SEC schools retool stadiums based on results of broad survey

For SEC football fans, sure, being connected is important, but not as important as short lines and clean bathrooms. So says a survey of more than 26,000 of the conference’s ticket-buyers.

Those fans were more concerned about long lines at concession stands and dirty restrooms than connecting to a mobile website. And those were exactly the kinds of insights the SEC hoped to uncover when it formed a fan experience committee in the last year and began a comprehensive survey of its fans.

Surveys during the 2013 season gave SEC schools a better idea about what was important to fans. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

Now, as the 2014 college football season unfolds, that analysis is prompting changes inside Southeastern Conference stadiums.

A dozen of the 14 schools added concessions and converted old menus into digital signage. Georgia’s fans said in surveys that they weren’t interested in buying merchandise inside Sanford Stadium, so the Bulldogs removed several points of sale for gear, and replaced them with additional concessions.

Eight schools made restrooms a higher priority, adding attendants and installing audio so that fans can follow the action while they’re away.

Four schools devoted a full-time position to the fan experience, like Jason Suitt, LSU’s director of fan experience.

Most SEC schools are showing highlights on their HD video boards from other games as well. Broadcast partner ESPN is providing each school with footage from games around the conference, and the schools are presenting live cut-ins during timeouts.

And while fans might have sent mixed messages on the importance of connectivity, many schools reacted anyway. Mississippi became one of the few colleges in the country to install Wi-Fi throughout its stadium bowl and concourse this season. Eight other SEC schools invested to improve their distributed antenna system, which increases the strength of cell signals.

“You hear a lot about Wi-Fi and connectivity, but that’s not all that showed up in the surveys,” said Herb Vincent, the SEC’s associate commissioner who has worked with the schools on this project. “A lot of what came back from the fans had more to do with ease and comfort.”

These moves represent an enhanced effort by SEC schools to understand the fan through research, and the results are providing a road map to improve the experience inside their stadiums.

“This topic is at the top of the food chain for every AD because you’re talking about the lifeblood of your program,” said Greg McGarity, the Georgia athletic director who represents the Bulldogs on the SEC’s fan experience committee. “If we get into situations where fans are disenchanted, then we’re going to suffer in the long run. … You want the young people to remember going to Georgia games in the fall. You want to give them the kind of experience that keeps them coming back.”

Even though the SEC has been relatively immune to the attendance woes that have plagued college football — SEC stadiums were filled at 99 percent of capacity last season — the conference started talking about improving the fan experience in 2012 with additional replays on video boards.

The SEC formed a smaller working group in 2013 and that expanded into a more formal 15-person fan experience committee, with representatives from each athletic department, as well as the conference office.

In addition to the surveys, the committee earlier this year heard presentations from Disney Institute and a New York-based research agency, Now What, at the SEC’s Birmingham headquarters.

The conference hired Now What last season and its research was distinctly different than the fan surveys.

Executives from the agency spent a total of 430 hours with 80 fans in the stadium, in their home and online, to better understand the depths of their SEC pride. A 70-page magazine was distributed to each school with Now What’s insights on the SEC brand and school-specific observations.

The agency predictably was struck by the passion of the fans and how their rooting interest expanded beyond their school to their SEC rivals.

Kyser Thompson, a senior director at Now What, attended a Mississippi State football game with a father and his teenage son. Even as Alabama drubbed his team, the Mississippi State fan took solace in the Crimson Tide’s dominant performance.

“There was a part of him that was OK with the outcome because it meant that Alabama would be a title contender again, and that was good for the SEC,” Thompson said.

Now What’s research also showed an underlying sense among fans that their schools operate with a “win at all costs” mentality that borders on arrogant.

But the agency’s findings were more about the SEC’s brand and how the conference is perceived, while the fan surveys provided more clear and immediate areas to work on.

“What it really forced us to do was build an even stronger relationship with our fans,” said Mississippi State AD Scott Stricklin, who chairs the committee. “We’re communicating with them, we’re giving them a voice, and there’s tremendous value in that.”

What started in 2012 as a step to address fans who wanted to see controversial plays on the video board has evolved into a conference-wide priority. Subcommittees have formed on connectivity, research and data, branding and game presentation, and basketball and Olympic sports.

During the earliest fan experience discussions, each school brought its own anecdotal information to the table, but few were doing the kind of in-depth study that could drive real change. They figured connectivity was important, but was it more important than reducing the long lines at restrooms? They needed more hard data to know how to prioritize often expensive updates.

Despite a mixed response, Mississippi became one of the few colleges in the country to install Wi-Fi through its stadium bowl and concourse. Photo by: GETTY IMAGES

Michael Thompson, a senior associate AD at Ole Miss, took the lead on implementing the surveys after the 2013 football season. Stricklin also reached out to the NFL office to learn how it surveys fans and benchmarks data, and other schools sought consumer insights from Sporting Innovations.

The committee enabled the SEC to address fan experience as a conference, rather than 14 individual entities. That way, schools have access to their own survey results and those of their peers, which has prompted a sharing of best practices that had not happened before.

The SEC is in the process of making all of that data available to its schools on a secure website, complete with a dashboard breakdown. Surveys in future years will determine whether the actions inside the stadium are producing higher fan satisfaction.

Ole Miss’ Thompson, in his former life, helped sponsors gauge return on investment during the 10 years he spent inside market research agencies before he joined the Rebels. He set up the online surveys for each school’s fan base, asking them to rate the importance of each subject and then rate their satisfaction with it.

Ole Miss shared a copy of its fan survey with SportsBusiness Journal. The subjects included concessions, restrooms, parking and traffic, connectivity, sound system, video boards and organized cheers/band. Within each subject were several questions.

Nothing generated a wider range of answers than connectivity.

Among 53 items surveyed, the importance of text messaging during the game ranked 21st among general ticket buyers and 37th among those in premium areas. But among students, it ranked second.

The students also said their experience inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium during the 2013 season underperformed in terms of texting, dropped calls, apps and mobile Web access. The Rebels responded this season by working with C Spire, a Jackson, Miss.-based telecommunications company, to install Wi-Fi throughout the stadium with more than 800 access points for wireless connection.

C Spire funded the Wi-Fi installation, and its wireless customers now connect for free in the 60,580-seat stadium. Non-customers pay $4.99 to buy a Wi-Fi day pass on game day.

“Wi-Fi takes the really heavy broadband traffic, like pictures, video, constantly updating stats, and frees up more space for cell service,” Michael Thompson said. “They complement each other significantly. Wi-Fi is great for big loads of data.”

Now What’s Kyser Thompson likewise advised SEC schools to consider adding Wi-Fi, in addition to their DAS.
“The question we got from many SEC schools is whether Wi-Fi is an immediate need or more long term,” Kyser Thompson said. “I believe every stadium and every sport is going to move in that direction; it’s just going to be part of the infrastructure. But while that’s inevitable, we didn’t find it to be a must-have right now.”

It’s also expensive to outfit a stadium with Wi-Fi — $5 million to $7 million and up, depending on the stadium’s needs. Not every SEC AD is convinced there’s a need for it.

AT&T spent close to $10 million to upgrade the DAS in Sanford Stadium with more than 400 new antennas, and the cell service improved so dramatically that the rate of dropped calls went from 40 percent to 1 percent in the season opener.

“If your DAS is good enough, I’m not sure you need Wi-Fi,” McGarity said. “The ROI is hard to justify.”

Other ADs, like Stricklin, are similarly skeptical, especially considering that college stadiums might have seven to eight football games a year, plus a small handful of other events, far fewer than a pro sports stadium in a major market.

“We’re in more of a wait-and-see mode on Wi-Fi,” Stricklin said. “At this point, we’re not seeing many fans staying at home because of connectivity issues.”

While the jury remains out on Wi-Fi, the SEC will continue to monitor fan feedback through the season, mostly from social media.

Its schools will request a new round of surveys from football fans at the end of the season to see how their scores compare to last season. Each school also is surveying fans in men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball.

“The more you talk to SEC fans, you start to realize that the fans are treated well, but not as well as they think they should be,” Kyser Thompson said. “The surveys make them heard, and they want to be heard.”