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VenueNext CEO talks lessons learned, new business

When it comes to driving innovation at sports facilities, VenueNext aims to be in the discussion. The mobile technology firm’s primary financial backer is Aurum Partners, an investment firm owned by the York family, owner of the San Francisco 49ers. Its first sports client is Levi’s Stadium, the 49ers facility that opened in 2014. Founder and CEO John Paul recently spoke with SportsBusiness Journal’s Don Muret.

Can you summarize how the first season went for the mobile platform at Levi’s Stadium?

PAUL: It exceeded our expectations in terms of the adoption from fans in the venue. I think what helped most was 65 percent of season-ticket holders knew about the [stadium’s mobile application], downloaded the app and linked their Ticketmaster account in the app. The 49ers learned a lot about how much season-ticket holders pass around their tickets. At the beginning of the season, the 49ers knew about 17,000 season-ticket holders. Now, they know more than 200,000 people who actually attended the games using those tickets. We had a lot of transferring of tickets going on, which is one of the main goals for the 49ers, to understand the fans in the stadium [and] know who’s there.

What [other] data points surprised you the most regarding fans’ use of the mobile app?

PAUL: [We thought] video replays would be the “hero feature” of the app. We worked very hard on it, to make the

Paul
video replays come up really quickly, and enhanced it during the season. But I think those two beautiful scoreboards [at Levi’s Stadium] eliminate the need to watch your own replay. It’s so easy to look up at those screens. That was the one where the stats were much below our expectations.

For the second year of stadium operations, which aspects of the technology must be improved for an even better fan experience?

PAUL: We want to make tickets easy to purchase and resell and we’re working hard with Ticketmaster on continuing to make the mobile ticket experience better and better. Another thing we’re going to do … we have a 49ers app and a Levi’s Stadium app. The stadium app is meant to be the app you use [for all events]. For fans who want to know about the team 24/7, [the team] app is the one they want to use. We’re going to take what we have in the Levi’s Stadium app and put it inside the 49ers app as well. You can use either one when you come to the stadium. For us, it just helps add adoption. … That [consolidation] will be ready for the upcoming season.

VenueNext is seeking clients outside of Levi’s Stadium. How is that strategy for growing business going to this point? Any deals in the works?

PAUL: We don’t want to talk about deals that are about to be signed. Our strategy is to work with the best brands in sports, the top teams that are innovators and data is an important piece of their strategy, and [next] season have one of those as our customers and learn how that [facility] and that sport might be different than the NFL and Levi’s Stadium. The other big thing is … think about a piece of property as a venue and you’re trying to get people there, move them around, feed them and you want to enhance the reason they came to that venue, on a mobile device. We’re having those discussions outside of sports.

■ As you talk with other teams and existing facilities about going fully mobile, what are the biggest concerns and shortcomings to overcome at their buildings?

PAUL: First, it’s always their network. With video maybe not being as important as we thought, the actual bandwidth consumption by our app is relatively low when you think about the value you get for the bandwidth you use. But they still must have enough coverage that when fans are doing everything they want to do with their mobile phones, there’s sufficient coverage to use our app. It’s the biggest capital outlay they’ve got to consider. … The other one is in-seat delivery. Take hockey, for example. You better not stand up at the wrong time to go get food and you better not have a runner with food step in front of you at the wrong time. So with the culture of the fan, will in-seat delivery get in the way of that? In the NBA, they generally don’t go down the aisles until there’s a timeout. So how can we make sure we can still deliver in a timely way with food that’s still warm if you’re waiting for timeouts. We keep encouraging people, “Hey, let’s get in there and try and we’ll figure it out and we’ll keep improving it season after season.”

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