

Each of the greeters, who are made up of any member of the stadium staff, have a card that they can give the fan that allows the fan to ask questions and rate the greeter. In 2012, the organization reached 87 percent of the fans that way. For example, that means that, at least in theory, every fan has to be greeted when they come to the Wells Fargo Center for a game and asked if they need any help. They have a program they call "How You Doin'?" (taken from Joey on Friends), which entails training their entire staff in helping fans and empowering the staff to do so. The Flyers realize that they have to engage every single fan who attends a game well beyond the game.

But one of their rivals, the Philadelphia Flyers, has figured out how the fan experience needs to work-with incredible results. Much as I'm a New York Rangers hockey fan, the Rangers are by no means all that great at keeping fans engaged. That means the fans' experience with the team, whether it wins or loses, has to be memorable. The Norwich City Canaries, a UK premier league football team, has seven distinct revenue-generating businesses.īut for a sports team to sell, they need to get and keep the fans engaged. There are other parts to the business model-events among them. How much does the team pay attention to the fan? The business model of a sports franchise is ticket sales (especially season tickets), merchandise sales, and concession sales. The successful core of a business that engenders the passion that sports does is the actual fan experience. But how many of you have heard of Huawei? Or root for them? Huawei, a Chinese global information and communications technology solutions provider, made more than that in profit in 2012. Fortune magazine, in March 2013, said that the wealthiest franchise in all sports in the United States is the New York Yankees (I'm proud to say) with $2.3 billion. But they have the aura of the megalith, so they seem much larger than they are. Interestingly, most sports franchises are only midsized businesses.
The fan smooze professional#
It could be childhood nostalgia, municipal pride, a love of play, living out a dream by proxy, a combination of some, or all of the above.īut despite this passion, we can't forget that professional sports teams are businesses first and thus have the same objectives of any business. There are lots of explanations why fans have the passion they have for their teams. I know that you all recognized yourselves in that "our," didn't you?
The fan smooze free#
I can't tell you how many times I've raged over how the Yankees' management spent "our" money on a free agent acquisition that I thought was incredibly stupid. What fascinates me beyond the game itself is how deeply involved the fans of a particular team are in the life of that team, its players, and even its management. Anyone who knows me knows that I love sports-which is a great deal different than saying I am good at them.
