Learfield IMG College is rolling out a new data analytics platform that is expected to lift the company’s capabilities in digital marketing, creating more opportunities for sponsors to engage with a school’s fans.
Not surprisingly, the new platform is named Fanbase. Iowa, Northwestern, TCU and Virginia Tech are among the schools that have begun using it to aggregate and analyze fan data.
By bringing together information on fans’ consumer behavior such as ticket-buying history, merchandise purchases and where they shop online, the company says it will arm its schools and sponsors with more data to better make decisions on how to go to market.
The Learfield IMG College platform increases audience and tracks fans’ brand and online shopping preferences.
New Learfield IMG College President and CEO Cole Gahagan has made Fanbase a high priority and considers it an important piece of the company’s future.
“This is the data infrastructure engine that’s going to power the growth of our university partners’ business,” Gahagan told Sports Business Journal. “If you think about having a central hub of data, of fan behavior and activity, it will allow us to target those fans with digital marketing ads and to reach out to them with different messages and offers from brand partners.
“This allows us to interact with those fans beyond the campus 365 days a year, so that’s pretty revolutionary in our business.”
Gahagan’s team is focusing for now on schools with multimedia rights with Learfield IMG College that also work with Paciolan for ticketing software and Sidearm for their official athletic website.
Both Paciolan and Sidearm are Learfield companies with reams of fan data that will help optimize the collection process. Schools do not pay extra to opt in on Fanbase.
Brad Wurthman, the senior associate athletic director for external operations at Virginia Tech, said 66,000 fans fill Lane Stadium on a football game day, but the school wants to reach the many more thousands of Hokies fans who might never get to Blacksburg.
“With all of the virtual tailgates that we’ve seen during the pandemic, it’s pretty clear that game day will never be just what’s inside the stadium,” Wurthman said of the return to live sports. “This platform will help us reach all of those other fans and create opportunities for our corporate partners looking to engage with those fans through content development.”
Using data to “stay ahead of national trends will help us know our fans better and maximize our engagement with them,” TCU AD Jeremiah Donati said.
Gahagan said Fanbase is Learfield IMG College’s own proprietary platform.
“The traditional sports marketing assets will always represent a critically important foundation for our business, but we have to grow this business beyond the confines of a campus,” said Gahagan, who previously worked at Fanatics and Ticketmaster, two consumer-facing companies that rely mightily on data.
Matt Deimund, who joined Learfield IMG College 16 months ago from McKinsey & Company, has taken on day-to-day oversight of Fanbase as managing director and has been promoted to senior vice president, corporate strategy and development.
Rob Schneider, in his third year as Learfield IMG College’s chief content, development and strategy officer, has run point on creating a data analytics plan since he arrived.
