What can you do to sell tickets and capitalize on this moment? Better yet, what are you willing to do?
These are the questions I asked myself as, at the time, Assistant AD for Ticket Operations in March 2018 following the hiring of a new men’s basketball head coach at the University of Evansville. This coach was a hometown legend, NCAA national champion (1996 – Kentucky), 10-year NBA veteran, and had been an assistant coach under some of the brightest minds in the game (Rick Pitino, Brad Stevens).
After finishing 17-15 and averaging 3,782 fans per game at the end of the 2017-18 season (our lowest mark in over 50 years), this coaching change was made. Now, excitement was at the highest it had been this millennium. I knew something drastic had to be done in order to capitalize on this positive shift in momentum.
The inspiration for what I did next comes from Jason Martin, current General Manager for the Learfield IMG College property at the University of Buffalo and former Associate AD for External Relations at Arkansas State. Jason spent much of August 2015 wearing a football helmet EVERYWHERE he went. Why you ask? In order to start a conversation about season ticket sales and issue a challenge to the Red Wolves’ faithful. He was to wear the helmet until 10,000 season tickets had been sold – a feat they did end up hitting for the first time in over a decade. [You can check out more on Jason’s efforts here: https://bit.ly/36uRCQX.]
So, with Jason’s story in mind, I started to brainstorm what I could do to continue the newfound buzz surrounding UE basketball and show the fans how committed we were to improving things with the new regime.
I am often lovingly referred to as “the guy with the beard”. What I decided to do, then, was dye my beard UE purple until we reached 500 new season tickets sold. I joined our in-house videographer and a reporter from Channel 25 News (s/o Jessica Wimsatt) and headed over to Impulse Salon and Spa in Newburgh, IN with my odd request.
After about an hour of bleaching, dyeing, and washing my beard I was on my way. Appearances on 2 local news channels and UE’s social media helped me accomplish my first goal of keeping the excitement around the new coach going. In fact, it turned out to be a fantastic ice breaker when starting the sales conversation with our fans – many even approached me out in public to ask why my beard was purple.
It took very little time to sell our 500 new season tickets. In all, we ended up selling over 1,100 and boosted our average attendance for the 2018-19 season to 5,294 – the 15th largest increase in the country. This started the momentum to UE’s Power 5 Mentality, finishing second in the conference in average attendance the past 2 seasons.
Now ask yourself, what are you willing to do to sell tickets and draw attention to your program?
- Scott Peace (@Scott_Peace)
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