Abe Madkour opened up the 2018 NSF starting with a fireside chat with Dan & Clark Hunt. We took a look at what was top of mind from these owners’ perspectives managing both an NFL and MLS team.

MODERATOR

Abe Madkour

Executive Director

Sports Business Journal/SBD

This session highlighted how the Anaheim Ducks used technology to set themselves apart in an extremely crowded marketplace.  We dove into the processes they have put in place to solidify seven figure revenue increases in sponsorship and spoke more specifically about why big brands like Toshiba felt partnering with the Ducks was the right solution for their business.  We heard from Graham Siderius of the Ducks and Bill Melo, Chief Marketing Executive for Toshiba America Business Solutions/Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions.

Topics covered included:

• Facing the challenge of time – brands + clients
• Setting yourself apart in a crowded market
• What brands are looking for in a partner
• Communicating the experience without being in venue
• Shortening the sales cycle + generating revenue

Women in the U.S. control or influence over 75% of all household spending and represented over 40% of the fan base for most professional and collegiate sports organizations.  Brands and advertisers took notice.  The days of a “pink it and shrink it” marketing approach had been replaced with new tactics.  Experts not only shared compelling strategies for serving women in the sports marketplace and why advertisers should play close attention, but also discussed why making a concerted effort to hire more talented women in your own company is invaluable.

Creating a positive service experience for your fans takes planning, collaboration and alignment with everyone in your venue, including contracted partners.  Ruby’s 7 Star Service Playbook shared how she improved customer satisfaction ratings by 17%, increased renewals by 19%, and amplified playoff revenue from the previous season by 16% for one of her clients. Ruby’s 7 Star Service Methodology helped increase Season Ticket Members from 4,000 to 11,000 and moved another client from #78 to the #1 position in ESPN rankings of 122 professional sports franchises.

Attendees learned how to:

• Create a customer service mantra that will become the foundation of your customer service initiative
• Outline procedures for reviewing patron concerns and mystery shopping reports that promote transparent decision-making and improves accountability
• Solve interdepartmental and contracted partner challenges through collaboration and more efficient communication
• Offer practical, easy-to-implement solutions for incorporating customer engagement into your business plans to attract loyal, happy customers
• Increase transparency, communication and involvement to promote commitment and a sense of ownership with your company’s brand
• Develop, refine and test ideas to improve levels of service
• Promote greater receptivity to change by increasing employee involvement and improving the understanding of the rationale for changes

“And This Is Why People Are Leaving Sports…” This session pinpointed culture drainers within teams.  5 areas were discussed: Leadership (lack of training), Training (re-energizing or simply training), Diversity (race/gender/ideas), Pay, Work/Life Balance.  Focus was on steps to change culture drainers and create a positive work environment with a more dedicated staff.

Leaders were able to:

• Identify culture drainers
• Take away solid methods to build relationships
• Interview to build and grow a solid sales team vs looking for some experience
• Staff evaluations that cultivate change vs penalizing
• Providing continual training to foster growth
• Understanding and developing diversity
• Running sports sales as a business: pay and commissions to motivate vs struggle to pay rent

Social media best practices and algorithms change more frequently than we all would like. This session helped attendees better understand how to create a successful social media advertising campaign by introducing them to the basics – the 3 R’s of social media marketing: reach, relevancy and revenue. It doesn’t take a large budget to generate strong ROI, just a keen understanding of the key principles and a little bit of creativity.

In the competitive market for entertainment and hospitality spend, providing customer service and a guest experience that distinguishes your product in the crowded sports and entertainment market place is imperative. Attendees learned how to “Treat their Customers Like Norm”. Our Premium clients expect us to know their names and ensure that our staff is always glad they came. In this session we learned how to deliver a service proposition that keeps clients coming back season after season just like Norm.

An examination of Mobile Last Minute purchasers and their behavior.  Session included examination of data and research collected by both Turnkey Intelligence and Gametime. Turnkey shared insights on the live event buyer and how the demographic make up of package buyers and general individual event ticket buyers differs from those that purchase via last minute mobile methods. In addition, Turnkey shared insights gathered from a deep dive into the attitudinal attributes of Gametime buyers, such as motivations for the purchase via last minute mobile. Gametime provided in depth analysis on data findings from more than 700,000 mobile transactions on Gametime in 2017, answering questions, such as:  How do customers profiles differ by league, market and other genre’s? Do day of game purchasers have a different demographic profile than purchasers who buy earlier?  What are the buying patterns leading up to events?  What seat locations do last minute purchasers buy and what are different AOV’s.

Everyone loves a great deal. BOGO, 25% off, Black Friday – we love feeling like we are saving money. What if you could get that same feeling from your marketing campaign? USA Swimming hosted this round table discussion to teach some unique ways they have increased their marketing ROI with low cost add-ons to their base strategy. Attendees came prepared to discuss some of their own low-cost marketing wins, as this session took a collaborative approach to building a “Cheap Marketing Toolbox” that each attendee to take back to their organization.

Are you curious to know what Sponsors are saying? Or which sports do the best job and bring in the most sponsors? How do Sponsors really evaluate packages? The 2018 Corporate & Industry Survey was an in depth review of the opinions of team/event executives and leading corporate sponsors on sports marketing. The country’s top Corporate Advertisers and Sponsors have spoken! Attendees found out what both sides are saying during this session with Ron Seaver and Jim Kahler as they uncovered the insider’s information.

Fans today experience events from more than just their seats. Entertaining them and creating an exciting atmosphere in and outside of the seating bowl is increasingly important. Fans are arriving earlier and staying later than they ever have before. In this session, how you can provide your fans with additional engagement during those key moments surrounding the main event to increase revenue and turn your venue into a complete entertainment destination was discussed.

SESSION LEADER

Will Ellerbruch

National Sales Manager

Daktronics

With the ever-changing sports business landscape, hot topics in the industry are continuously keeping senior level executives up at night. They must focus not only on what’s most important for their organizations, but for their team and themselves as well. George Killebrew lead a roundtable discussion on some of the biggest concerns & topics on manager’s minds daily. What happened at the roundtable, stays at the roundtable!

What technologies are top stadiums, teams, and vendors using to engineer year-over-year F&B revenue growth? Food & Beverage experience ranks second to only live game action on your fans’ in-stadium experience meter. They want choices and speed of service to define the F&B experience. Our panel filled attendees in on the strategies and technologies they are using to leverage data to make the dining experience more compelling for their venue’s visitors. Industry leaders are collecting more data and employing the data to increase F&B revenues …. every year! Our panel discussed:

• What data you already have, but aren’t employing
• Data that is easy to collect, and how to do it
• Using data to drive fan engagement and behavior
• Becoming predictive with your F&B offers
• Engineering waste down to never-before-seen levels
• Speeding thru-put to speed queue times
• Using data to dynamically inform menu board content

In the age of diluted content, easy access to a variety of entertainment options, and other daily distractions how do promoters create the “FOMO” feeling to their potential customer base? While acknowledging this is far easier said than done the focus of this session was on strategies, tactics and examples of how we have utilized across the Feld Entertainment portfolio. The goal of the session was to create an open dialogue for idea generation and debate in this space.

In 2017 the esports industry brought in $1.5 billion in revenue and is poised to hit $2.3 billion by 2020. It’s no secret that pro sports is investing in esports and playing a huge role in the growth of the sector but there are many factors behind this trend. Opportunities to engage fans, cultivating new demographics, brand activations and media monetization strategies are just a few of the boundless opportunities presented by esports. This session addressed why esports are a massive opportunity for pro sports and dove into specific examples of what’s happening today and what the future holds.

Brad Shelton lead an all-star panel in a discussion about upcoming trends and hot topics during the “What’s Next” Super Panel. In a rapidly growing sports industry, new technologies and trends are constantly emerging allowing organizations to become more innovative with their campaigns and advertising. This Super Panel included several organizations who continue to capitalize on these opportunities and are eager to share their insights on what we expected to see in 2018 and the direction they saw the sports industry heading.

Picture this: You’ve left the office, the day is over and as you try to fall asleep at night you lay there in bed… and you’re thinking… and thinking… and thinking. What keeps some of the best minds in the business up at night?

As a long-standing tradition, the NSF began the final day of the 2018 conference with the “What Keeps You Up at Night?” Super Panel. This gathering of top notch executives told us exactly what they’re losing sleep over.

This panel of top executives navigated through a discussion on the issues that consume their thoughts post-game and year-round. Then, JJ Gottsch took us on a thought provoking ride as we began our final day of the 2018 National Sports forum.

This session took us behind the scenes with a roll up your sleeves open panel discussion with sponsors who oversee strategy, relationships and decisions on a day to day basis. Hosted by Jim Kahler, Executive Director of the AECOM Center for Sports Administration at Ohio University, the panel featured candid insights from three sponsorship executives.

Gone are the days when we can simply offer tickets and parking to sit in “a box” on gameday.  Today’s fans, our clients, want unique experiential benefits that we have to be able to deliver and leverage as part of a year-round platform.

For some that means trips to away games on the team plane, or it could mean heading down to the field to take pre-game batting practice or a lap around the track at 165 mph with one of their favorite drivers.

For this session we focused on several of the new, novel, unique (…and effective…) ways that clubs and sports properties are keeping their high dollars ticket holders, sponsors and advertisers engaged and involved.

What can you do to make sure the investment you make in training pays off in improved results?  Bill Guertin is a sports sales performance expert, and this session explored several simple things we can do before, during, and after training that will make our training investment “stickier”. Changing old sales habits is difficult, and there is a BIG difference between simply learning and actually incorporating the learning into daily activities.  Bill revealed effective ways to help each of our staff members to “buy into” positive change, apply what they’ve learned, and help their careers to soar.

Everyone acknowledges the importance of data and analytics, but one area that’s overlooked is how use of this data can and should change how we manage staff. Simply put, it’s one thing to have the information, but it’s entirely another to know the best ways to make use of it. It can impact priorities, incentives, decision making, accountability, oversight, feedback, transparency, integrity and more. This panel discussion focused less on data and more on the strategies, tactics and best practices on how to better integrate analytics into the role of management.

As the new kids on the block, the Vegas Golden Knights took a 21^st century approach in capitalizing on generating revenue through social selling. This session gave attendees an inside look on how the Golden Knights used Facebook and other social media platforms to create brand awareness and engaging content through social selling. Through promoted and organic posts, the strategy and data behind the Golden Knights objectives through social media selling was analyzed.

First, it’s all about relationship-building. Second, in a competitive market, vying for the same corporate dollars can be a challenge. Understanding the market and competitive landscape while having the right offer and inventory are all important aspects to staying relevant and putting your team in a position to win locally. This fireside chat covered various topics that pertain to the sales process for securing local sponsorship dollars that help fill the gap on everyone’s sponsorship P&L.

Hosted by BRC Imagination Arts, an experiential design and production agency, Creative Director Matt Solari and other experts from sports marketing, organizations and top brands shared their expertise on how the power of storytelling and transformational experiences generate traditional and non-traditional revenue. They shared how to build a unique storytelling roadmap for revenue generation on both game day and non-game day as well as increase brand loyalty and fan engagement all year round.

As fans increasingly spend their time online, sponsors are looking for opportunities to activate content-driven partnerships leveraged with fully integrated marketing platforms. How the UFC and MetroPCS worked together to create an innovative campaign to amplify the sponsor’s message, bringing fans #CloserThanEver was shared.

Sports are the coveted “DVR-proof” medium, which consumers still have to see, hear, or follow in real time.  We explored how networks, sponsors, and other stakeholders leverage sports entertainment content to deliver a more compelling experience and better reach their target audience.

In sales, we are all solutions providers and it is critical for us to find what the largest struggles are for our clients in order to provide them value.  As the sales climate is changing for ticket packages, innovative ways to engage clients and create revenue streams for today’s buyer were discussed.

With escalating salary caps each season, how are teams meeting the demands of this growing expense? We can’t just continue to raise ticket prices ever year…. we need to get more creative on how we grow revenue streams. This includes growing revenues in Sponsorship, Radio, TV, Social/Digital, Merchandise, Special Experiences and Food/Beverage. Eric Stisser lead a roundtable discussion on the creative ways we are all having success increasing our revenue streams.

Content is King in today’s marketing, where consumers value brand authenticity and entertainment at ever-decreasing increments of time. But while content may be King, distribution is Queen…and she wears the pants.  Content is only as valuable as the consumer exposure and experience.  Marrying a strategic distribution plan with big idea content, from inception to implementation, is critical to success.  This session explored some of the best Team and Property content and social media campaigns from the recent past.

From a personal brand to building up a national or international campaign, “Parney” shared some concepts and experiences that brought perspective on brands, brand building and living the brand.  Additionally, they  talked about ways the community can be impacted as a brand evolves.

How successful are you at leveraging your entire organization against the common goal of revenue growth & brand engagement? Is your corporate sponsorship, season ticket holder, event sales and operations team aligned and working together? This session took a look at building cross-functional strategies to optimize the utilization of venue, fire up revenue generation, extend a brand and deliver innovative experiences across the board. This candid discussion included a panel of leaders from the industry who discussed the opportunities to take businesses further, break down the silos that may be in the way and surpass goals for revenue and brand activation.

The corporate landscape in esports has taken the industry by storm in recent years, and the ecosystem continues to grow at an enormous rate. More and more we’re seeing sports organizations investing into esports, which provides a tremendous intersection between traditional sports and esports. One thing that remains consistent is corporate partnerships. In this session we explored WHY brands are investing in esports, and how they can be leveraging their existing sports portfolio to grow their brand in esports, and how teams with interests in esports can be approaching their existing corporate clientele to expand their relationships.

Ticket sales are the life-blood of sports organizations. As ticketing evolves at hyper speed, it’s essential that sports organizations stay ahead of the marketplace. Technological advancements coupled with the creativity of contemporary ticketing companies are changing the way leagues, teams, venues and sports properties do business. Steve DeLay lead this diverse panel in exploring the rapidly changing nature of ticket sales to stay profitable. Tips and best practices for increasing sales and filling seats from these MVP’s of the industry were shared.

To close out the 2018 NSF, we celebrated with a Budweiser Gala at the Star!