Teams get creative to preserve season ticket relationships (and money) for 2021 (2024)

Sweta Patel is a hardcore Detroit Lions fan who opted to forgo her season ticket this fall because of the pandemic.

She’s emblematic of a new challenge professional sports teams face as they try to convince their most financially important fans to again buy season tickets, or to generate new season ticket sales – not an easy task with so many questions still unanswered about 2021.

Patel, 37, works as a physical therapist in a nursing home, so she decided to avoid any crowds at Ford Field to reduce the risk of transmission.

“That was also one of the deciding factors for me to opt out as I can be a carrier both ways,” she said. So she rolled her $1,600 club-level ticket payment to 2021, when she hopes the pandemic is under control. Patel is among more than 40,000 fans that have season tickets at Ford Field, which may not see any fans this season.

Teams have offered season ticket holders refunds or credits toward next season. At the same time, they have begun to brainstorm unique marketing strategies to maintain their season ticket bases while not knowing what 2021 might look like – will there be fans in the stands? How many? When will seasons begin? Will prices go up or be frozen?

Teams mostly cannot answer those questions yet, making the sale process challenging even as the process has evolved in recent years to include far more perks for buyers such as gifts, discounts, VIP events, behind-the-scenes tours and access to players and executives.

In Pittsburgh, if a foul ball landed in a PNC Park seat linked to a season ticket holder, the Pirates mailed the ball to that fan – an example of a team getting creative under the pandemic circ*mstances to maintain relationships. Other teams are doing similar things where a season ticket holder gets a ball if it hits a cardboard cutout of them in the stands.

“It is without question an immenselydifficult time for ticketsales staffs,” said Clinton Warren, a sports management lecturer at the University of Minnesota. “Most teams are trying to find ways to keep their fans and clients engaged with their ticket accounts while providing deferredor flexible payment options.”

The Phoenix Suns used their digital on-court advertising inventory during their games inside the NBA’s Orlando bubble to promote their massive arena renovation and to push season ticket sales, said Dean Stoyer, the team’s chief marketing and communications officer.

“We saw incredible lead generation during that time from fans who saw it on the court and were curious about it,” he said. “We were able to book a lot of appointments.”

In Phoenix, the Suns built a small mockup of what suites, bars and other seating will look like when Talking Stick Resort Arena project is done and it averaged about 20 visits a week in March, but that leapt to 70 a week once bubble games began and the marketing messages aired, Stoyer said.

The team also staged Zoom interviews for fans with Rex Chapman, Adam Silver and Dan Majerle and others. “We used that platform to show the renderings and fly-throughs of the new arena,” Stoyer said.

The Suns lost seven home games when the pandemic hit, so the team opted to have influencers play those games via NBA 2K on Twitch. The video game sessions quickly drew a couple of million viewers, Stoyer said, and sales messages were incorporated into the virtual games.

“It helped us continue to get exposure,” Stoyer said.

Why are teams so focused on season ticket holders more than single-game sales?

While local and national broadcast rights deals are a primary source of cash for teams, season ticket revenue is critical for most major league teams because it’s tens of millions of dollars in reliable money – the ticket cost plus in-game spending on food, drinks and merchandise — compared to reliance upon the public’s whim for single-game tickets.

That is why teams have evolved marketing-speak in many cases from “season tickets” to “season memberships” as they gild the expensive purchase with value-added benefits. It’s easier and cheaper to retain such fans than to find new ones.

Usually, teams get 80 percent of their fan revenue from 20 percent of their season ticket accounts, said Nels Popp, a University of North Carolina professor of sport administration who specialized in ticket sales.

“Would you rather try to find a way to keep 100 season ticket holders happy or add up 20,000 to buy one game?” he said.

One success story is the Seattle Mariners, who gave season ticket holders what amounts to about a 15-percent discount by making the first 11 games of 2021 free for account holders who rolled over their tickets, said Cory Carbary, the team’s vice president of ticket sales and service.

That’s helped drive an 88 percent renewal rate for 2021, he said.

“We really wanted to do something to thank them and keep them on board,” he said after a season in which MLB fans could not attend regular season games.

Teams with recent win-loss success generally are in better shape with season ticket holders. For example, the Golden State Warriors have retained their roughly 12,000 season ticket accounts. Struggling franchises and those without superstar players have to work harder and get more creative.

One unique season ticket promotion came in Detroit where the long-rebuilding Pistons last month unveiled the “Pistons IPO: Initial Pistons Offering.” The team’s bank partner, Flagstar, is offering certificates of deposit ($500 minimum) through Oct. 31 for fans buying season tickets, and interest generated by the CDs through the end of the year is deposited into the fan’s checking account. The CDs have up to a 5 percent interest rate.

Neither the team nor bank have disclosed how many CDs have been opened for the promotion but say it has served as a lead generator for both.

“The Pistons IPO sparked lots of buzz and generated lots of inquiries. While that hasn’t turned into a significant number of account openings, it has led to good conversations with customers, and we’re pleased with the results,” said Susan Bergesen, Flagstar’s vice president of communications.

The Pistons sound pleased with the promotion, too.

“The program has spurred good conversation and closed some new business with a little over a month left on the promotion,” team spokesman Kevin Grigg said.

NBA teams typically have season ticket bases that are 50 percent or more of their arena capacity, said Matt Wolf, the NBA’s senior vice president for team marketing and business operations. He noted that most NBA teams had already begun their 2021 season ticket campaigns when the hiatus stopped the season, and renewals and new sales have continued.

“Our fans are telling and showing us they are extremely enthusiastic about returning to our arenas. We’re seeing a ton of interest across the league in season ticket packages for the 2021 season,” Wolf said. “A number of our teams have had significant success (with 2021 ticket sales) during the hiatus and restart.”

He credits honest regulation and open communication between teams and their fans, along with creativity and flexibility such as reduced deposit minimums and payment schedules.

“We’re in these uncertain times and people value choice and options more than ever,” Wolf said.

He said season ticket renewal rates are essential in line with an uninterrupted season.

“A number of teams that have been pretty aggressive in the marketplace using social, digital and virtual communications to engage with new buyers – significant numbers of new (full-season packages),” Wolf said. “The numbers give us a lot of reason for optimism.”

Smaller leagues such as the WNBA also heavily rely on season tickets. There had been hope for a fresh wave of interest in the league because college superstar Sabrina Ionescu was the certain No. 1 draft pick of the New York Liberty, but the pandemic struck and forced the event online and the league pivoted to play its season over the summer in a Florida bubble – nicknamed the Wubble.

While Ionescu was lost early in the season to an ankle injury, the league said it was able to parlay the Wubble experience into a positive for ticket sales.

WNBA chief operating officer Christy Hedgpeth said her league’s embrace and leadership of social justice efforts help goose season ticket leads and sales. She also cited the WNBA’s focus on virtual events such as watch parties and chat with players for generating buzz that has, or is hoped to, fuel more season ticket sales.

“Having virtual events around the games this year allowed us to build more loye with our current season ticket members and allowed us to draw in prospects for 2021,” Hedgpeth said.

The WNBA hasn’t started its season when sports went on hiatus, and the league’s season ticket sales cycle for the following season typically begins about mid-way through the current regular season.

“I’m optimistic because I feel like our fan engagement metrics have been really, really strong,” Hedgpeth said. “Our fan ticket holder loyalty has been higher than we anticipated. We have a really solid, strong fanbase, one that we’re looking to grow and is very loyal.”

The season ticket challenges are not limited to American major leagues since the pandemic is global.

Eight of the 20 Premier League teams in Britain are not selling season tickets this year while clubs such as Everton and Southampton have seen significant renewals thanks to refund offers and frozen prices, said Chris Brady, a British sports academic working currently as director of research at the advisory firm Sportsology.

“As the grounds are effectively closed for the remainder of the current season and the new season is likely to see government legislating to limit capacity many clubs are operating a ballot system to select the season ticket holders who can attend each game next season,” he said.

The league is like the NFL in that reliance on season ticket money has shrunk as TV cash has grown. Brady estimated broadcast rights fees account for almost 60 percent of league revenue while tickets and match-day revenue has fallen to less than 15 percent.

“The Premier League will survive. However, the minor leagues where matchday revenue can exceed 75 percent of total revenue, are existentially threatened,” he said.

(Photo: Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)