Menu
Colleges

Beavers target recent alums with ticket model

When Oregon State’s Zack Lassiter looks at Netflix, he sees more than movies and TV shows. He sees a new way of selling tickets to the Beavers’ games.

Lassiter, Oregon State’s deputy athletic director, is leading the school’s implementation of a new ticketing model that looks and feels like a subscription TV service. Pay a monthly fee for a subscription to Oregon State sporting events and go to as many or few games as you like.

Oregon State hopes Squad, its Netflix-influenced ticket subscription service, helps it keep in contact with younger fans.
Photo by: AP IMAGES
“Look at Netflix, or cable TV, or your cellphone bill,” Lassiter said. “A lot of our purchasing is done on a subscription basis and then the customer decides how and when to use that content or service. It’s how we live our lives. Why doesn’t that apply to live sports?”

The Beavers’ ticket subscription service is called Squad, and Lassiter conceived it with the help of Experience, the Atlanta-based technology company.

The Beavers rolled out Squad earlier this month to young alumni who have been out of school for 10 years or less. The idea is that the new ticketing model is best suited for a younger audience’s buying habits. It’s also a way for the athletic department to stay connected to recent alums who might be future donors.

A subscription to Squad runs $19.99 a month or $239 for the year. Once fans sign up, they have access to tickets for any Oregon State event, including football and basketball. If the Squad members want to upgrade their tickets or purchase unique experiences, like watching from the field as the team runs out, those would be an additional expense.

Experience has 54 college clients, but none of them use a subscription model for ticketing like this, although company CEO Greg Foster said he’s already heard from other pro and college teams that are interested in a subscription model and expects it to spread quickly.

“It really is revolutionary,” Foster said. “It’s the first of its kind. … This is a manifestation of something we believe very strongly in, which is that the season-ticket experience has to be reinvented.”

Squad uses Experience’s Pass technology, which is used by some NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB teams to unload unsold tickets, often as part of last-minute deals. Oregon State’s subscription model doesn’t charge a per-ticket price, though. Costs are built into the subscription, unless the buyer wants to upgrade.

Every option to accept ticket offers or upgrade the experience through Squad can be executed through an app on a smartphone or online. Once fans sign up for Squad, they will receive a notification via text during the week of the game, giving them the opportunity to opt in for the ticket or opt out if they don’t want the ticket. Fans who opt in will be assigned a ticket from the Beavers’ unsold inventory.

Squad customers also can sign up as a group (called a Squadron), which guarantees them seats together.
“The two ticketing models that have existed forever are student tickets and donating to the booster organization,” Lassiter said. “We’re finally listening to younger alums, and neither one of those models fit what they’re looking for.

“The inspiration was to create a model that allows young alums to use tickets when they want and how they want, and technology allows us to do it all digitally.”

Lassiter said it will be up to the Beavers’ ticketing department to block off enough tickets each game for Squad orders, but it does raise the question of how the subscription model would work for programs that annually sell out.

Experience said it has talked to pro and college teams that have very limited ticket inventory and some that have tons of tickets to move, and the program is flexible enough to accommodate either situation. For teams that typically sell out, a school might start with a small number of tickets — maybe 50 — that are set aside for young alumni who subscribe to a program like Squad, and look to build on it through the years.

Opening lines of communication with young alums is just as important, or more important, than getting rid of tickets, the company said.

Foster said that within 24 hours of Oregon State’s announcement, “we heard from half a dozen top-tier schools who said they wanted it. Same thing from some pro teams.” He expects a handful of college programs to adopt this model by the time football season starts.

“The reality is that consumer behavior changes, and the concept of selling tickets really needs to change to more of a personal experience,” Foster said. “We applaud the folks at OSU for taking this leap. This kind of on-demand ticket model is for that next-generation fan. They want to manage things themselves.”

Lassiter, who’s been with the Beavers 10 months, began thinking about a new way to sell tickets when he was at his previous job at Central Florida. It was during his stint at the Orlando school that Lassiter attended a ticketing conference at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and heard an executive from Experience speak.

When his athletic director, Todd Stansbury, left UCF for Oregon State last summer, Lassiter decided to go with him and they began working with Experience to create and implement this subscription model for ticketing.

“This is going to appeal to anyone who has the ability and desire to make a short-term decision,” Lassiter said. “We’re just trying to find that sweet spot of what people are looking for. I think this is the closest thing to it.”

Because Oregon State athletics has its own in-house branding team, which is called the ideation department, the school could do its own customized branding, creative and website for Squad.

Chris Kesicke from Experience’s business development unit has been working with the school.

Oregon State has not established any benchmarks or targets for Squad yet. Experience will be paid on a revenue-share basis.

“This could become the preferred method for people to attend events,” Lassiter said. “If this becomes more popular than season tickets, we have to evolve based on where the consumer takes us. I don’t think we’re in control as much as we were 20 years ago.”

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 18, 2024

Sports Business Awards nominees unveiled; NWSL's historic opening weekend and takeaways from CFP deal

ESPN’s Jay Bilas, BTN’s Meghan McKeown, and a deep dive into AppleTV+’s The Dynasty

On this week’s Sports Media Podcast from the New York Post and Sports Business Journal, ESPN’s Jay Bilas talks all things NCAA. Big Ten Network’s Meghan McKeown shares her insight into the Caitlin Clark craze. The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn chats all things Bean Town. And SBJ’s Xavier Hunter drops in to share his findings on how the NWSL is making a social media push.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/05/23/Colleges/Oregon-State.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2016/05/23/Colleges/Oregon-State.aspx

CLOSE