Seven Learnings from FEVO Beyond Tickets: Building Innovative Revenue Streams

Last week we hosted our May Webinar, FEVO Beyond Tickets: Building Innovative Revenue Streams, which featured a ton of great insights on how to unlock new revenue streams beyond simply selling tickets. Erik Malinowski, FEVO’s VP of Partners Success hosted a standout group of panelists featuring Dan Gadd, SVP of Growth at the Atlanta Dream, Connor Whelan, Associate AD of Fan Experience & Sales at Mississippi State and Chris Dubek, COO of Flexwork Sports. 

Below, find some key takeaways — both FEVO-related and otherwise — from the panel on selling items beyond the ticket, maximizing efficiency, driving additional revenue and increasing brand affinity.

Keep the Entry Point Affordable

Mississippi State elected to keep the barrier to entry low for their Maroon Memories program and priced it in a way that the in-game add-on experiences would be available to as many fans as possible. Not only does this drive additional revenue and improve the fan experience, but also creates an environment where fans don’t feel as if they’ve been price gouged. By making the program accessible to a larger group of fans, the Bulldogs ensure they have more fans to sell on future engagements — some even spending more in the future after a positive first experience.

Use Variable Pricing

The demand for add-ons varies greatly based on the timing of the event and the opponent. As Whelan pointed out, a scoreboard shoutout on a Tuesday vs one on a Saturday afternoon against an SEC opponent are not equal, and the pricing for those experiences should reflect that. This of course takes some dialing in to get right, so don’t be afraid to experiment with price when introducing a new product. 

Get People on the Field 

“Any time you can bring people down onto the field, that’s something that resonates really well,” says Whelan. The Bulldogs have seen huge success selling experiences with access to the football field both befor the game and at halftime, as well as getting fans out to the University’s iconic baseball stadium for batting practice. Giving fans the opportunity to walk the same grounds as the athletes they support helps to solidify the connection they have with the team and makes them an even more valuable fan asset for a longer period of time. 

“Insights Before Ideas”

When it comes to brainstorming offer ideas, the Atlanta Dream’s Gadd says, “I always say insights before ideas. That means we want to do research — get really good insights on what worked, come up with some hypotheses for why those were working versus the challenges they solved for, test things quickly and then optimize over time.” This is how the Dream found there would be demand for their Daughter Date Night Experience: a casual post about “girl dads” had abnormally high engagement, which led to more research, hypotheses, and then a test which led to a super successful campaign around father-daughter date nights. 

Keep Fans in Your Environment

Gadd also pointed out how useful FEVO is in terms of giving fans who may not be familiar with the Dream a fully customized and branded purchase environment where the team can display all the necessary information and creative assets. Keeping fans on the Dream’s owned-and-operated site means the team also gets access to troves of data to retarget as well as real-time data to see what is and isn’t working on the marketing front. 

Drive Incremental Revenue Through Infrastructure

“There is nothing more operationally devastating than day-of-event changes.” says Dubek. Point taken, but as Dubek also pointed out, changes are an inevitable part of the live events experience. Strategically setting up infrastructure to be flexible allows your organization to factor in any necessary changes to the sales process while also allowing you to drive day-of incremental revenue at any given moment. 

Give Fans the Tools to Purchase Upgrades On-Site

At Flexwork events (a network of pro-athlete youth camps) they post FEVO-created QR-codes all around camp check-in areas. Says Dubek, “The QR codes allow parents, while our staff are checking people in, to self-educate and purchase the upgrades themselves. Operationally it has allowed our staff to meet demands at the speed of business.” This simultaneously streamlines the check-in experience and creates additional revenue. Given the opportunity, fans are smart enough to figure things out themselves. But if it isn’t there for them, they can’t buy it. 

Watch the webinar in its entirety below and get even more great insights: