The St. Louis Cardinals announced that their charitable foundation Cardinals Care raised $200,000 to help the children of Joplin recover from one of the most destructive tornadoes in Missouri history.
The fundraising was part of the joint “Teams Unite for Joplin” effort with the Kansas City Royals, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association which dedicated the three-game series at Busch Stadium (Friday, June 17 –Sunday, June 19) to raise awareness and money to help Joplin.
“We appreciate our fans generously supporting this important effort,” said Cardinals President William DeWitt III. “We also appreciate our players, manager, front office staff and our business partners doing their part to help Joplin.”
The Cardinals broadcast partners Fox Sports Midwest and KMOX 1120AM helped raise over $100,000 through first-ever broadcast auctions of once-in-a-lifetime Cardinals experiences. In addition to Cardinals Care volunteers collecting money at the gates, the team’s concessionaire Sportservice sold commemorative “Teams Unite for Joplin” patches, the team’s ticketing partner Tickets.com assisted with taking phone donations and Major League Baseball Advanced Media helped with collecting on-line donations, as well as conducting an on-line auction of autographed and game used items from the weekend that wrapped up on Sunday.
The May 22nd twister that hit Joplin was classified as an EF-5 tornado, the most powerful tornado possible. The storm left 153 dead, put more than 500 people into shelters at its peak and destroyed nearly 7,000 homes, businesses and schools.
While the recovery needs in Joplin are multiple and extensive in the wake of the tornado, Cardinals Care established the Joplin Recovery Fund to help the thousands of Joplin area children impacted by the disaster.
In the meantime, fans can still help by donating on-line at cardinals.com/Joplin or by texting the word JOPLIN to 32020.
Showing posts with label kansas city royals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kansas city royals. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Client Spotlight: Kansas City Royals & Minnesota Twins
The Starting Line-Up: Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins
We are excited to announce that both the Kansas City Royals and the Minnesota Twins Baseball Clubs are operating on the ProVenue ticketing platform. Both the Twins and Royals started their 2010 season on-sales and single game ticket purchases in ProVenue.
"The decision to migrate to ProVenue was an easy one when you realize the technological potential the new Tickets.com platform possesses. As with any ticketing system change, we realized the process would have its challenges. However with the help and support of Tickets.com, we are working together and making positive strides every day. We now look forward to building off the core system so we can capitalize on the current ticketing trends that are in line with our business needs," said Larry Chu, Senior Director Ticket Operations, Kansas City Royals.
Congratulations to the Minnesota Twins in their new home at Target Field!
We are excited to announce that both the Kansas City Royals and the Minnesota Twins Baseball Clubs are operating on the ProVenue ticketing platform. Both the Twins and Royals started their 2010 season on-sales and single game ticket purchases in ProVenue.
"The decision to migrate to ProVenue was an easy one when you realize the technological potential the new Tickets.com platform possesses. As with any ticketing system change, we realized the process would have its challenges. However with the help and support of Tickets.com, we are working together and making positive strides every day. We now look forward to building off the core system so we can capitalize on the current ticketing trends that are in line with our business needs," said Larry Chu, Senior Director Ticket Operations, Kansas City Royals.
Congratulations to the Minnesota Twins in their new home at Target Field!
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tickets.com partner Turnkey tackles ticketing with new technology
Sports Business Journal
Eric Fisher
Turnkey Sports & Entertainment this month is introducing Prospector, a ticketing software program it believes will dramatically change how teams seek to fill their buildings.
The program was developed over the past four years at a cost of more than $1 million. It uses inputs such as individual ticket purchases, survey responses and merchandise buys, and blends that data with a variety of demographic, housing and income information on those same fans to create detailed ticket-sales leads that are scored by their likelihood of success.
The software’s custom-built algorithms also allow for customization to rank sales leads for fans’ likelihood to purchase different ticket packages. For example, a high-income fan might score high as a candidate to purchase a luxury-seat package and score lower as a candidate for a smaller, value-oriented ticket package. But if survey data also arrives indicating a propensity by the fan to bring his family to games and participate in youth-oriented promotions, the lead scoring for that person could change, and the sales pitch as a result may then veer away from the more-corporate seating options.
Turnkey successfully beta-tested the effort with the Texas Rangers and Miami Heat earlier this year and will launch the program with at least 18 pro teams over the next several weeks, including the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Timberwolves and Kansas City Royals. The effort seeks to reverse years of declining ticket-sales trends. Pro teams in the early 1990s commonly were able to close sales on 3 percent to 4 percent of their outbound sales calls, but they’ve seen that rate fall below 1 percent in more-recent years as people grow more resistant to any sales call, particularly calls not customized for them.
“The key factor is boosting the close rate back up to where we were 20 years ago,” said Len Perna, Turnkey chief executive. “It’s the only thing that will work. Staying at 1 percent just isn’t going to get it done, so this is about creating tools that will enable more efficiency and improving that close rate.”
To create Prospector, Turnkey needed to strike a series of licensing and commission-based deals with a large group of related parties, including Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, and database marketers Acxiom and InfoUSA. Others, including Veritix and MLB Advanced Media, are also being sought out.
To that end, the Turnkey effort seeks to collate and analyze data that exists at these various outposts or has been voluntarily provided and perform analytical functions that in many instances now occur in a more rudimentary fashion. Many pro and college teams for years have sent lists of names to companies such as Acxiom for additional data enrichment and analysis, but such a process often has been time-consuming and performed in large batches.
Prospector, conversely, performs such analysis daily and on an individual level, more akin to the type of extensive and rapid consumer profiling common in the retail industry.
“This has definitely made us a lot more intelligent and efficient,” said Andy Silverman, Texas Rangers executive vice president of sales. The Rangers posted the highest percentage attendance increase in the American League this season and now are fully deploying the Prospector system in preparation for 2010.
The Heat, similarly, posted during its offseason sales period for the 2009-10 season seven times more ticket-sales revenue from its highest-rated Prospector-generated leads than from those at the bottom end of the scoring.
“This looks like it’s a really slick product,” said Glenn Christian, an Acxiom sales executive who works exclusively with sports teams and properties. Turnkey will act as a reseller of Acxiom data. “There are still some teams that are going to want to have raw data and data enrichment from us, but what they have done to get their secret sauce in there is really interesting.”
Teams will pay a monthly licensing fee to use the service, with an introductory rate of $4,000 a month. The participating teams’ data will be stored on Turnkey’s servers, and the data can be both uploaded to the clients’ computers and woven into teams’ existing CRM systems.
As with any new product, there are some issues continuing to be worked out. The Rangers are among the teams purging buys from ticket brokers from their Prospector analysis, as broker behavior is typically very different from individual and corporate buyers.
The product also promises to create a bit of a management issue, as ticket salespeople at individual teams may start clamoring for only highly rated sales leads as opposed to lower prospects. The Prospector system allows for a variety of view levels, though, depending on organizational seniority and responsibility.
Turnkey is a research partner of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily.
Eric Fisher
Turnkey Sports & Entertainment this month is introducing Prospector, a ticketing software program it believes will dramatically change how teams seek to fill their buildings.
The program was developed over the past four years at a cost of more than $1 million. It uses inputs such as individual ticket purchases, survey responses and merchandise buys, and blends that data with a variety of demographic, housing and income information on those same fans to create detailed ticket-sales leads that are scored by their likelihood of success.
The software’s custom-built algorithms also allow for customization to rank sales leads for fans’ likelihood to purchase different ticket packages. For example, a high-income fan might score high as a candidate to purchase a luxury-seat package and score lower as a candidate for a smaller, value-oriented ticket package. But if survey data also arrives indicating a propensity by the fan to bring his family to games and participate in youth-oriented promotions, the lead scoring for that person could change, and the sales pitch as a result may then veer away from the more-corporate seating options.
Turnkey successfully beta-tested the effort with the Texas Rangers and Miami Heat earlier this year and will launch the program with at least 18 pro teams over the next several weeks, including the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Timberwolves and Kansas City Royals. The effort seeks to reverse years of declining ticket-sales trends. Pro teams in the early 1990s commonly were able to close sales on 3 percent to 4 percent of their outbound sales calls, but they’ve seen that rate fall below 1 percent in more-recent years as people grow more resistant to any sales call, particularly calls not customized for them.
“The key factor is boosting the close rate back up to where we were 20 years ago,” said Len Perna, Turnkey chief executive. “It’s the only thing that will work. Staying at 1 percent just isn’t going to get it done, so this is about creating tools that will enable more efficiency and improving that close rate.”
To create Prospector, Turnkey needed to strike a series of licensing and commission-based deals with a large group of related parties, including Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, and database marketers Acxiom and InfoUSA. Others, including Veritix and MLB Advanced Media, are also being sought out.
To that end, the Turnkey effort seeks to collate and analyze data that exists at these various outposts or has been voluntarily provided and perform analytical functions that in many instances now occur in a more rudimentary fashion. Many pro and college teams for years have sent lists of names to companies such as Acxiom for additional data enrichment and analysis, but such a process often has been time-consuming and performed in large batches.
Prospector, conversely, performs such analysis daily and on an individual level, more akin to the type of extensive and rapid consumer profiling common in the retail industry.
“This has definitely made us a lot more intelligent and efficient,” said Andy Silverman, Texas Rangers executive vice president of sales. The Rangers posted the highest percentage attendance increase in the American League this season and now are fully deploying the Prospector system in preparation for 2010.
The Heat, similarly, posted during its offseason sales period for the 2009-10 season seven times more ticket-sales revenue from its highest-rated Prospector-generated leads than from those at the bottom end of the scoring.
“This looks like it’s a really slick product,” said Glenn Christian, an Acxiom sales executive who works exclusively with sports teams and properties. Turnkey will act as a reseller of Acxiom data. “There are still some teams that are going to want to have raw data and data enrichment from us, but what they have done to get their secret sauce in there is really interesting.”
Teams will pay a monthly licensing fee to use the service, with an introductory rate of $4,000 a month. The participating teams’ data will be stored on Turnkey’s servers, and the data can be both uploaded to the clients’ computers and woven into teams’ existing CRM systems.
As with any new product, there are some issues continuing to be worked out. The Rangers are among the teams purging buys from ticket brokers from their Prospector analysis, as broker behavior is typically very different from individual and corporate buyers.
The product also promises to create a bit of a management issue, as ticket salespeople at individual teams may start clamoring for only highly rated sales leads as opposed to lower prospects. The Prospector system allows for a variety of view levels, though, depending on organizational seniority and responsibility.
Turnkey is a research partner of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Royals, Indians will join MLB clubs selling stored-value tickets
Sports Business Journal
By DON MURET
Staff writer
The Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians will introduce stored-value tickets at their ballparks this season, bringing to eight the number of clubs that will have the technology in place on Opening Day.
Loaded tickets are a ballpark admission with credit to buy food, drink and merchandise loaded into the bar code and folded into the price of a ticket.
The Royals are benching their all-you-can-eat program in favor of loaded tickets in several parts of renovated Kauffman Stadium, including 190 seats in the Diamond Club boxes behind home plate.
Those $70 seats, available only as full-season tickets, include a $20 concessions credit, and were 75 percent sold as of last week, said Mark Tilson, the Royals’ vice president of marketing and ticket sales.
The Indians will roll out their program at Progressive Field to a small number of season-ticket holders, said spokesman Curtis Danburg. The team will expand the program to include groups and single-game tickets later in the season.In addition, the New York Mets plan to offer a combination of stored-value tickets and loyalty cards later in the season after making sure all systems work smoothly at Citi Field, their new billion-dollar ballpark, said Dave Howard, executive vice president of business operations.
The St. Louis Cardinals hope to sell loaded tickets at Busch Stadium, but nothing was firm as of last week, said Joe Strohm, vice president of ticket sales. The Arizona Diamondbacks will make a decision in February whether to offer stored-value tickets in 2009, spokesman Shaun Rachau said.
IMS, the software vendor supplying equipment to six MLB teams, has data dating to 2004, when the Philadelphia Phillies opened Citizens Bank Park and became the first club to use the concept. The information shows that fans holding loaded tickets spend 40 percent to 60 percent more on concessions than those without stored-value tickets, said Jeff Harvey, IMS’ vice president of sales.
The firm’s data also show that “breakage,” the industry term used to describe unused value on loaded tickets, can generate significant returns, averaging 36 percent, Harvey said. The Phillies’ breakage numbers are much smaller, according to John Weber, the team’s vice president of sales and ticket operations. The Phillies sold 90,000 “Power Tickets” containing a $10 credit, and breakage averaged 10 percent to 15 percent, Weber said.
In that case, breakage produced $90,000 to $135,000 in revenue, not including the park’s 350 Diamond Club seats with $30 in value. Still, it’s an element that weighed heavily in the Royals’ decision to use loaded tickets.“It’s a compelling part of the technology,” Tilson said. “The fact that it could pay for itself and ultimately lead to a legitimate revenue stream helped us make the decision to invest in the technology.”
In this recession, some teams don’t have the six-figure sum to pay for installing the software and hardware and back-of-house support. That’s the case at Minute Maid Park in Houston, said Bill Goren, the Astros’ director of ticket sales. “We would have to spend a lot of money [and] it’s not in the budget for this year,” Goren said.
The Royals spent $150,000 for their IMS system. In conjunction with Aramark, their new concessionaire, officials thought it made perfect sense to start promoting loaded tickets now that Kauffman Stadium’s two-year, $250 million renovation nears completion and they can make a fresh start with a redesigned seating bowl.
Stored-value tickets are also available in Kansas City for group sales, family four-pack promotions on Fridays and Sundays and single-game sales, available in increments as low as $5. There is no set limit on the number of tickets that can have value added, Tilson said.
The Royals sold a little more than 17,000 all-you-can-eat tickets in 2008, generating $455,000 in gross revenue. The common complaint among fans buying those tickets was a limited menu; loaded tickets now provide the opportunity for them to buy whatever they want, Tilson said.
“We are waiting to see the reaction of not having all-you-can-seat seats,” he said.
By DON MURET
Staff writer
The Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Indians will introduce stored-value tickets at their ballparks this season, bringing to eight the number of clubs that will have the technology in place on Opening Day.
Loaded tickets are a ballpark admission with credit to buy food, drink and merchandise loaded into the bar code and folded into the price of a ticket.
The Royals are benching their all-you-can-eat program in favor of loaded tickets in several parts of renovated Kauffman Stadium, including 190 seats in the Diamond Club boxes behind home plate.
Those $70 seats, available only as full-season tickets, include a $20 concessions credit, and were 75 percent sold as of last week, said Mark Tilson, the Royals’ vice president of marketing and ticket sales.
The Indians will roll out their program at Progressive Field to a small number of season-ticket holders, said spokesman Curtis Danburg. The team will expand the program to include groups and single-game tickets later in the season.In addition, the New York Mets plan to offer a combination of stored-value tickets and loyalty cards later in the season after making sure all systems work smoothly at Citi Field, their new billion-dollar ballpark, said Dave Howard, executive vice president of business operations.
The St. Louis Cardinals hope to sell loaded tickets at Busch Stadium, but nothing was firm as of last week, said Joe Strohm, vice president of ticket sales. The Arizona Diamondbacks will make a decision in February whether to offer stored-value tickets in 2009, spokesman Shaun Rachau said.
IMS, the software vendor supplying equipment to six MLB teams, has data dating to 2004, when the Philadelphia Phillies opened Citizens Bank Park and became the first club to use the concept. The information shows that fans holding loaded tickets spend 40 percent to 60 percent more on concessions than those without stored-value tickets, said Jeff Harvey, IMS’ vice president of sales.
The firm’s data also show that “breakage,” the industry term used to describe unused value on loaded tickets, can generate significant returns, averaging 36 percent, Harvey said. The Phillies’ breakage numbers are much smaller, according to John Weber, the team’s vice president of sales and ticket operations. The Phillies sold 90,000 “Power Tickets” containing a $10 credit, and breakage averaged 10 percent to 15 percent, Weber said.
In that case, breakage produced $90,000 to $135,000 in revenue, not including the park’s 350 Diamond Club seats with $30 in value. Still, it’s an element that weighed heavily in the Royals’ decision to use loaded tickets.“It’s a compelling part of the technology,” Tilson said. “The fact that it could pay for itself and ultimately lead to a legitimate revenue stream helped us make the decision to invest in the technology.”
In this recession, some teams don’t have the six-figure sum to pay for installing the software and hardware and back-of-house support. That’s the case at Minute Maid Park in Houston, said Bill Goren, the Astros’ director of ticket sales. “We would have to spend a lot of money [and] it’s not in the budget for this year,” Goren said.
The Royals spent $150,000 for their IMS system. In conjunction with Aramark, their new concessionaire, officials thought it made perfect sense to start promoting loaded tickets now that Kauffman Stadium’s two-year, $250 million renovation nears completion and they can make a fresh start with a redesigned seating bowl.
Stored-value tickets are also available in Kansas City for group sales, family four-pack promotions on Fridays and Sundays and single-game sales, available in increments as low as $5. There is no set limit on the number of tickets that can have value added, Tilson said.
The Royals sold a little more than 17,000 all-you-can-eat tickets in 2008, generating $455,000 in gross revenue. The common complaint among fans buying those tickets was a limited menu; loaded tickets now provide the opportunity for them to buy whatever they want, Tilson said.
“We are waiting to see the reaction of not having all-you-can-seat seats,” he said.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Ways to Buy Tickets are Changing
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
As published on KansasCity.com, The Fan's Eye
Buying tickets to Royals games is becoming similar to shopping on eBay or Craig’s List.
Go to the team’s website, royals.com, and you’ll find the team auctioning off tickets and also providing a place for private individuals to buy and sell tickets.
Gone are the days when teams only sold directly to customers at face ticket value and would never be go-betweens for private sales. The Royals, like other major league teams, are looking for more ways to make money. But these new methods also give fans access to otherwise unavailable seats.
Read more
As published on KansasCity.com, The Fan's Eye
Buying tickets to Royals games is becoming similar to shopping on eBay or Craig’s List.
Go to the team’s website, royals.com, and you’ll find the team auctioning off tickets and also providing a place for private individuals to buy and sell tickets.
Gone are the days when teams only sold directly to customers at face ticket value and would never be go-betweens for private sales. The Royals, like other major league teams, are looking for more ways to make money. But these new methods also give fans access to otherwise unavailable seats.
Read more
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