StratTix: Making ticket sales proactive, rather than reactive

Last season (2006-2007) the NHL adopted a ticket analysis tool called StratTix to help all 30 teams grow home game revenues and maximize ticket sales, while standardizing how they report their revenues to the league.  It became the second major sports league to integrate StratTix’s data analysis features, the other being the NBA.  After a year of use, the NHL has capitalized from the benefits that StratTix has provided by setting a league record for attendance throughout last season and it will help the league going forward.

There are two critical activities that professional sports franchises must do well for the team to be successful. First, they need to assemble and maintain winning teams in order to attract fans. Second, they need to maximize the revenue from their activities. Assembling a successful team together depends on signing the right players and making good trade decisions.  To maximize revenue, concentrating on ticket sales often returns immediate benefits.  The NHL is unique among the professional sports leagues because more than 60% of the its revenues comes directly from ticket sales, so improving this process has been a key issue. 

Most ticketing systems, however, are focused on simply fulfilling and tracking transactions, not maximizing revenue. As a result, a great deal of potential revenue to the teams is lost.  StratTix is the first tool that lets users quickly gather ticket information from a variety of sources to gain a real-time view of ticket inventories and trends prior to a game.  It takes data directly from the ticketing system of a stadium or arena and produces a variety of visual and quantitative analyses. This allows sales teams to develop strategies on the fly to fill seats as they can quickly figure out which seats are available and initiate specific campaigns to sell them.  StratTix provides sports teams and entertainment venue managers a variety of strategic advantages, including:

1. the ability to see previously hidden patterns and trends within an event or stretch of events;

2. track the impact marketing campaigns such as advertising, promotions and direct mail have on sales; and, 

3. monitor price effects visually and quantitatively.

“Previously, real-time data collection was impossible,” said Lorraine Spadaro, vice president of technology and eBusiness for the Boston Bruins. “We’d get data from various ticket sources that sometimes was several days old. So we often had to make assumptions, which isn’t the best way to fill the arena. StratTix gives us in-depth mouse click analysis so we have the most current information for making crucial marketing decisions.” Consistently filling a venue to capacity is a challenge for many organizations.  However, StratTix takes the guesswork out of the process. The sales staff no longer has wait for the box office or ticketing systems to produce “up-to-date” ticket information. Instead, they can use StratTix to collect the data in real time and automatically see what seats are still unfilled. That real-time access lets them make smarter decisions about how to fill unsold seats.  The NHL will greatly benefit going forward because StratTix will help teams grow their capacity for home games with better ticket sales.