Adam O’Connell has the duality of professional and collegiate experience in ticket sales, which means he can see past the rhetoric, discussing what works and what doesn’t when selling sports tickets. O’Connell talks about his tenure with the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team and the Fresno Falcons junior hockey league team, then expands to what Akron is currently doing to ensure that each fan receives the best customer service in the Ohio area.
A former Arena League2 General Manager, Butch Bellah now spends his days developing and training sports sales staffs across the country. Bellah talks in terms of the sports sales person being a craftsman, ensuring that each understands that they should take pride in what they do. Bellah shares his philosophy on starting the work week off right while the competition is struggling, especially on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, and how make sure that each sales call ends with progress toward a sale, not toward a no. Twitter: @SalesPowerTips
FC Dallas is one of the examples of why Major League Soccer is starting to take hold in the USA. VP of Ticket Sales Kris Katseanes talks about how forward-thinking the FC Dallas ownership group was in placing the team in the city of Frisco, led by the late-Lamar Hunt. Katseanes talks about what he looks for in staff and the target market for the FC Dallas franchise.
North of the American Border is one of the top minds in sports revenue generation in Paul Fruitman, who has sold for the Toronto Blue Jays, Halifax Rainmen, Toronto Argonauts, and Edmonton Eskimos. Fruitman understands not only the ticket selling aspects, but also the social media ones, speaking on both in a combination style that separates him from most sports marketers. Fruitman discusses premium seating, sports marketing, and customer service, along with how each person should look at their own career aspirations in the field, especially on whether to move to a new franchise after a certain point in time. Twitter: @Dngitasawngrp
Brett Sanders has an interesting dilemma, some of his top games are sold out, while others in men’s basketball are a few seats short, leaving a perception that there are no tickets available even when there are. Sanders discusses some of the ways in which Xaiver protects its price point, even when providing discounts, and some of the issues surrounding venues being sold out, yet tickets not redeemed for the game.
The forgotten child of sports revenue is sometimes its more valuable member, that being premium seating options. Thought for a long time to be an easy win with high end partners, since the economic crash of 2008, teams have found it harder to sell a premium seat. Jason Gonella talks about the role of premium seating, what exactly those customers are looking for, and how to build up a stronger base of premium seating which is valuable real estate on the seating map. A former VP of Sales for AEG & The Rose Bowl, Gonella has worked in over 17 years in premium seating, his clients include AVP Volleyball, the Los Angeles Angels, MKTG, PrimeSport, Santa Anita Park. Twitter: @JasonGonella
Ticket brokers have been around forever, but it took Brittany Menard to write it all down five years ago and start selling one of the most successful guides on the industry. Menard talks about some of the details that those starting out miss when getting into the ticket broker game, as well as what any person thinking about getting into the business can expect in terms of a return on investment.
Mark Washo has influenced a generation of tickets sales representatives with his book, How To Break Into Sports Through Ticket Sales. Washo also founded PMI College, a third-party out-bound ticket sales group with several college properties throughout the nation. Washo talks about his book’s influence, as well as how the world of ticket sales has grown since his time at the Chicago Fire and other other MLS teams, always trying to sell out the house. Twitter: @BreakIntoSports
Scott Worden has been on both sides of the vendor-client side of sports ticket sales. Now at the helm of GetTix.Net's sales division, Worden is responsible for ensuring that everything a sports sales department needs is implemented in the GetTix framework. Worden talks about some of the challenges of dynamic pricing, CRMs and ticket sales in general. Worden discusses his career, selling for the Arizona Diamondbacks, Sacramento Kings, and Portland Trailblazers under the direction of legendary ticket salesman Jon Spoelstra in the late 1990s.
The ticket reselling game tends to get a lot of flack, but J Cobb decided to come on the podcast to dispel a lot of rumors. Cobb talks about the fact that selling to brokers is one of the dirty little secrets of sports sales, as well as ways that brokers tend to not make as much money as laymen might think on the secondary market. Could the secondary market be cornered by Ticketmaster or is there still hope for the small independent brokers? Twitter: @TeamOneJ