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| Rone |
When Kris Rone, chief marketing officer of the Los Angeles Dodgers, was named executive vice president of business operations for the team in July, it wasn't so much an elevation in job duties as a new title to reflect the work she was already doing, said Dodgers President Bob Graziano."She was doing a lot more than just marketing the Dodgers," Graziano said. "She really touches all aspects of the business. She oversees virtually all of our revenue streams, be it local or national."
With her promotion, Rone said, "My focus has changed from sales and marketing to a bigger picture of how to drive our business. Everyone in baseball knows that driving revenue and cutting expenses is what we are all trying to do."
Even before Rone joined the Dodgers in 2000, she began increasing the team's sponsorship and marketing revenue as head of Fox Sports One, which was a partnership between Philip Anschutz and Fox to market Staples Center, the Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Galaxy and Dodgers.
In her first years at the club, she developed a premium-seat program for the team's new suites and dugout seats, and billboard advertising at the stadium. This season, Rone focused on ticket sales.
"In the last year we really got back to the basics of re-invigorating individual sales and season-ticket sales," she said. "We had the first uptick in season-ticket sales in several years in a year where ... attendance was down [around the league]."
Individual ticket sales were up by more than 100,000, helping to boost overall attendance to 3.1 million.
Now, as part of her quest to increase revenue, Rone is focused on two new challenges for 2003.
First, the Dodgers have brought in house the team's Spanish-language radio rights with KWKW 1330 AM, a major Spanish-language station in the Los Angeles area. "We will still be on KWKW, but we will be buying time and producing it ourselves," Rone said.
Second, the team will use the radio agreement to further promote itself to Los Angeles' huge Hispanic population.
"It will afford the opportunity to use a lot of time on the broadcast to promote the team to our Hispanic fans," Rone said, "and our sponsors and other marketing partners will continue to look for opportunities to leverage the Dodgers' relevance to the Latino community."
Despite the fact that the Dodgers have a lot of Hispanic fans and that Dodger Stadium is located in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, the team has not yet fully tapped into that fan base, Rone said.
Rone has done a lot of research on Hispanic Dodgers fans and has found some interesting results. "Our Hispanic fans who come to the ballpark spend more money on food and beverages than any other" ethnic group, she said. "They bring more children with them. That is the future of our sport, getting kids and families involved with our brand."
In another unusual move, the Dodgers have moved their English-language radio broadcasts from Fox Sports station KTXA 1150 AM to news station KFWB 980 AM. For Angelenos, KFWB is a set station on most car radio dials because it provides traffic updates every six minutes, as well as local and national news.
Rone said the move is meant to bring Dodgers broadcasts not just to the hard-core sports fans who listen to 1150, but to casual fans and people who would not normally seek out a baseball game.
Around Major League Baseball, Rone is respected for her ideas on how to market the team creatively and find new revenue streams, said Bob Aylward, executive vice president of business operations for the Seattle Mariners.
Tim Brosnan, MLB executive vice president of business, said: "Kris Rone is nothing short of fantastic. The club people generally have gotten very aggressive. She stands out in a group that has done really amazing stuff on the marketing of baseball and particularly on a local level."
