Cal Ticketing & Marketing Ideas: FINAL UPDATE

7,929 Views | 51 Replies | Last: 2 mo ago by movielover
berknolongerclaimusc82
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Truly appreciate your thorough work and insight here.
harebear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
eastcoastcal - thank you for your work here. Is there any opportunity for you or other like-minded students to continue to have contacts within the department? I find that organizations are sometimes slow to want to try new things, but if there is a friendly but persistent push into a certain direction they will ultimately sometimes relent.

Having the insights of students is extremely valuable so i would wonder if there could be an ongoing group of student consultants of some kind for the department to interact with, bounce-ideas off of, etc. Some of the academic departments on campus do this with their peer advisors etc.
89Bear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
eastcoastcal said:

Hi everyone hope you had a great Big Game weekend! My furd friends have been pretty silent over the past 24 hours... must be some cell service issues over in Palo Alto

Seemed that enough folks wanted a little wrap-up update on the marketing/ticketing/gameday project that the club I'm a part of was contracted to do with Cal Athletics, so I figured I could summarize a bunch of stuff here.

This past week we presented our final deliverable to the folks in the department. My friend @lucasst33 was part of the group too (see how I'm slowly building a base of students on this site!? Soon all you alums will be sick of us...) and it was a great experience to interact with the ADs office and see how operations are run.

Here are a few facets of what we discovered:

Demographic Outreach:
There were three target demographics in particular that we wanted Cal FB to really go after that were being undertargeted- Bay Area youth, young alums, and east bay football fans (raiders).

For the youth in the bay area (namely elementary school, middle school, and pop warner football), the truth is that Cal doesn't do enough outreach in these areas. We have to be giving away more tickets here. AD Knowlton's reservation in this regard was devaluing the perceived value of a Cal football ticket, but let me tell you why this is misguided: These non-Cal-affiliated kids are not coming to games anyways. There is currently no attachment or reason why they would take the initiative to come to Cal games on their own free will. The only way to attract this demographic is frankly, free handouts. Realistically, given that we don't sell out on most given games, making ROI on concessions & merch purchased is better than letting the seats go unsold and this key demographic go untargeted. Additionally, as many posters can rationally surmise, getting kids to games means that there have to be accompanying adults, coaches, and teammates- no 7 year old kid is going to Memorial alone. As a result targeting a Pop Warner package or outreach to elementary/middle schools (permissible by NCAA regulations as it is below age threshold for recruiting violations) would bring a great benefit. Unfortunately the free tickets were generally a no-go for suggestions per our person of contact in the department.

Young alumni are a massively important demographic for a few reasons. Firstly, Cal alums are generally wealthy (as compared to national & regional median figures), there is a great volume of alumni (one of the largest active alumni bases in the country), and many of our alums, especially young ones, are heavily congregated in the bay area. Should be geographically feasible to get the folks from SF, Oakland, etc. to come to games. Pricing isn't the issue here- our packages are fairly affordable especially compared to other entertainment options in the Bay. Issue is a) outreach (virtually none done by AD) and b) lack of enticing tangential sweeteners. Outreach issue is that when we probed the marketing guys about their efforts to entice alums, specifically in SF, it turned out to be the case that effectively none was done: updating the price of the special young alumni package on calbears and making a brief announcement to the alumni chapter is not enough. In fact upon surveying young alums at the Oregon game festivities, many were unaware that such a package existed. Beyond outreach, a few changes/additions need to be made to the package: Recommend adding small discount on drinks at game; access to a young alumni pre-game beer garden; "party shuttles" from SF; offer to host club reunions and socials at Memorial. A few of these recs are somewhat capital-intensive, namely the shuttle, but the ROI is worth it- Cal has to develop an alumni donation pipeline and as several posters here have suggested, the donor base has very few younger alums. There is a serious risk of having a generational gap in donor enthusiasm. This is a great way to reestablish the pipeline.

The last couple paragraphs were a bit long so I'll try and make the east bay football demographic explanation short, it's fairly easy to understand anyways: Raiders left somewhat of a market void. There are hundreds of thousands of raiders fans who now have no weekend football tailgating/in-stadium experience. These are fans known for their passion and rabid fanaticism. Getting them to games is instrumental in making Memorial more rowdy and exciting. Great news: there are already organized groups of Raiders fans that collectively tailgate, go to games, watch party, etc. You don't have to do individual market outreach here, you can literally reach out to a section leader, tell the leader that Cal is going to designate a section of Memorial for Raiders fans for an upcoming game, free tickets to everyone in your fan group, wear black and silver. I mean we can even sweeten it by getting Desean or Marshawn or Garbers to show up for a quarter. Point being is these are fans who love football, don't have the weekend gameday experience anymore, live in close proximity, are already organized into several fan groups, and are electric supporters.

Stadium Zones
Will briefly skim over this since it's not that substantive and involves more high-level factors but Q/QQ need to sell better and most of the suggestions for club level seating are more on the experience side rather than price threshold. Consider looking into a general access ticketing model instead of assigned seating.

Competitor Analysis
DId a lot of competitor analysis, mostly on Pac-12 teams. It's fairly involved and I don't know if anyone here is that interested in it but we explored a lot of what Oregon, UW, UCLA, Furd, USC, and a couple out-of-conference programs do right and wrong. It's long so happy to explain if anyone wants but I'll skip it for now.

Survey
We did surveys throughout the week leading up to the Oregon game and during the Oregon game. This is where we really hammered the recommendations made on this site as well as responses garnered in our survey to the folks in the department.

Firstly, YES we absolutely hammered the importance of maintaining traditions. If the folks in the AD office didn't get it by the end of the presentation then there is no hope because this was absolutely one of the central points we tried to convey. Explained the importance of the band, how statistically per our survey data, nothing even comes close to being as popular as the band and traditions are for most alums.

I will make a side note here- we also brought up the idea of the sound system issues and piped-in stuff... I think it is a sore topic of discussion because we were told to deemphasize it and that many of the ppl in the department were a little sick of hearing about it and they understood people were unhappy. Take that as you will.

Suggested having a traditions seminar, having old yell leaders and knowledgeable alums come in and pass down their suggestions and expertise.

Food was another big survey response- lines for concessions are being looked at by the actual catering folks. Food options are another story: This is maybe one frustration I had with the AD people, seems like nobody has the knowledge of what the actual contractual obligations are on Cal's end? Are food trucks permitted on premeses? Is contractual exclusivity in play? Can Maxwell field be exempted? Still no answers from AD. Wish I could tell you if there could be more/better options but a concrete improvement could be doing what Cal baseball did for a game last spring- have a local Berkeley restaurant cater for a game. This could be a club-level perk or a Maxwell field tailgate perk.

Gameday
Gotta get Greeks to the game. Too many frat/sorority kids staying at the houses. Suggested halftime activities like flag football or other competitions between the organizations to both encourage them to come early as well as get more greek life kids to show up. Another suggestion made on here was to get shuttles (would be very short drives) to get kids who don't want to walk to the stadium after drinking.

More interactive stations (selfie stations for students to post on social media) and games for kids were suggested.

Giveaways, especially t-shirts, seem to be very popular.

We also mentioned the commercialization/random jumbotron games as fairly unpopular. Not sure where that leaves Cal as I doubt the department would part with the (however meager) amounts of revenue that brings in but it was at least brought up.

Re: tailgating- Honestly I don't know how much the folks in the department understand the lack of tailgating options impacts fans. The belief seemed to be that Maxwell was enough and that due to on-campus options being restricted by the university, no further exploration was warranted. Our team really did try and convey the importance of fostering tailgating culture as part of a proper power-5 program.

We wrapped up with a short term and long term vision for the program and synthesized our findings and recommendations.

Overall Thoughts
I think I've mentioned this before but to be honest, I and the rest of the team at points expressed how underwhelming some of the contacts in the department are. Seriously, not to be disrespectful at all, it's just not a particularly creative or engaging group who are willing to press hard on Cal market advantages or try out-of-the-box ideas. At the end of our presentation we had a part where we talked about how Cal actually has some really great things going and how if properly capitalized on, could really push Cal upwards: Wealthy and large alumni base, great corporate connections, beautiful stadium & setting, fantastic weather, market void left by raiders/warriors to SF/A's looking to Vegas/Stanford non competitive and not popular, etc. I think one of the problems is that there are barely any Cal grads (at least that we interacted with) in the department. A lot of them don't know what it's like to be a student here, what the traditions are, what the culture and aesthetic is like in Berkeley- and as a result are very dull and unimaginative in their work. Just my 2 cents.

Overall a great experience though. Enjoyed getting to learn how an athletics department works and had a blast working on the project. I hope this was somewhat informative and the post leaves out a ton of more granular suggestions and recs we gave- I promise our deliverable was far more encompassing and impactful than what I just summarized.

Have a great end to your weekend and Go Bears!
What an impressive group you are!!! Thank you for your work!
HoopDreams
How long do you want to ignore this user?
sounds like your group did an amazing and valuable job

and thanks for the report

will they give you any updates what suggestions are implemented?

(by the way, there were 3 food trucks at the Big Game. not sure if that was from your suggestions)

would love to hear about your research of what other schools do!
CalBearPete
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Lots of thoughtful ideas; bring on more. The AD should hire all of you.
Calcheermom
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thank you for all of your hard work. Very impressed! Would love to hear more about what other schools are doing and/or how they contend with similar challenges.
calfan347
How long do you want to ignore this user?
northendbear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
I don't know whether to thank you for your efforts, insight, and summary here or to pour myself a double Balvenie.

I think I will do both.
HoopDreams
How long do you want to ignore this user?
lucasst33 said:

Such a great and rewarding experience working with @eastcoastcal on this project. What a win this past weekend, hopefully this momentum carries over into next season! Go Bears!
and lucas thanks for your involvement in this project. great to see students get involved in Cal sports marketing.

have you interviewed/discussed with students what would get them to attend games too?
SBGold
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Great insights, TY

I for one would be interested in the competitor analysis piece
drizzlybear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thanks for your work on this important project and posting your summary. Do you have any insights into how the incredible crowd for Big Game came to be? It seems that everyone in this site, even the mods and donors, are all perplexed as to how it happened. Such a mystery! Any thoughts?
CannonBlast
How long do you want to ignore this user?
When I was a student athletic marketing intern back at the turn of the century, many people in the Cal athletic department graduated or were working toward a masters in sports management at USF. Not sure if most of the folks that work in the AD come from some type of sports management program but I found that the things they learn at these programs are very formulaic and mechanical. I don't want to over generalize but I guess I am. If not USF, they are all from the same handful of sports management programs from across the country, and I guess similar to some other industries, is a relatively small world where friends, acquaintances, classmates, or fellow program alums hire one another.

You get the same unimaginative crap across all of college sports. An example is Learfield. Yeah, it's convenient and can cut down costs on AD overhead, but for an organization with a multi-million dollar budget, is that the right move to garner the best marketing, media or promotional opportunities? Do pro teams hire companies like Learfield (I'm actually asking, I have no idea).

Another is this weird notion that giving away free tickets cheapens the value of a Cal football ticket. If JK really thinks that, that's just another big fat strike against him. I guess we'll added it to his growing list of transgressions.

This backwards mentality is no different then when televised MLB baseball games became a thing and the owners at the time started to freak out that no one would attend games because you were basically giving it away for free. Why pay to go to games when you can watch it at home for free! News flash, that is not what happened. It did the opposite.

Your work on this project is impressive and inspiring. It is smart and solution-oriented. They could have hired a high-priced consulting firm and I don't know that they would have come up with a fraction of these ideas. Perhaps JK would only have the right comfort level with high-priced consultants and not smart and energetic students in his own backyard. Sorry...had to include that M bball dig in there.

I don't post much but I really appreciated the work you and your fellow students did here and I wanted to take the time to respond (I also wanted to vent). :-)
coachdeke
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Great stuff…The Greek system started staying home when students were made breathylize for alcohol and would be ticketed for underage drinking or public drunkenness. Believe or not the campus used federal grant money to do this. I asked Knowlton if they were still doing this and he was clueless.
4 years ago or so they restricted access to the stadium northbound on Piedmont av at Channing, forcing anyone using the stadium lot to go around campus and not allowing fraternities to sell parking-several hundred spaces.
These things need to be fixed asap!!!
There's grounds on campus; for example, South Field that could be set up for a tailgate experience or even parking.
BeachedBear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
eastcoastcal said:

We have to be giving away more tickets here. AD Knowlton's reservation in this regard was devaluing the perceived value of a Cal football ticket,

Young alumni are a massively important demographic for a few reasons.

If the folks in the AD office didn't get it by the end of the presentation then there is no hope because this was absolutely one of the central points we tried to convey.


Suggested having a traditions seminar, having old yell leaders and knowledgeable alums come in and pass down their suggestions and expertise.

seems like nobody has the knowledge of what the actual contractual obligations are on Cal's end?

We also mentioned the commercialization/random jumbotron games as fairly unpopular. Not sure where that leaves Cal as I doubt the department would part with the (however meager) amounts of revenue that brings in but it was at least brought up.

Re: tailgating- Honestly I don't know how much the folks in the department understand the lack of tailgating options impacts fans.

it's just not a particularly creative or engaging group who are willing to press hard on Cal market advantages or try out-of-the-box ideas.

I think one of the problems is that there are barely any Cal grads (at least that we interacted with) in the department. .



Thanks for this. I've isolated and bolded the pithiest sections that haven't changed much in waaaay too long.
jsherr
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thanks you for your report. Great work. Highlights what we all know, we are clueless when it comes to the basics stuff. The feeling I get, which you also highlighted, is they somehow think they are doing a good job. Oye.

I think they honored, Flo, at Big Game. She is in charge of the stadium for the past 20 years. Honoring here was not what I was thinking. Total disconnect with what is happening, what should be happening and what athletics thinks of themselves.

We were at the donor tailgate before the game on Maxwell Field, Stood in line to get a beer and the guy says that the free beer is gone but you can purchase. Oh my.

That said, glad we have the axe. Go Bears!
Jason Sherr
jsherr@calalum.org
SturdyGolden
How long do you want to ignore this user?
coachdeke said:

Great stuff…The Greek system started staying home when students were made breathylize for alcohol and would be ticketed for underage drinking or public drunkenness. Believe or not the campus used federal grant money to do this. I asked Knowlton if they were still doing this and he was clueless.
4 years ago or so they restricted access to the stadium northbound on Piedmont av at Channing, forcing anyone using the stadium lot to go around campus and not allowing fraternities to sell parking-several hundred spaces.
These things need to be fixed asap!!!
There's grounds on campus; for example, South Field that could be set up for a tailgate experience or even parking.
These are all excellent ideas that should/could be executed immediately!
PalyBear
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thanks for the hard work and report.

Curious to know if there was any research into parking solutions. I found a reliable parking solution but for the casual fan parking is a stressful barrier to attending games.
91Cal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Thank you for the project, @eastcoastcal & @lucasst33! Disappointing to read that the engagement was less than engaging...ugh.

iirc, there were ticket giveaways to local elementary schools combined with inexpensive family plans in the early Tedford years that brought in a ton of new fans, including young families looking for an inexpensive day of entertainment. Each game had a welcome to a couple of schools at a break with a message on the (little) big screen.

But that's not the subject of this message...

This is a suggestion from a friend who is a big Boston College alum/donor who related that they had a tough time getting fans into the stadium for kickoff. The product fielded has been similarly mediocre to Cal, but they are now near the sold attendance at every kickoff because they started selling any beer bought before kickoff at half price and they promoted the heck out of it...they bumped up the price a little and stop selling at the start of the 3rd quarter, which has had the effect of getting fans in the game less drunk than if they were pounding beer/taking shots at tailgates and the consumption during the game slowed because the beer was twice as much as they had just paid (limit two per person) AND most had just had two full beers and weren't buying two more.

I passed along the suggestion to my contact in IA who said he'd pass it along...I'm curious as to whether anything like that came up in discussion.
wifeisafurd
How long do you want to ignore this user?
coachdeke said:

Great stuff…The Greek system started staying home when students were made breathylize for alcohol and would be ticketed for underage drinking or public drunkenness. Believe or not the campus used federal grant money to do this. I asked Knowlton if they were still doing this and he was clueless.
4 years ago or so they restricted access to the stadium northbound on Piedmont av at Channing, forcing anyone using the stadium lot to go around campus and not allowing fraternities to sell parking-several hundred spaces.
These things need to be fixed asap!!!
There's grounds on campus; for example, South Field that could be set up for a tailgate experience or even parking.
they no longer breathylize
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
berkusc82 said:

Truly appreciate your thorough work and insight here.
Thanks so much for the kind comment!
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
harebear said:

eastcoastcal - thank you for your work here. Is there any opportunity for you or other like-minded students to continue to have contacts within the department? I find that organizations are sometimes slow to want to try new things, but if there is a friendly but persistent push into a certain direction they will ultimately sometimes relent.

Having the insights of students is extremely valuable so i would wonder if there could be an ongoing group of student consultants of some kind for the department to interact with, bounce-ideas off of, etc. Some of the academic departments on campus do this with their peer advisors etc.
Hey harebear, thanks for the nice comment. They were actively looking for student volunteers and asked if anyone in our group or anyone we know was interested. Will definitely keep in contact with them & I think it would be great to get a consistent student presence. Would like to see them meet with the IFC and establish a good pipeline of getting the Greek kids to games. Would be a great start. Thanks again for the kind comment!
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
89Bear said:

eastcoastcal said:

Hi everyone hope you had a great Big Game weekend! My furd friends have been pretty silent over the past 24 hours... must be some cell service issues over in Palo Alto

Seemed that enough folks wanted a little wrap-up update on the marketing/ticketing/gameday project that the club I'm a part of was contracted to do with Cal Athletics, so I figured I could summarize a bunch of stuff here.

This past week we presented our final deliverable to the folks in the department. My friend @lucasst33 was part of the group too (see how I'm slowly building a base of students on this site!? Soon all you alums will be sick of us...) and it was a great experience to interact with the ADs office and see how operations are run.

Here are a few facets of what we discovered:

Demographic Outreach:
There were three target demographics in particular that we wanted Cal FB to really go after that were being undertargeted- Bay Area youth, young alums, and east bay football fans (raiders).

For the youth in the bay area (namely elementary school, middle school, and pop warner football), the truth is that Cal doesn't do enough outreach in these areas. We have to be giving away more tickets here. AD Knowlton's reservation in this regard was devaluing the perceived value of a Cal football ticket, but let me tell you why this is misguided: These non-Cal-affiliated kids are not coming to games anyways. There is currently no attachment or reason why they would take the initiative to come to Cal games on their own free will. The only way to attract this demographic is frankly, free handouts. Realistically, given that we don't sell out on most given games, making ROI on concessions & merch purchased is better than letting the seats go unsold and this key demographic go untargeted. Additionally, as many posters can rationally surmise, getting kids to games means that there have to be accompanying adults, coaches, and teammates- no 7 year old kid is going to Memorial alone. As a result targeting a Pop Warner package or outreach to elementary/middle schools (permissible by NCAA regulations as it is below age threshold for recruiting violations) would bring a great benefit. Unfortunately the free tickets were generally a no-go for suggestions per our person of contact in the department.

Young alumni are a massively important demographic for a few reasons. Firstly, Cal alums are generally wealthy (as compared to national & regional median figures), there is a great volume of alumni (one of the largest active alumni bases in the country), and many of our alums, especially young ones, are heavily congregated in the bay area. Should be geographically feasible to get the folks from SF, Oakland, etc. to come to games. Pricing isn't the issue here- our packages are fairly affordable especially compared to other entertainment options in the Bay. Issue is a) outreach (virtually none done by AD) and b) lack of enticing tangential sweeteners. Outreach issue is that when we probed the marketing guys about their efforts to entice alums, specifically in SF, it turned out to be the case that effectively none was done: updating the price of the special young alumni package on calbears and making a brief announcement to the alumni chapter is not enough. In fact upon surveying young alums at the Oregon game festivities, many were unaware that such a package existed. Beyond outreach, a few changes/additions need to be made to the package: Recommend adding small discount on drinks at game; access to a young alumni pre-game beer garden; "party shuttles" from SF; offer to host club reunions and socials at Memorial. A few of these recs are somewhat capital-intensive, namely the shuttle, but the ROI is worth it- Cal has to develop an alumni donation pipeline and as several posters here have suggested, the donor base has very few younger alums. There is a serious risk of having a generational gap in donor enthusiasm. This is a great way to reestablish the pipeline.

The last couple paragraphs were a bit long so I'll try and make the east bay football demographic explanation short, it's fairly easy to understand anyways: Raiders left somewhat of a market void. There are hundreds of thousands of raiders fans who now have no weekend football tailgating/in-stadium experience. These are fans known for their passion and rabid fanaticism. Getting them to games is instrumental in making Memorial more rowdy and exciting. Great news: there are already organized groups of Raiders fans that collectively tailgate, go to games, watch party, etc. You don't have to do individual market outreach here, you can literally reach out to a section leader, tell the leader that Cal is going to designate a section of Memorial for Raiders fans for an upcoming game, free tickets to everyone in your fan group, wear black and silver. I mean we can even sweeten it by getting Desean or Marshawn or Garbers to show up for a quarter. Point being is these are fans who love football, don't have the weekend gameday experience anymore, live in close proximity, are already organized into several fan groups, and are electric supporters.

Stadium Zones
Will briefly skim over this since it's not that substantive and involves more high-level factors but Q/QQ need to sell better and most of the suggestions for club level seating are more on the experience side rather than price threshold. Consider looking into a general access ticketing model instead of assigned seating.

Competitor Analysis
DId a lot of competitor analysis, mostly on Pac-12 teams. It's fairly involved and I don't know if anyone here is that interested in it but we explored a lot of what Oregon, UW, UCLA, Furd, USC, and a couple out-of-conference programs do right and wrong. It's long so happy to explain if anyone wants but I'll skip it for now.

Survey
We did surveys throughout the week leading up to the Oregon game and during the Oregon game. This is where we really hammered the recommendations made on this site as well as responses garnered in our survey to the folks in the department.

Firstly, YES we absolutely hammered the importance of maintaining traditions. If the folks in the AD office didn't get it by the end of the presentation then there is no hope because this was absolutely one of the central points we tried to convey. Explained the importance of the band, how statistically per our survey data, nothing even comes close to being as popular as the band and traditions are for most alums.

I will make a side note here- we also brought up the idea of the sound system issues and piped-in stuff... I think it is a sore topic of discussion because we were told to deemphasize it and that many of the ppl in the department were a little sick of hearing about it and they understood people were unhappy. Take that as you will.

Suggested having a traditions seminar, having old yell leaders and knowledgeable alums come in and pass down their suggestions and expertise.

Food was another big survey response- lines for concessions are being looked at by the actual catering folks. Food options are another story: This is maybe one frustration I had with the AD people, seems like nobody has the knowledge of what the actual contractual obligations are on Cal's end? Are food trucks permitted on premeses? Is contractual exclusivity in play? Can Maxwell field be exempted? Still no answers from AD. Wish I could tell you if there could be more/better options but a concrete improvement could be doing what Cal baseball did for a game last spring- have a local Berkeley restaurant cater for a game. This could be a club-level perk or a Maxwell field tailgate perk.

Gameday
Gotta get Greeks to the game. Too many frat/sorority kids staying at the houses. Suggested halftime activities like flag football or other competitions between the organizations to both encourage them to come early as well as get more greek life kids to show up. Another suggestion made on here was to get shuttles (would be very short drives) to get kids who don't want to walk to the stadium after drinking.

More interactive stations (selfie stations for students to post on social media) and games for kids were suggested.

Giveaways, especially t-shirts, seem to be very popular.

We also mentioned the commercialization/random jumbotron games as fairly unpopular. Not sure where that leaves Cal as I doubt the department would part with the (however meager) amounts of revenue that brings in but it was at least brought up.

Re: tailgating- Honestly I don't know how much the folks in the department understand the lack of tailgating options impacts fans. The belief seemed to be that Maxwell was enough and that due to on-campus options being restricted by the university, no further exploration was warranted. Our team really did try and convey the importance of fostering tailgating culture as part of a proper power-5 program.

We wrapped up with a short term and long term vision for the program and synthesized our findings and recommendations.

Overall Thoughts
I think I've mentioned this before but to be honest, I and the rest of the team at points expressed how underwhelming some of the contacts in the department are. Seriously, not to be disrespectful at all, it's just not a particularly creative or engaging group who are willing to press hard on Cal market advantages or try out-of-the-box ideas. At the end of our presentation we had a part where we talked about how Cal actually has some really great things going and how if properly capitalized on, could really push Cal upwards: Wealthy and large alumni base, great corporate connections, beautiful stadium & setting, fantastic weather, market void left by raiders/warriors to SF/A's looking to Vegas/Stanford non competitive and not popular, etc. I think one of the problems is that there are barely any Cal grads (at least that we interacted with) in the department. A lot of them don't know what it's like to be a student here, what the traditions are, what the culture and aesthetic is like in Berkeley- and as a result are very dull and unimaginative in their work. Just my 2 cents.

Overall a great experience though. Enjoyed getting to learn how an athletics department works and had a blast working on the project. I hope this was somewhat informative and the post leaves out a ton of more granular suggestions and recs we gave- I promise our deliverable was far more encompassing and impactful than what I just summarized.

Have a great end to your weekend and Go Bears!
What an impressive group you are!!! Thank you for your work!
Thanks 89bear, really appreciate it
wifeisafurd
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Good stuff EC (we got get you a nick name or initials).

I would be interested in what you guys viewed as happening in other Pac venues. The only ones we have not been to are the two Oregons. We were most impressed by Utah's student and young alum stuff (though copying the chants about BYU coeds may not be portable to Cal).


eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
HoopDreams said:

sounds like your group did an amazing and valuable job

and thanks for the report

will they give you any updates what suggestions are implemented?

(by the way, there were 3 food trucks at the Big Game. not sure if that was from your suggestions)

would love to hear about your research of what other schools do!
Their feedback after our presentation was very positive. We had a specific section on 'short-term' implementations which were aimed at quick, low-cost implementations that could be enacted for the Stanford & UCLA games this season. Then later we gave more long-term solutions aimed at the next 3ish seasons and beyond.

Hope the food trucks were enjoyable, we specifically suggested food trucks & expanded options at Maxwell Field but unsure if these specific trucks were preplanned or a result of our suggestions. In any case it's good news because it means contractually they should be permitted beyond just the Stanford game. We were really clear that expanded food options were very popular among poll respondants.

Will put the competitor analysis in another reply below! Thanks for your nice comments
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
CalBearPete said:

Lots of thoughtful ideas; bring on more. The AD should hire all of you.
Thanks CBP! I'd be happy to take Knowlton's salary in exchange for being hired...in fact how about a discount. I'll work for just 900k.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
Calcheermom said:

Thank you for all of your hard work. Very impressed! Would love to hear more about what other schools are doing and/or how they contend with similar challenges.
Thanks so much for the very kind comment! I hope you were able to enjoy the cheer and dance and I absolutely will post some of the competitor analysis in a reply shortly.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
northendbear said:

I don't know whether to thank you for your efforts, insight, and summary here or to pour myself a double Balvenie.

I think I will do both.
Hahaha thanks northendbear really appreciate it. Enjoy your drink
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
HoopDreams said:

lucasst33 said:

Such a great and rewarding experience working with @eastcoastcal on this project. What a win this past weekend, hopefully this momentum carries over into next season! Go Bears!
and lucas thanks for your involvement in this project. great to see students get involved in Cal sports marketing.

have you interviewed/discussed with students what would get them to attend games too?
Not lucas but we did interview students, and really can be summarized into two things: 1) win more, which obviously isn't controllable from a ticketing/marketing standpoint and 2) Gameday experience has to improve. Experiences like the stanford game really help. Tailgating is HUGE and is much more present at a lot of our fellow conference members' festivities.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
SBGold said:

Great insights, TY

I for one would be interested in the competitor analysis piece
Thank you SBGold for the nice comment and will definitely follow up shortly & expound upon the competitor analysis component
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
drizzlybear said:

Thanks for your work on this important project and posting your summary. Do you have any insights into how the incredible crowd for Big Game came to be? It seems that everyone in this site, even the mods and donors, are all perplexed as to how it happened. Such a mystery! Any thoughts?
Hey drizzly, thanks for the lovely comment. Wish I could pinpoint exactly what it was but culmination of a few things: First Big Game with fans at memorial since 2018, similarly matched opponents, 125th anniversary, Starkey, 40th anniversary of The Play.

Was really, really great to sell out and have an electric win. Does so much for enticing fans to come back. More than that it really gives hope that when this team becomes good, there are enough people out there who care and will come under the right circumstances.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
CannonBlast said:

When I was a student athletic marketing intern back at the turn of the century, many people in the Cal athletic department graduated or were working toward a masters in sports management at USF. Not sure if most of the folks that work in the AD come from some type of sports management program but I found that the things they learn at these programs are very formulaic and mechanical. I don't want to over generalize but I guess I am. If not USF, they are all from the same handful of sports management programs from across the country, and I guess similar to some other industries, is a relatively small world where friends, acquaintances, classmates, or fellow program alums hire one another.

You get the same unimaginative crap across all of college sports. An example is Learfield. Yeah, it's convenient and can cut down costs on AD overhead, but for an organization with a multi-million dollar budget, is that the right move to garner the best marketing, media or promotional opportunities? Do pro teams hire companies like Learfield (I'm actually asking, I have no idea).

Another is this weird notion that giving away free tickets cheapens the value of a Cal football ticket. If JK really thinks that, that's just another big fat strike against him. I guess we'll added it to his growing list of transgressions.

This backwards mentality is no different then when televised MLB baseball games became a thing and the owners at the time started to freak out that no one would attend games because you were basically giving it away for free. Why pay to go to games when you can watch it at home for free! News flash, that is not what happened. It did the opposite.

Your work on this project is impressive and inspiring. It is smart and solution-oriented. They could have hired a high-priced consulting firm and I don't know that they would have come up with a fraction of these ideas. Perhaps JK would only have the right comfort level with high-priced consultants and not smart and energetic students in his own backyard. Sorry...had to include that M bball dig in there.

I don't post much but I really appreciated the work you and your fellow students did here and I wanted to take the time to respond (I also wanted to vent). :-)
Thanks so much for the kind comment CB. Agreed on a lot of facets of what you said & you are correct- lot of MBA/Sports Management folks from non-cal backgrounds. Will add another reason why this is problematic: these people tend to see Cal as all negatives/hurdles; all aspects of what make us unique are pitfalls to them. I personally think that if someone is to be a "marketer" of Cal, aka be someone trying to curate an experience to get Cal fans to games, how can you internally view Cal/Berkeley as a detractor? It will inevitably show up in their work. Just my 2 cents. Thanks again for the comment
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
coachdeke said:

Great stuff…The Greek system started staying home when students were made breathylize for alcohol and would be ticketed for underage drinking or public drunkenness. Believe or not the campus used federal grant money to do this. I asked Knowlton if they were still doing this and he was clueless.
4 years ago or so they restricted access to the stadium northbound on Piedmont av at Channing, forcing anyone using the stadium lot to go around campus and not allowing fraternities to sell parking-several hundred spaces.
These things need to be fixed asap!!!
There's grounds on campus; for example, South Field that could be set up for a tailgate experience or even parking.
Thanks for the nice comment Coach and really appreciate your insight. Your experience & knowledge are awesome and this is a very interesting illustration of misguided efforts. Really, they should've gone the other way imo- have drinks available for (of age) Greek kids at the game so they're encouraged to come to the game earlier, they can drink in a more supervised environment rather than show up to the game wrecked, etc. There is a great technological solution for this too (have to think about this in a CS way haha) where scanning the student ID could keep track of how many drinks purchased & thus avoid excess drinking.

The piedmont path is also important. Thanks again for your reply
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
BeachedBear said:

eastcoastcal said:

We have to be giving away more tickets here. AD Knowlton's reservation in this regard was devaluing the perceived value of a Cal football ticket,

Young alumni are a massively important demographic for a few reasons.

If the folks in the AD office didn't get it by the end of the presentation then there is no hope because this was absolutely one of the central points we tried to convey.


Suggested having a traditions seminar, having old yell leaders and knowledgeable alums come in and pass down their suggestions and expertise.

seems like nobody has the knowledge of what the actual contractual obligations are on Cal's end?

We also mentioned the commercialization/random jumbotron games as fairly unpopular. Not sure where that leaves Cal as I doubt the department would part with the (however meager) amounts of revenue that brings in but it was at least brought up.

Re: tailgating- Honestly I don't know how much the folks in the department understand the lack of tailgating options impacts fans.

it's just not a particularly creative or engaging group who are willing to press hard on Cal market advantages or try out-of-the-box ideas.

I think one of the problems is that there are barely any Cal grads (at least that we interacted with) in the department. .



Thanks for this. I've isolated and bolded the pithiest sections that haven't changed much in waaaay too long.
Thanks BB appreciate the kind comment & appreciate the context on what's been wrong for too long.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
jsherr said:

Thanks you for your report. Great work. Highlights what we all know, we are clueless when it comes to the basics stuff. The feeling I get, which you also highlighted, is they somehow think they are doing a good job. Oye.

I think they honored, Flo, at Big Game. She is in charge of the stadium for the past 20 years. Honoring here was not what I was thinking. Total disconnect with what is happening, what should be happening and what athletics thinks of themselves.

We were at the donor tailgate before the game on Maxwell Field, Stood in line to get a beer and the guy says that the free beer is gone but you can purchase. Oh my.

That said, glad we have the axe. Go Bears!
Thanks for the nice comment Mr. Sherr and very sorry to hear about Maxwell field. You wouldn't believe how much of a problem the food/drink options are at Maxwell, I personally surveyed the tailgate & almost every response mentioned it. There is more than enough space to set up food booths or even have local restaurants cater. We explicitly mentioned this in our presentation. Hope it changes and improves next year.
eastcoastcal
How long do you want to ignore this user?
senorbeta said:

coachdeke said:

Great stuff…The Greek system started staying home when students were made breathylize for alcohol and would be ticketed for underage drinking or public drunkenness. Believe or not the campus used federal grant money to do this. I asked Knowlton if they were still doing this and he was clueless.
4 years ago or so they restricted access to the stadium northbound on Piedmont av at Channing, forcing anyone using the stadium lot to go around campus and not allowing fraternities to sell parking-several hundred spaces.
These things need to be fixed asap!!!
There's grounds on campus; for example, South Field that could be set up for a tailgate experience or even parking.
These are all excellent ideas that should/could be executed immediately!
Agreed with you senorbeta & your comments from prior PM were corresponded in the presentation
Page 1 of 2
 
×
subscribe Verify your student status
See Subscription Benefits
Trial only available to users who have never subscribed or participated in a previous trial.