SBJ Football: Watching The 49ers' Concession Strategy

My throat is still sore from all the yelling at the incredible Penn State-Michigan game last week. Also, I’m emotionally scarred from the 2-hour wait to get out of our parking lot. I always thought Happy Valley handled traffic and parking well in the past, but they changed the system this year.

WILL 49ERS' NEW CONCESSION STRATEGY CATCH ON?

• The 49ers and Levy Restaurants got plenty of positive headlines from their Monday announcement that basic concessions will be included in the price of season tickets next year. Even the biggest cynics -- who claimed it was just a way to take the sting off a 13% average price hike -- have to admit the price predictability will be extremely popular. But once again, we ask the question: Will others follow? As you recall, AMB Group and Mercedes-Benz Stadium introduced low price points for concessions in Atlanta in 2017 to similarly great acclaim, but that remains an outlier. Levy CEO Andy Lansing said every client of his is considering how they might alter their F&B strategy, but it’s hardly a mass push.
  
  
• Chris Bigelow, president of food service consultant Bigelow Cos., said teams just don’t see a reason to move quickly on this. While fans universally don’t like high concession prices and would prefer lower costs -- or at least upfront pricing -- it’s not yet an imperative, Bigelow said. "Nobody’s telling my clients they’re not coming to the game because of concession prices; they’re not coming because of the overall costs, which include tickets, parking and concessions.” Teams take a long time being certain they won’t take a bath on a new pricing scheme -- which takes lots of data and sophisticated analysis -- and they’re acutely aware of how unpleasant it would be to abandon such a plan down the road if it doesn’t work out. That adds up to lots of intrigue, but slow movement.
  
  
• There’s also some risk in annoying fans who don’t get the benefit. The 49ers are restricting the included concessions to actual season-ticket holders, and the benefit doesn’t transfer on secondary market sales. That’s a way to maintain value in the season-ticket package, but there’s an interesting wrinkle here: The Niners will only know that a season ticket has been sold -- rather than simply shared among friends -- if the transaction occurs on an NFL partner sales platform, like StubHub. If somebody sells a ticket on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace, the ticket will be transferred directly and the benefit survives. Bigelow also said you have to be sure that premium ticket holders still feel like they’re VIPs. Inclusive pricing on F&B is common in club areas; do those benefits now feel less valuable if the masses get them?

LIFE IN THE BLUE TENT

• On Monday, the NFL invited me to MetLife Stadium for a tour of the league’s in-game player health and safety system as they were preparing for "MNF." I stepped inside the Jets’ “blue tent,” saw the stadium’s X-ray machines and viewed the game from the vantage point of the medical spotters, who watch from the press box and are authorized to directly seek a medical timeout from the head official. Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, narrated our tour. 
  
  
• Some of my main takeaways: At least 31 people at an NFL game are doing nothing but watching for injuries and reacting to them, including three unaffiliated neurological consultants (UNCs). For every diagnosed concussion, there are three more checks that turn out negative, Sills said. The sidelines have a video review system only for injuries. In a mock exercise, I donned headsets and asked the replay booth to run footage of the play where Patrick Mahomes injured his knee. Incidentally, I was using Bose headphones and an Xbox controller -- both league sponsors who are getting impressions on the sidelines. Doctors examining players in the blue tent use Surface tablets like coaches do.
  
  
• One hour before every game, the head official convenes a meeting of all 31 of those people to cover basic emergency protocols. That includes routes to hospitals for emergencies, checks of equipment and introductions so they know everyone involved. A critical aspect of the entire system’s integrity is that it operates alongside of -- but separate from -- coaching and team management. Helmets and coaches can’t be in the tent, and NFL operations officials are watching closely for signs of teams gaming the system. Coaches tend to respect that medical/coaching wall, said NFL Exec VP/Health & Safety Innovation Jeff Miller. "That’s a substantial culture change from not long ago," he said.  
  
  

The NFL uses an injury replay review unit to diagnose or spot injuries from the sideline

NFL GROWING DATA-BASED APPROACH TO UNDERSTAND FANS

• Club-level marketers left the NFL’s marketing meeting in Chicago this week impressed by what they’re hearing from league headquarters, where a team under CMO Tim Ellis continues to develop a data-backed approach to understanding fans and driving business for sponsors. NFL Senior VP/Data & Analytics & Insights Iwao Fusillo spoke about their work to build out a model that predicts the lifetime value of fans, one source said, and to create clusters of fans -- basically to “show who wants what from the NFL,” another source said.
  
  
• Last Friday, Fusillo’s deputy, Justin Friedman, who like Fusillo joined from American Express, went into more during a conference at Columbia Univ. The NFL has been renegotiating partnerships to include access to transaction-level data, which helps the league develop the same familiarity with its fans that AmEx has with its card customers. Something as simple as an online purchase of a jersey can say a lot. “From [transaction data], you can tell if there’s a presence of children, is that person a gift giver? And you can really pivot your marketing campaigns based on that," Friedman said. “So getting to that 360-degree view of the fan has allowed us to build 10 different personas to enable our marketing to talk to fans in 10 different ways, which drives the overall strategy of the league."
  
  
• The gap in the NFL’s fan data two years ago was in viewership, Friedman said. Last spring the league patented a way to blend Nielsen panels with fan data to see how different kind of fans watch games, which then allowed them to create the “lifetime value” of fans. Club marketers said that kind of detail is a game-changer in their talks with local sponsors.

SPEED READS

• News at deadline: Fox Sports launched a new weekly video series with the net's NFL personalities taking viewers through their favorite Super Bowl moments. "Super Bowl Stories: Road To Miami" kicks off with Rob Gronkowski reflecting on the Patriots win over the Seahawks in SB XLIX. Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Michael Vick will also participate.

• The XFL released its full schedule this week, giving us a great look at how the startup will attempt to make a splash six days after the Super Bowl. Both ABC/ESPN and Fox are giving this every opportunity to break out: three games are on free-to-see networks each of the first two weeks. Things kick off in D.C. on Feb. 8 on ABC with a game featuring former Ohio State QB Cardale Jones, who is arguably the most well-known player on an XFL roster right now. Between Fox and ABC, there are three XFL games airing in Week 1, and 24 during the course of the regular season, including two primetime games on Fox later in the season.
  
  
• The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Mark Craig notes that former Vikings are “more welcome, more appreciated and more involved" since Zygi and Mark Wilf bought the team. With two full-time positions dedicated to handling former players, the team coordinates more than 300 alumni community visits per year. The Vikes also hosted a record 124 alumni during their Legends Weekend in Week 2.
  
  

• The Jets took issue with ESPN airing some mic'd up audio from the past week's "MNF," but Sam Darnold isn't holding a grudge. While the Jets QB wishes his "ghosts" comment hadn't made the air, he told Newsday's Al Iannazzone that he is open to being mic'd up again. Darnold: "If I start worrying about that kind of stuff then I’m worried about the wrong things. I got to continue to be me and being honest with my coaches no matter what. No matter if I’m mic’d up or not.”
  
  
• Fans are beginning to flock to Santa Clara and Levi's Stadium in droves as the 49ers remain undefeated heading into Week 8. According to data from Ticketmaster, the Seahawks-49ers matchup (Nov. 11) and Panthers-49ers matchup (Sunday) are the games with the most total ticket sales among NFL games still to be played this season. The 49ers' average ticket prices on the secondary market also have increased by 38% since the beginning of the season.

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Something on the football beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (bfischer@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).