Marketing opportunity for sports teams

WESTERN Australia’s top sporting clubs can enhance their revenue and profit through the improved collection and use of information on their supporters, according to a marketing expert in international sports.

Last Friday’s sold-out match between Fremantle and Collingwood presented the Dockers with a tremendous opportunity to develop valuable relationships with its fans through the collection of database information, The Aspire Group’s general manager fan relationship management, Bill Fagan, said.

Speaking to WA Business News from his home in Atlanta, Georgia, Mr Fagan said the large crowds at Fremantle’s games was in itself a strong statement.

“But my question for the club is to what extent are you capturing the data of these new fans, whether it be through the internet or through database collection programs at the event,” he said.

“And then to what extent can they get those fans that have never been to a game to come to one game, or those who have come to one to then come to two or three and get on what we call the ‘fan escalator’.”

Mr Fagan, who will join other international professionals at the second Australian Masters Marketing & Sales Summit in Perth in August, explained the success of a professional sporting club, regardless of the code or country, was directly proportional to the number of people passing through the turnstiles.

“It all starts with bums on seats, that drives everything else,” he said.

“Ticket sales is the trunk of the sports sales money tree and the more bums you start with, the more opportunities to get more concession sales and more merchandise sales.

“Sponsorships are the close follower but you can’t sell a sponsorship if nobody can see it.”

Mr Fagan oversees The Aspire Group’s fan relationship management, the fastest growing area of the global sports and entertainment company, for American football (NFL), basketball (NBA), soccer (Champions and Premier leagues in Europe), and rugby.

He said the company’s overall goal was to maximise revenues for clients through its ‘Next Practices’, based on the NBA’s best practices model developed by Aspire principal, Bernie Mullins, which delivered all-time attendance records, revenue and profit growth and raised the league’s overall asset value when he served as NBA junior vice-president of team business.

Part of Mr Fagan’s work includes establishing fan management centres at sporting events and then hiring and supervising staff to interact with fans.

“There are really two major areas to selling; the first is to sell more to your existing customers, maintaining those customers and increasing the wallet share for fans already attending,” he said.

“The second area is to sell to new customers, or the acquisition of those customers.

“So when you look at database collection programs, it is critical and this can really make or break to what extent they (sporting clubs) are successful.

“Once we have the data we can reach out to them individually and learn more about them and we can do that in numerous ways whether that be through e-marketing or phone or face-to-face.”

He said Australia’s sporting clubs were doing a tremendous job with existing ticket buyers, knowing who they were and then servicing these people through events and programming.

But he said largely untapped secondary users, such as those watching on television, presented a terrific opportunity for growth.

“I think there’s a great opportunity to get that data and then once you have that data be able to target market those segments,” Mr Fagan said.