NBA teams have started making the renewal of season tickets as easy as a couple of keystrokes on your phone.
The Portland Trail Blazers earlier this year became the first team in the league to begin selling renewals through their mobile app. The Miami Heat last week followed suit with an offering of their own.
“Our biggest fans and ticket holders are comfortable with the app, and it made a lot of sense to make it about renewals as well,” said Dewayne Hankins, senior vice president, brand strategy and digital, for the Blazers.
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Portland has done 15 percent of its renewals through its mobile app.
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Portland last year had a 95 percent full-season-ticket renewal rate, with 80 percent of the renewals sold through Blazers.com. That marked a notable jump from the year before, when just 20 percent of the team’s season-ticket holders renewed online. The rest were sold through more traditional methods, such as mailings and phone calls.
But it’s not just the volume of traffic to Blazers.com that drove Portland to the new offering; it’s how they’re getting there. Two-thirds of the team’s weekly 400,000 unique visitors to Blazers.com access the site through mobile devices and tablets.
“One of the reasons we wanted to do it was that the integration of our mobile device and
traffic has far outpaced any expectations,” said Vincent Ircandia, senior vice president of business operations for the Blazers. “We wanted to do it because we have a savvy digital fan base and it makes it more functional for fans while driving engagement. There is a convenience factor.”
Portland officials said they expect to hit the 95 percent renewal mark again this year, with the app-based sales now playing a part. The Blazers began their full-season-ticket renewal efforts in late January. One month into the sales season, 15 percent of the agreed-to renewals have been sold through the app, team officials said.
The Blazers have 13,000 full-season-ticket holders, and the team was averaging 19,314 fans per game this season as of last week, 99.6 percent of capacity at Moda Center. The team did not disclose a percentage of this year’s renewals that they anticipate will
ultimately come through the app, but they do expect the online renewal mark to reach 85 percent (compared with 80 percent last year).
About 200,000 fans have downloaded the Blazers’ mobile app. Along with the new season-ticket renewal offering, the app offers team statistics, game tracker information, and video highlights. The app is sponsored by Les Schwab Tires.
To create the season-ticket renewal offering, the Blazers worked with Ticketmaster, their ticket partner; YinzCam, which operates the app; and Iomedia, which created the renewal platform that the team uses both online and now in its app.
“We had to get everyone in the same room, and it needed to be a seamless and clean process,” Ircandia said.
To push renewals through the app, the team has emailed all full-season-ticket holders about the option. The Blazers have been promoting the option in-arena during games, as well.
The app offering gives the team another easy and immediate way for fans to renew their season tickets at no cost to the team. Blazers executives did not disclose the cost to develop the app-based renewal option but said the team was not charged any fees by its Ticketmaster, YinzCam or Iomedia because it’s a pilot program.
In Miami, the new Heat offering takes fans from the app to a proprietary customized payment center. As as result, fans in Miami, like in Portland, will be able to complete their renewals fully through their phones.
But there’s also something that’s lost in the process, and that could in part explain why app-based season-ticket renewals have been uncharted territory until now.
“Taking renewals through the app is convenient, but you are missing a fan touch point,” said Bill Sutton, principal of Bill Sutton & Associates and a consultant who has worked with the Orlando Magic and Philadelphia 76ers, among others, as clients. “If a fan is positive on what they want, it is a no-brainer, but you are missing a chance to up-sell or to add on seats.”
