Fan engagement is key for sports and entertainment management | Advancing Business

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Anyone strolling the Oak Hill golf course in May of this year at the PGA Championship could not help but notice many people in the gallery were holding smartphones. But many of these fans are not merely taking or making calls. They are actively engaging in the sport by sharing observations with other fans, using apps to follow individual players and compare data, and going on social media for behind-the-scenes videos and interviews.

As Nancy Hensley writes in Forbes, “Many fans want to dive in deep when watching sports. They love chatting with friends and family about their favorite teams, dissecting certain plays and engaging with other fans around shared interests.”

Enhancing and improving the fan experience is at the heart of sports and entertainment management, a burgeoning area of business. Sports teams, entertainers, festivals and venue managers seek ways to connect with fans, learn their desires and engage with them before, during and after events.

Making and strengthening these connections has been especially important post-COVID.

Luke Mekker, Executive Director of University Arenas at RIT, who teaches a course with case studies in Sports Management for Saunders College, indicates that  “COVID ruined exactly what sports and entertainment management does, which is to get a lot of people into a small space to be entertained,” he told me.  “Now we’re trying to come back from that. There are a lot of other options for entertainment, on television or streamed online, as opposed to attending a relatively expensive event like a Bills game.”

Often building these fan connections means sifting through reams of data.

I reached out to an RIT MBA alum Ken Radzyminski, Manager of Analytics for the National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers, to get his take: “We collect data on fans in order to tailor our products and services to them,” says Radzyminski. “For those who come to our facility we’re trying to create an experience for them so they’ll want to come again. For others watching on TV or online, we also want to create a digital community so they can be involved even though they can’t be there at the physical game. We even have fans from Australia, Europe, and Brazil.”

The Analytics group gathers Cavaliers fan data in multiple ways to improve the fan experience in the arena and online. Following games, they send out surveys via email to those who have bought tickets. During events, they gather information from fans who enter the field house and log on to the WiFi system for real-time feedback. They are able to track individuals’ behavior including where they go in the arena and what they purchase. Using these data, they can make changes to improve the fan experience. Says Radzyminski, “We can improve management of ticket scanning areas and concession locations to assist in wayfinding efficiency.”

Radzyminski and his group also seek out online communities that are engaged with their team, say on Facebook or TikTok. Then they can post to that forum. “We have a digital strategy team that creates content and manages all of our digital platforms,” he says.

Those working in Sports and Entertainment Management are especially eager to engage with fans on social media.

“From live-filming games to sharing memes and trash-talking,” writes the author of the Greenfly Blog post, Social Media in Sports: Driving Fan Engagement, “people no longer just watch sports; they actively engage with them.”

Fans on social media have grown accustomed to — and have come to expect — content that goes beyond the basics: scores, highlights, stats.  In short, they want immersive “all-access content” that makes them feel as though they were in the arena when they cannot be.

“All-access content refers to short-form videos and photos captured specifically for digital channels,” according to the Greenfly blog. All-access creators “go anywhere — locker rooms, parking lots, dugouts and team benches — and reach beyond what broadcast cameras can pick up for fans at home. An all-access pass provides a VIP immersive experience through the eyes of the creator, and when fans see it, they feel like they’re capturing the scene through their own camera.”

“We use everything from TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter — we try to keep up with all of them,” says Michele Crawford Korn, Director of Arena Operations for the Blue Cross Arena here in Rochester. “We live Tweet games for those who can’t be here.”

“We have three people on our Marketing team who cover social media,” says Korn. “They post game stats, player stats, fun videos of the team to get to know the players themselves so fans can see the personal aspect. We have a very strong social media presence and I think our fans appreciate that — they like seeing it.”

That presence was especially crucial during COVID, when the Blue Cross Arena was empty of fans.

Korn recalls, “We spent a lot of time online checking in with season ticket holders, making sure they were still engaged with what was happening — we were still playing games.”

As with so many sectors of business these days, artificial intelligence (AI) is coming into play in Sports and Entertainment Management.

“Interest in AI is massive,” says Radzyminski.

Crucial to the fan experience, AI can call up and deliver information in an instant.

“Nothing engages a fan more than insights into their favorite team and player,” writes Hensley in Forbes. “The challenge is serving up those insights at scale at the right time. AI can help with key insights and visualizations. AI and machine learning can automatically detect formation patterns that could take humans hours to do, allowing sports broadcasters, analysts and fans to find the hidden story faster than ever.”

Sports and Entertainment Management is a wide-open, fast-growing field. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: “Overall employment in entertainment and sports occupations is projected to grow 13 percent from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations; this increase is expected to result in about 95,500 new jobs over the decade.”

Universities are responding with related academic programs. Saunders College is well positioned to enter this area, with our unique blend of marketing, analytics, events, hospitality, real estate and sports all at one college. In fact, we have recently added a minor in Sports, Events, and Entertainment Management.

The COVID years were devastating for sports and entertainment, but largely thanks to near constant fan engagement the future for Sports and Entertainment Management is bright.

“We’ve had a great bounce back,” says Korn. “Our schedules are filling up. People are comfortable coming back into the building.”

Jacqueline Mozrall is dean of Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology.