Robb Heineman is trying to elevate fan engagement and technology and find ways to enhance stadium experiences in more ways than ever. Heineman is CEO of Sporting KC and Managing Partner of Sporting Innovations, the team’s spinoff consulting firm that focuses on fan engagement and learning more about fans using Fan 360, an aggregation tool that combines 17 information sources, from demographics to social media activity. Heineman, speaking Thursday at the ’14 IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum, said, "We want to learn not only who and what they are, but who they come to games with, what time they get there ... and it allows us to drive insights and create not only in-stadium things, but also things for our business team to be very active on. If I’m a ticketing agent at Sporting Kansas City, I’ve got, right on the screen, not only what section you buy in, but I also have the favorite player that you tweet about. So that if they’re on the phone, they can create a better interaction. It’s really about using that data to try and create better experiences.”
QUICK HITS:
* On attendance growth at Sporting KC: “We went from 389 season tickets to 14,000 and an 11,000-person waiting list, and we’ve sold out 52 matches in a row. We just did renewals for next year and we renewed at 98%.”
* On the difference between college and pro sports: “For college, it’s how can I impact not only the stadium experience but college life in general? How can we generate data not only in the athletic department but for development, as well? So you’re trying to increase both of those. The other thing we deal with in college is it’s multisport, and all of the different cycles that go on. But there’s nothing that we do that can’t be recreated manually. What we’re trying to do at the end of the day is create processes that make this much more seamless and easy.”
* On how this helps sell sponsorships: “What we can do on a game day within the venue, I’ll have 20,000 either on Euphoria or Wi-Fi. I can identify probably between 11,000 and 12,000 people by profile. So if I’m talking to the brands, I can sit there and say, 'Let’s build a segmentation for you around these optimal characteristics of what your customer looks like and tell them in real time what number of fans were in the venue.' For the first time, a sponsor can know in real time if they’ve got their customers in the venue.”
* On reluctance from others about using the platform: “It seems too hard, too expensive and we’re a young company. That’s basically what it is, and nobody wants to be first. We’ll go for a period where we don’t have much going in a sport, and then one client goes and then you have five clients six weeks later. We’ve probably done a bad job of making it seem hard because, honestly, once you get the data, it’s an easy system.”
* On the growth of U.S. Soccer: “It’s a really cool opportunity because the sport is growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve got such a young fan population. The fact that we have four or five cities right now that want to do expansion is a great thing. The World Cup was good this year, and the U.S. responded really well to it, but our team’s got to get better. So that’s the goal for us. As cool as Major League Soccer is for us, the best thing that could happen for Major League Soccer, as an owner, is for the U.S. to win the World Cup, so that’s the big frontier. Those that are considered casual fans, look, they’re fans. Soccer is a big thing, the amount of kids focusing on soccer as their only sport is growing and growing. For the last 30 years, people have said soccer's coming, and others ask when it's finally coming. Well, I say it’s here.”
