Do you want to sell more tickets, sponsorship packages, and merchandise? Of course you do! But how exactly can you sell more easily? And how can your sports organization all the while gain more supporters, superior sales, and make real revenue? Well, we’ve actually come up with a formula, aka the Data Talks formula, that will help you make real revenue easily.
So in this blog post, we will be covering:
The solution: The Data Talks formula to making real revenue in sports
Why the Data Talks formula works
3 use cases you can apply to now to easily sell more tickets, sponsorship packages, and merchandise
Before we dive right in...
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What is the Data Talks formula to making real revenue in sports?
So what exactly is this Data Talks formula we’re on about? Well, before answering this question, let’s take a look at why we came up with this formula in the first place. You see, after talking to over 100 decision-makers within sports, we figured out that, for most of you, there is one thing that is at the very top of your priority list. And that is:
To sell more tickets to your games
So naturally, the next question we needed to answer was:
How can sports organizations sell more tickets to their games?
This is where the Data Talks formula was born. Specifically, we uncovered 4 fundamentals that sports organizations need to have in place in order to successfully sell more tickets to their games.
And these 4 fundamentals are to:
1. Grow your contact database, continuously.
This first step matters tremendously. Because growing your contact database means that you have access to names, addresses, and other information about your supporters. This information is crucial because it is the key to knowing who your supporters are and giving them what they want. More on this in the next steps below. Learn all you need to know about growing your supporter database in this blog post.
2. Collect supporter data with contact information and merge it with your sales data
This is as straightforward as it sounds. You want to know as much as possible about each supporter, in order to give them exactly what they want. So, you merge their contact information with your sales data. And by sales data, this could be your supporters’ purchase history, how frequently they buy different products, their favorite products, etc. The point is that you want to merge all of this information in one place. Because not including your sales data means that you won’t truly know what your supporters buy often, seldom, or never. Meaning you won’t know what your supporters want from you. This brings us to the fundamental number 3…
3. Find out which supporter segments you should target with your ticketing campaigns
When you merge your supporters’ contact information with your sales data, you are then able to find out exactly which supporter segments you should target with different campaigns. For example, you might discover that a segment of supporters who are season ticket holders have not bought tickets for season 2022/2023. Or that another segment of supporters usually purchase tickets to all single games, but do not attend all of them. The list goes on. The point is that now you will know this! And when you’re able to group your supporters into different segments based on specific characteristics, preferences, and behaviors (which you have uncovered through their contact details and sales data), you can now…
4. …send relevant ticket offerings to those segments in a way that your supporters will really appreciate.
Yes, the 4th fundamental to selling more tickets is being able to target supporter segments with ticket offerings in a way that they will really appreciate. Thanks to the contact information in your database and your supporters’ sales data, you now know exactly what your supporters want. So all that is left is to create a message that is tailored to each supporter’s wants and needs. If you discover a segment of supporters that haven’t purchased season tickets for the period 2022/2023, then you could, for instance, target them with a special ticketing offer for just that. Or for the supporters who do not attend all their games, you can send them a message that will encourage them to do so. The sky is the limit.
As you can see, these 4 fundamentals to selling more tickets are basically a process you cannot skip. You need them all.
But does the Data Talks formula really work? Yes, and here is why.
Why you should follow this formula
Our customers are using the Data Talks formula and they have seen immediate results
To illustrate this, let’s take a look at two of our customers, AIK FC and PAOK FC, two top-tier football clubs who used our formula and saw immediate results.
AIK’s success story: generating 6 figures from one single campaign
AIK is a football club competing in the top league of Swedish football. They had one goal: to make as many supporters as possible buy a season ticket. So following the Data Talks formula, AIK created three different supporter segments and targeted each segment with tailored messages that they would really appreciate. To adopt the 4 fundamentals approach, AIK partnered up with Data Talks.
The result?
They only targeted 2% of their supporter base. But! They still managed to yield €100 000 in profits. Now, imagine what would happen if they would target a larger portion of their database.
PAOK is a greek football club and one of the top domestic clubs and the most popular club in Greece. The club’s Marketing & Commercial Team knew early on that communicating with supporters and sending them offerings that they really appreciate can offer a higher return on investment while simultaneously keeping them engaged and loyal to the club. So, they successfully put this knowledge and understanding into action. As part of their strategy, PAOK introduced its partnership with Data Talks.
And here is one of several of their success stories:
Just one day before their Season Tickets renewal for season 2022/2023:
- PAOK decided to target supporters who had purchased a season ticket for a previous period but not for the upcoming one.
- And they then took it one step further and decided to only target supporters that had bought tickets to specific sections of the Toumba stadium in Thessaloniki, Greece.
- Once they had identified this specific supporter segment, they targeted them with a tailored campaign that they knew their supporters would really appreciate.
The results?
For starters, 50% of the supporters opened the email campaign
A whopping 10% renewed their season ticket
And out of the supporters who renewed their season ticket, 74% were high spenders, and…
…16% of the supporter segment were VIP spenders, which is PAOK’s highest monetary ranking.
So you see, the formula is not a one-hit-wonder. It can be replicated again and again. This brings us to the second reason why you should follow this formula:
You can replicate this formula to other revenue streams such as sponsorship and merchandise sales
Yes, you read that right. You can actually apply the same formula for selling more tickets to other revenue streams. And this includes selling more sponsorship packages and merchandise. How? Well, because the formula’s 4 steps are needed in order to accomplish both. To increase your merchandise sales, you will need to have contact information and sales data from each supporter to know exactly what merchandise offers you should target them with and you can be certain that they will really appreciate it.
And for sponsorship packages, having a robust supporter base where you know who your supporters are and what they desire is key to negotiating sponsorship agreements of higher value and delivering on it. Learn more about negotiating sponsorship agreements of higher value here.
Amazing right!
But seeing is believing. So let’s take a look at three use cases to showcase exactly how you can sell more tickets, sponsorship packages, and merchandise using the Data Talks formula and our Sports CDP.
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3 use cases for selling more tickets, sponsorship packages, and merchandise that you can apply now
1. Increase ticket sales in your general ticket category
Let’s say you’re a football club and you want to sell more tickets to your next game against another club called Giants FC. Using the Data Talks Sports CDP, you can quickly see how your ticket sales have been performing by age and by ticket category. You see that your sales drop as we go up in the age groups. So right now, your biggest opportunity is:
to sell more tickets in the general ticket category in the age group 40-65
Moreover, since you have already got your supporters’ contact information as well as their sales data merged in one place, you can easily go ahead and find out which supporters match the criteria above. Specifically, you can now easily create a group of supporters that only include:
- general ticket holders,
- who are in the age group 40-65,
- and have not purchased a ticket to the next game
This would be as simple as three clicks, and boom, now you have got a segment with general ticket holders, who are between the ages of 40-65 and have not yet bought a ticket. So what is the next step? Well, to create and send a ticket offer to each of them which you know they will really appreciate. And since you have your supporters’ contact information and sales data merged in place, you can quickly understand exactly what your supporters want and care about. Because at the end of the day:
“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotions”
– Dale Carnegie | Writer & Lecturer
So, once you have created and tailored your ticketing offer that you know your supporter segment will truly care about, all you need to do is click send and your ticketing offer will be on its way. So you see, you can win from day one when using the Data Talks formula. And you can get similar results when selling merchandise as well.
Let’s take a look at an example of this below.
2. Boost merchandise sales for sports club t-shirts
Let’s continue with the same story which we did for the use case above. You want to increase your merchandise sales for your online merchandise store. So you get a brilliant idea. You decide to create a campaign where you target your supporters with merchandise offers based on their favorite player from your team, for example. And once again, since you have your supporters’ contact information and sales data merged in one place, you can easily segment supporters into different groups based on their favorite team player. Then, you target each supporter segment with tailored merchandise offerings based on who their favorite player is. The result? Well, your supporters will, of course, be ecstatic when they receive their unique offering.
To showcase this, just take a look at PAOK’s other success story on how they skyrocketed their merchandise sales thanks to a campaign that their supporters really appreciate.
And finally, we have sponsorship:
3. Sponsorship packages
Do you remember what the first of the 4 fundamentals to selling more tickets was? None other than:
Growing your supporter database, continuously.
This fundamental comes in very handy when it comes to negotiating sponsorships of higher value. Specifically, the more supporters you also have in your supporter database with contact information about your supporters, the higher the sponsorship deals you are able to negotiate.
To illustrate this, let’s take a look at an example with no other than Barcelona FC:
“When Spotify initially approached Barcelona, they made enquiries about the club’s fan database. The soon-to-be sponsors wanted to know the number of ‘registered’ fans, i.e., the supporters who had given consent for the club to use their names, email, phone numbers, and other personal information. And the number is believed to have left them disappointed. Barcelona is a club with a massive fan following across the globe, with over 350 million followers supporting the Blaugrana. However, out of that, just 1% of the fans, approximately around 3 million, are ‘registered.“
As you can see above, having a robust fan database is crucial if you want to negotiate the highest sponsorship deal possible. So even a big club such as Barcelona could avoid leaving money on the table if they managed to increase their fan database. So you want to make sure that your fans are loyal enough that they not only follow you on social media but also opt-in to receive email and marketing communications from you. You can do this in several ways, such as your fan:
To illustrate this, let’s take a look at an example with no other than Barcelona FC:
- Buying match tickets online
- Purchasing merchandise from your online store
- Registering to your superfan club
- Signing up for your newsletter
- Downloading your app
- Subscribing to your OTT streaming service
- Being a customer of one of your sponsors
And when you have them in You can segment your fans into different groups based on specific characteristics that you have uncovered about them. For example, after learning who your most loyal fans are, you can create a segment of this specific group of fans. Then, you can target them with messages that you know your supporters will truly appreciate.
But seeing is believing, right? So request a demo and explore the sports CDP yourself to see this and more in action.
