic departments have been especially resistant to avoiding the notion that they need to provide mass promotional appeal beyond the game itself. This “deny the wheel” mentality has permeated throughout the college sports marketing landscape, decreasing audience attendance nationwide. One of the primary causes is the inability of college athletic departments to shift the focus of the branding from winning to supporting a fun experience. Because of this “win” branding scenario, when the college teams lose on the field of play, they lose in the stands as well.
The sports marketer at the college level is also constrained by being answerable to several other governing bodies. This means that administration has the ability to suppress what may be viewed as “cheesy” or “outrageous” in terms of sports promotion. They are perpetually ignorant in crowd-building simply because they never worry about going bankrupt.
Any sports franchise would close its doors, fold operations, and layoff workers if it purposely ignored creating reasons for prospective customers to attend events. Yet, college athletic departments routinely do just that because of governing pressures by people who rarely attend their events anyway. The ability to stay operationally afloat despite revenue losses, and in some cases, without customers, perpetually keeps college athletic departments from changing their promotional tactics.
In the 1970s, the entertainment-driven consumer sought out entertainment options because she had to. There were few avenues aside from what we know now as traditional media, with four or fewer television channels, a bunch of radio stations, and one or two newspapers in each marketplace.
Getting the word out meant advertising, which was how an event drew people who were looking for something to do. The event was where everything happened, a meeting place, and competition for entertainment was actually low.
More than forty years have passed since that golden era of live entertainment. Now, every event is fractionalized as media tries to broadcast their messaging to the public. Every event can be played in high-definition, in a patron’s bedroom.
The Internet, with every component of entertainment accessible via large or portable device, has broadened that spectrum as well. The public receives an abundant amount of messaging at a constant, immediate rate unimagined in the 1970s.
It's a constant problem for the sports marketer: Are marketing concepts or messaging options being based on rules that no longer apply to consumers in today’s ever-changing world of media?
The industry is moving past the era of the premium item giveaway as a silver bullet tactic. Bobbleheads will always be around, but as they have reached the king of the mountain of sports promotions over the last few years, they will likely become like Beanie Babies, which used to be the silver bullet giveaway item and have vanished as a push factor promotion. The upcoming era of entertainment arrives with multiple message points. How each sports marketer decides to change the brand of fun within the experiential component of the event will be different from what a sports marketer faced three generations ago.
There are fundamental questions that each sports marketer should ask when equating their events:
Who are the prospects who can afford your event?
What event value can you deliver to the prospect?
Where do you gain the most traction to reach that prospect?
When should you initiate your messaging?
Why should a prospect attend your event?
How can added value be built to entice prospects into buying?
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FIGHT SPORTS REVENUE EROSION
BY TROY KIRBY
WHO IS TROY KIRBY?
COP
YRIGHT 2014
Troy Kirby is an experienced sports industry veteran and revenue analytics professional. He has interviewed over 350 sports industry leaders for The Tao of Sports Podcast, ranging from MiLB, MLB, NBA, NBADL, NHL, AHL, ECHL, NFL, Arena Football, as well as every size of college athletic department throughout the country, along with episodes focused on international sports. The goal is to build revenue, and Kirby does this as a frequent contributor to www.ticketingtoday.com as well as SEAT Magazine (Association of Luxury Suite Directors).
Kirby has been a keynote speaker at several industry conferences, and has continued to work professional in the sports field as the director of ticket sales and operation for three different university athletic departments. He has been a consultant to several professional teams, leagues and organizations, along being available to speak on various subjects surrounding sports business at upcoming conferences. Kirby can be reached at [email protected] or by his website, Tao of Sports: www.sportstao.com.
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