What Fan Data Can Tell Us About Everything From Partnerships to Concessions

Data can tell an organization a lot about their fans and, in particular, their experience within a venue. Take concessions, for example, and plenty of questions arise.

In this webinar, San Diego Padres VP of Marketing Katie Jackson, Minnesota Vikings Manager of Engagement & Sales Analytics Genette Sekse Amar, and Satisfi Labs COO Courtney Jeffries join FOS CEO Adam White to discuss the findings from our latest whitepaper “Burgers, Beer, and Bottled Water: What Do Fans Really Want At The Game?” and the latest and greatest from the world of stadium concessions.

Edited highlights appear below:

On incorporating fan data into business strategy on the team side (2:57)

Jackson: “Data drives all of our decisions, whether it be how we program the ballpark on the entertainment aspects that we have, the changes that we’ve made to our app and what that experience looks like to our fans, our giveaways, literally everything from a marketing perspective is done alongside our friends at business analytics. For us, we’ve worked with Satisfi since 2017 and have employed a couple of different strategic initiatives to really provide our fans with information about our ballpark. We were voted the number one ballpark in America after the All-Star game in 2016 and a lot of that was due to the entertainment aspects that we have here at Petco Park. But also the food and beverage is a huge component to our experience and it’s very localized.”

SEE MORE: Producing Esports Broadcasts in 2019 & Beyond

On educating fans about concessions/fan experience options (12:13)

Sekse Amar: “Thankfully for digital ticketing we can talk to anyone coming into the stadium…That’s been crucial to really deliver that message. Not obviously just food, but any information that you need coming to our stadium. Emails are super personalized…Our app is crucial…We have a concession stand map where you can see what’s around you and then you have every item that stand is serving…With Apple business chats, which has been new for us this year, we’ve been able to put these QR codes around the venue and also outside…You can scan it and just start talking with us right away before you come inside…We’re seeing that fans that are using Apple are getting questions answered and they’re finding what they want…So it’s something that we’re still working on with the data this season just to see. But it’s been pretty powerful so far.”

On fan data driving sales of sponsorship packages (19:15)

Jeffries: “I mean we can transact ticket sales through our platform and, and I think anybody that is in ticket sales knows the most barriers you can remove makes a sale much more easy to facilitate, right? Somebody’s casually having a conversation about interest in tickets, then let’s sell them the ticket right then and there in the conversation instead of bouncing them to other sites or some other process. What’s cool about the data that we are capturing is that any question that comes in can inform a business strategy like a season ticket benefits, right? Somebody’s asking about autograph sessions, somebody asking about scoreboard messages or access to players or an early pre-sale offer. Those can inform what kind of packages a team can then put in front of their fan base…That’s how we can, we absolutely see this informing, informing the strategies.”

SEE MORE: State of the Gameday Experience

On meeting the demand for coffee from sports fans (51:54)

Sekse Amar: “It’s definitely something that we’re seeing as well. We actually have a partnership with Caribou [Coffee]. I think we might be the only stadium who has an actual Caribou in our venue…We have expanded regular coffee around the whole concourse…So definitely something that we’re looking at because that is our top requested and non-alcoholic beverage.”

Download the whitepaper “Burgers, Beer, and Bottled Water: What Do Fans Really Want At The Game?”