In the constant pursuit of younger ticket buyers, the Phoenix Suns began marketing more directly to college students this past season.
The NBA team rolled out a new product called “College Pass” with the help of Atlanta tech firm Experience, generating 8,500 unique accounts in its database of ticket buyers.
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The Phoenix Suns sold as many as 500 tickets on some nights through the College Pass program.
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The Suns were one of five teams this season that tested the new ticketing tool as a way to reach younger fans. For the Suns, the College Pass gave them an opportunity to target the 100,000-plus college students who go to school in the Phoenix area with last-minute deals for $5 to $10 a ticket on game day.
“One of our core marketing initiatives is to reach the millennials, and the [College] Pass gave us something that really fits the lifestyle of those consumers,” said Nic Barlage, the Suns’ senior vice president and chief sales officer. “The prices are a low barrier to entry and it helps us build more generational fans.”
Experience was founded in 2012 and has worked with up to 200 properties across college and pro sports to offer upgrades and unique experiences at games on a mobile platform like the team app. That’s been the foundation of the business. To build on that, the company rolled out two pilot ticketing sales tools this past NBA season — College Pass and Fluid Venue — that are designed to maximize ticket revenue by moving unsold tickets or inventory that was turned in by season-ticket holders.
Atlanta, the L.A. Clippers, Orlando, Phoenix and Portland were the five teams that gave the programs a trial run. Based on the feedback so far, Experience has begun selling to Major League Baseball teams as well. The company says it has both revenue-share and transactional-fee models for its clients.
The College Pass offered last-minute, inexpensive ticket deals, and is marketed by the team. Fans are pushed to register for the Pass through the team’s website, after which they receive a text on game day notifying them of availability. The buyer then can opt in and buy the tickets through a return text.
Seat locations are revealed to the buyer close to game time. About 75 percent of the seats are in the upper level. Buyers can use the Experience app to upgrade their seats if they wish.
“Our original goal was to get 4,000 new names and we actually hit 5,500,” said Vincent Ircandia, the Trail Blazers’ vice president for business analytics and ticket operations. “We’ve got about 200 tickets a night that we’re converting” through the Pass program in the 18-24 age group.
The Suns sold as many as 500 tickets through the Pass on some nights.
“It’s a new type of ticket for the next-generation fan,” Experience President Ben Ackerman said. “These college students and young professionals grew up in an age when they could get whatever they wanted when they want it. That’s their mentality and that’s the expectation we’re trying to meet.”
The teams also reported that three-quarters of the fans who registered had not bought tickets previously.
“We saw strong utilization,” Anthony Perez, Magic vice president of business strategy, said of their College Pass, “and 80 percent of those who used it were not already in our database.”
Experience’s other program, Fluid Venue, was designed to provide season-ticket holders more flexibility to use their tickets.
By accessing their account through the team’s mobile app, season-ticket holders could turn in their tickets to games they weren’t going to attend for a credit in the full amount of the tickets. That credit can be used for future purchases to buy tickets in a better location or buy more tickets for friends and family.
The credit also can be used on experiences, such as high-fiving the players as they enter the court or sitting courtside for pregame warmups, the kinds of perks that teams have been selling since 2012 with the help of Experience’s technology.
“This really has the ability to maximize revenue on finite inventory while improving the fan experience,” Ircandia said.
