Talking Tickets 18 February 2022: Why Do Fans Really Go to Games? The Lion King Draws a Crowd! Pricing! NIL! And, More!
Number 123!
Good morning/evening/day…whatever.
Hey!
Someone in the Slack Channel asked me why the email goes out at the time that it does…hoping I’d have an answer that was data-driven or scientific in nature. The truth is that the newsletter comes out at the time it does because that’s a point where I can guarantee the maximum number of people get this newsletter on Friday morning.
Simple, right?!
If you dig the newsletter, please share it with someone! I’ll be grateful and at some point, I will figure out how to reward sharing…until then, thanks for sharing.
I’ll be in Europe from 12-20 March. The locations are still slightly in flux because of some potential fun and games, but I will definitely be in London. Because I can’t seem to go to Europe without a stop in London!
Share your thoughts on the potential pod-ference!
See you there!
To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: Why do people really go to games? It might not be what you think!
Big Ideas:
Suspense drives interest.
In a big duh, getting more people to come to games is hard but profitable.
Could salary caps that help spread talent actually help players earn more money?
I start the week by going to Australia and as Tourism Australia puts together a campaign to get folks to return, this is as good a time as any to tell them, “I am an influencer. Maybe invite me down.”
I’m just saying.
This is an interesting piece of research that took place using the AFL to study what really drives fans to attend games. Strangely enough, it is a word that we don’t use nearly enough when we talk about games: suspense.
It seems obvious that suspense is at the heart of what drives ticket sales, but we think hot tickets, big teams, or matchups…but the study makes the case that the storylines matter and they might be slightly different than we think.
Game 7 of the World Series is obviously suspenseful and presents a ready-made example, but let’s look at the not-so-obvious like rivalry games.
It is that sense that anything can happen that will drive folks to the stadium. Or, so the theory goes.
I won’t wipe it away as out of hand from the start, I think it is promising.
Why?
Because when you look at some of Major League Baseball’s attendance issues, you see that a lack of competitiveness has caused a lot of the conversation around baseball to shift negatively.
If you’ve ever been to a really great pitching duel, you’ll know that a game where the ball doesn’t get put into play a lot or where there aren’t a lot of runs doesn’t mean that the game is boring.
In fact, having had the chance to watch prime Pedro Martinez pitch a number of times in Boston, the opposite is true.
But, going to a game between two bad teams or where there doesn’t appear to be a competitive matchup will kill the mojo fast.
Think about a lot of those money games in college football. Or, the FA Cup in England.
The money games we only remember when there is the occasional Appalachian State upset of Michigan, but the FA Cup is almost designed to encourage the suspense and story around anything could happen.
The truth is that this suspensfullness (poetic license in action, I think) seems to drive sales and revenue. In other words, having the belief that you’ll see something crazy or exciting or unsuspected will encourage you to go to the game.
Who could have guessed?
YOLO in plain sight.
The big question that this leaves me with is whether or not studies like this and case studies could be causes for increased use of salary caps or other mechanisms around the world that have mechanisms in place to reward the players for the increased revenue from suspense while also encouraging more competitiveness?
I’m not going to expect this question to be answered in the near term, but it is something interesting to think of.
More directly for the folks that read this note: how can you use the idea of suspense in the way you market and sell your tickets and experiences?
To me, this is applicable to folks in any part of the live entertainment business.
2. The Road to Recovery: Spark Arena brings in The Lion King on short notice:
Big Ideas:
Flexibility and risk are going to be key for the recovery of a lot of organizations.
With the right launch strategy, you can shorten the odds of success.
Pay attention to the ecosystem.
I’ve been holding onto this piece for a little bit because of the holidays, the Covid, and such.
I like this one for several reasons like New Zealand is awesome and the people are great! I love The Lion King and seeing that on Broadway is still one of the best things I’ve ever seen live. And, the example of Spark Arena shows the need to be creative and flexible coming through the pandemic.
In a compressed time frame, Spark Arena was able to sell 136,000 tickets for a summer season they didn’t know they were going to have.
Compare this to a lot of places that are saying, “we aren’t selling well because we don’t have the same run-up that we would normally have.”
Whenever I’m talking with someone, I try and tell them to flip the thinking to reflect on knowing what you are dealing with, what can you try.
This is what happened in NZ.
Why were they successful?
I see a few big things:
First, they moved quickly.
Sometimes, you just have to go.
You can’t worry about the way you’ve always done things. You have to just go.
Spark Arena went with it. Out of necessity due to fixed costs and the lack of a season, making the decision and going can often help you learn and adjust more quickly than any amount of planning.
I’ve been working with a bunch of folks lately, discussing the need to be willing to try new things.
Real innovation is applied creativity and that is what is on display here.
Third, this was an effort that boosted a large part of the community and that probably helped.
Were some people upset?
Of course.
Some people complain about this newsletter… it is free!
In a large enough population, you’ll find everything. That’s the beauty of large populations, you can find an outlier for anything.
A takeaway for me is that the creativity for recovery is taking hold in some places. Now we need it to be even more widespread.
My question to y’all: how are you going to do something you haven’t done before?
3. How-To: Set prices, raise prices, and not look like you don’t know what you are doing with pricing:
Big Ideas:
There is a right way and a wrong way to talk about price increases.
Most people don’t know what they are talking about when they talk about pricing.
Underpricing is a huge problem.
Y’all, I love pricing.
Why?
Because that’s where you get paid!
I like to work in Mark Ritson columns when I can as well because he’s one of my marketing professors from back in the day and I like the way he takes the piss out of ideas and people.
His writing shows that you don’t have to sugarcoat an issue. I’d actually argue that you shouldn’t sugarcoat things because in too many places we sugarcoat and nothing changes.
So pricing.
Mark’s column, read the whole thing.
Let’s get to three big take-homes though:
First, you need to communicate with your audience effectively about any changes in procedure, pricing, or experience.
I often write about effective communication in the world of project management with my PMI column. In that column, I tell you that to be effective, your communication must have three qualities:
Clear
Concise
Easily understood
Recognize that I live in DC where jargon is the coin of the realm if you listen to most folks talk. And, I honestly get a headache from the different acronyms that people throw around to make themselves sound knowledgeable.
So keep your message tight, focused, and clear.
Don’t BS folks.
Two, Mark’s column, his research, and my millions of individual pricing decisions have taught me one thing I can say with almost total certainty: most people, even the ones working in pricing, don’t know what they are talking about.
Go back to point one, when I give you pricing advice, I try to make it as simple and clear as possible because I want you to do this stuff with or without me.
If someone is explaining pricing in a language that sounds like it came from a Star Wars convention, take a timeout and call me for clarification.
Third, beware of underpricing.
As Mark points out, it is very easy to only look at the top-line number. To the point that you miss the profit.
When you only look at the top-line number, you risk losing sales, losing profit, and creating a bad perception.
But most importantly, you become attached to the tyranny of the top-line.
It isn’t what you make, but what you keep.
For you, my question is how are you thinking about pricing now in an environment where demand can be up and down, uncertainty can still be high, and inflation still hangs around?
4. Tech/Tools/Profile: MK Lever wrote a book about the life of a college athlete:
Big Ideas:
Too much of the conversation around college athletics focuses on financialization at the cost of dehumanization of the athletes.
Antitrust, NIL, and other dynamics are pointing towards a precarious point for the business of college athletics.
To survive going forward, innovation and creativity are going to be necessary.
I had a nice little podcast conversation with MK Lever this week. Her new book just dropped on Tuesday and we sat down on Wednesday for a talk.
I posted it right away because it was fun for me, spirited, and I learned a lot.
For the context of today’s newsletter, I’ll point out three key takeaways for me that might mean something to y’all as well.
First, the conversation around athletes has devolved to one of commoditization and dehumanization over the reality that these athletes are mostly kids that have other responsibilities and are adjusting to life away from home for the first time.
MK was adamant that we need to reshape the conversation to focus on the real people that are athletes and not just whether something is good for our bet or a fantasy play.
Y’all know me, I’m all about people. So I agree.
Two, the situations popping up in college athletics around debt, NIL, and antitrust point towards an industry that needs to innovate and change, but seems reluctant to do anything.
Let’s call it the “deer in the headlights” syndrome.
When I give talks on change and innovation, I talk about the fear of change and how folks will fight it at all costs.
That’s on display in so many programs, but with the inflation of pay packages for coaches…it actually can seem like the industry is accelerating its own destruction.
Maybe I’m wrong.
But my track record is pretty good.
Finally, that does bring us to the idea of innovation and creativity.
MK brings up the idea of actually understanding your students and your student-athletes as a jumping-off point.
TBF, she lost me at innovation and change…I mean, I kid, but do I?
MK’s point about innovation and change is spot on though. Because when I teach innovation to my clients or students in my workshops, I tell them that problem solving is a dead issue. Anybody can do that…
The magic is in getting to another level a new, higher level.
And, that’s what MK is talking about.
To be successful in the future, you can’t stop at getting back to zero. You have to push to the next level.
To think about here, I’d focus on the idea of creativity and innovation…but that’s usually where I am. You?
5. Blurbs and Such:
Leaked Broadway numbers show the impact of the Omicron variant: Follow the data and all because the virus and any spikes in the virus are going to have an impact on whether or not people go to shows, restaurants, and other group activities. That’s just what we are dealing with. So follow the data…the numbers are clear that the virus will rule until the virus decides it is done with us.
I write up my principles of Brand Management: Lately, I’ve been thinking about the principles that drive a lot of my work. Here is my thinking on the principles that drive my thinking and work with brands. Let’s start with my definition of a brand: which is just the accumulation of all of the interactions your brand has with your market, good and bad. Just keep in mind that the good stuff adds up much more slowly than the bad stuff tears your brand down.
Subsidy Bowl, that’s a good one: It is obviously a serious topic of subsidizing billionaires especially when the business practices in so many places are so far behind. In truth, if you asked me tell you the teams that do the best job…I’d almost always point to the ones that don’t have heavy subsidies or fully taxpayer-funded buildings. Having to generate revenue and profits makes people act so much differently, strangely enough.
I’m syndicated in Laos now!?: I knew me when or something of the sort. Pretty soon I’m going to mess around and know what I’m doing.
Socios is really just for fun now: These kinds of stories are the ones that will drive the there is no value in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Also, the Socios rewards do seem a little flimsy and often feel like the stuff you should use for fan engagement, to begin with. But what do I know?
Roger Martin talks about the reality that all of your data is from past events and not necessarily always relevant for the future: I’m burning it down this week. First, crypto. Now, DATA! RIP my inbox later. Roger Martin is probably the best strategy teacher in the world…I’m chasing him down and I will catch him!? But this short talk is poignant when he talks about data, the scientific method, and creating a strategy that is future-focused.
I was in Sportico with Simon Mabb a few weeks back talking about Booking Protect, refund protection, and what customers want and need now. Give it a read.
You can find me everywhere with my special Linktree! It is all my links!
Be a part of the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack community.
Check out my friends at Booking Protect!
Customers have been taking up refund protection at a rate that is double what it was before the pandemic began. This is a great opportunity for you to offer more value to your customers in a way that they want while also creating a new revenue stream for your organization.
Also, check them out in Birmingham, UK at the Ticketing Professionals Conference UK. If you are in the neighborhood, get to the conference, Andrew and Carol do a great job and they throw great parties.
Check out this week’s podcast with MK Lever talking about her new book! Or, hit some of the previous episodes. All of the ones from 2022 have been bangers: Ruth Hartt, Hannah Grannemann, Lyndsey Jackson, and, now, MK Lever. I’ve got some more good stuff coming up!