28 November 2024
Four record high net promoter scores (NPS) for football. Selling out games. Improved fan scoring across all gameday elements. Our latest webinar charted how Arizona State Sun Devil Athletics used analytics to achieve these feats and improve fan experience.
Greg Emmons, Manager, Business Analytics at Arizona State Sun Devil Athletics, shared how the organization had transformed its qualitative analysis process. He explained how the team transitioned from manually tagging and reading fan feedback to creating an integrated process — and how this led to the team taking meaningful action to improve fan experience.
Relative Insight Senior Account Manager, Zac Dhanoo, joined Greg on the session. Zac shared how best-in-class customer journey maps incorporate analytics. He outlined how implementing a rigorous process can help brands boost customer experience, whether their customers are sports fans attending games or in another other sector.
Use the banner below to view the webinar in full on demand. This blog features the key points Zac and Greg covered during the 40-minute session.
Results ASU achieved by improving fan experience
Greg began by outlining the simple reason for the organization’s focus on improving fan experience: “The better the fan experience, the more likely it is a fan will return to a game”.
While this sounds simple, the team has put in place a comprehensive program to ensure this happens. The organization has multiple measures of success, including commercially focused metrics like ticket sales and season ticket renewals, as well as the team’s use of NPS to signal fans’ overall enjoyment on gameday.
Incorporating Relative Insight’s qualitative analytics into this program has enabled Greg and the team to work faster and drive action in areas where the team can have the greatest impact. He outlined three aspects where the team had made improvements:
- Concession variety and value: Fans asked for affordable, diverse options. The team responded by introducing value-priced items at tailgates, adding unique menu items on every gameday and keeping prices low for core concessions.
- Parking access: High parking fees were a common complaint, especially for fans parked further from the stadium. By halving prices for parking lots further out, ASU addressed cost concerns while maintaining a balance of convenience and affordability.
- Speed of service at concessions: Long waits at concession stands frustrated fans. The organization added grab-and-go stations to minimize queues and ensure fans spent more time enjoying the game.
Why these three in particular? “The reason that we changed these items was that our fans with the lowest scores talked about these three areas the most, and it had overlap with what our most passionate fans cared about,” Greg explained.
This helped increase the organisation’s fan NPS; which correlates with the number of season ticket renewals the team earns.
Incorporating qualitative analytics into a fan experience program
Achieving these results requires a well-oiled machine. Greg outlined the steps different departments at Arizona State Sun Devil Athletics take to ensure fan feedback is actioned.
He highlighted the different tools used to collect, analyze and visualize fan feedback. This includes Qualtrics for survey collection and quantitative analysis, Salesforce and Ticketmaster to link feedback with fan data points such as seat location and ticket type, and Tableau for data visualization. Greg also highlighted how the team use Relative Insight for qualitative analysis and AI reporting.
The below schematic offers a visual as to how the organization structures its fan experience program.
Building this process and incorporating technology has enabled ASU to expand its efforts to improve fan experience. This has enabled the team to conduct more wide-ranging surveys and cover more sports.
“We’ve been able to survey more events,” noted Greg. “By saving 2-6 hours for each survey, we’re now able to survey all of our volleyball games, a bunch of women’s soccer games, men’s basketball, football, women’s basketball, baseball, softball etc.
“We’re really starting to learn more about all of our fans across the board and not just one or two sports that we were focused on before.”
Getting great fan feedback — whatever the result
One of the challenges all fan experience programs face is volatility in feedback based on wins and losses. Greg and the rest of the team have elevated the program to avoid feedback clouded by results:
“We can’t control what happens between the lines, but we can control the fan experience.”
He credited the ability to extract feedback no matter the result to the entire team at Arizona State Sun Devils Athletics, noting that sales, marketing, service and other departments contribute to gameday experience.
Greg noted that the organization made a conscious effort to create surveys that separate the result from other gameday aspects when it began its journey to improve fan experience. Greg also took the time to praise ASU supporters, noting they offer insightful feedback whether the team wins or loses.
But what if your fans aren’t able to separate the emotion of the result from their feedback?
Zac offered his perspective after working with sports teams on their fan experience programs. He noted that there are ways to use analytics tools like Relative Insight to mitigate results-focused feedback. This includes comparing only wins or losses to filter out bad feedback.
“You can examine all the games that were won and all of the games that you lost. You can compare them against each other or in isolation,” he explained. “If you analyze all the games that were won and fans are still talking about expensive concessions or parking issues, that might hold even greater weight.
Want to find out how Relative Insight can help you build qualitative feedback analytics in your fan experience program? Speak to one of our experts to find out how you can improve fan experience with Relative Insight.
