Increasing the number of times a fan visits your venue has a direct and measurable impact on revenue; as does extending the duration of their visit. To do this, stadiums need to have a clear understanding of who each of their visitors are and how they behave when they are in the venue. However, with multiple ticket purchases and the increasing influence of the resale market, most stadiums don’t have the data they need to directly influence the fan experience and behavior that truly matters.
Companies such as Amazon, Alibaba and Google, are beginning to shift from an online-only business into the realm of brick and mortar stores, bringing their data capture methods with them into these physical spaces. If ignored, this merging of business intelligence represents a genuine threat to organisations.
Efforts to engage with billion-dollar stadium audiences, maximizing revenue opportunities, fall flat when stadia can’t identify who is at their events. More than half of visitors are anonymous, either because they are among a large group where only a single purchaser’s details are held, or because they have bought a ticket through a reseller. This makes it impossible for venues to build a relationship with them, or market to them intuitively.
Amazon FC
What if Amazon had a team? They would play their home games at the Prime Arena and treat the stadium like a website. Amazon FC’s marketing, CRM and ticket reps, will know who every single person is who enters their stadium. They know whether it is their first visit, or their 51st visit at the stadium.
They would know where ticket holders go in the stadium, what routes they take, what they spend their money on, and how much they spend per second in the stadium. They would then use that information to optimize their fan experience so fans are able to spend money more quickly, as well as make recommendations on other things they might like, such as merchandise, refreshments, or upcoming A-list concerts.
Content to engage and excite
On top of all this, they are merging the offline into the online. Amazon FC’s brand managers would share content that enriches the fan experience within the stadium – whether that’s interviews with the players, in-game stats and replays, or access to online gaming. As they collect all of this rich intelligence, ticket reps would be able to utilize the insights when fans aren’t in the stadium to encourage their return and interact with the club before, during, and after their visits.
Driving behavior that matters
Amazon FC will have merged the offline into the online world of data to offer a personalized fan experience that encourages them to arrive at the stadium earlier, stay longer, and return again in future.
Stadiums and entertainment venues wanting to get people returning to the website to purchase tickets would look at data on core demographics, website traffic, dwell times, frequency of visits and social media channels. So why wouldn’t you look to your physical space for the same information on who is in your venue in real-time to build a campaign that was personalized using the information you had about them?