While writing about SeatGeek’s new Parties feature, I kept thinking about one of the worst event experiences I’ve ever had.
My wife and I went to a concert last year, featuring her favorite band in a college amphitheater. First, we had to walk through a dark, wooded path from where we parked to the concert space, which I swear felt like a half-mile march. The rain did not help. We showed up to a muddied entry point that nearly destroyed our shoes. Most of the flat lawn seats were spoken for by the time we arrived. We ultimately settled on a steep hill, fighting the push of gravity for the next two-plus hours.
That experience, funny enough, featured a failed ticket transfer, which left my wife and I scrambling to verify that she could in fact walk in (thank goodness our friend had an extra). That moment was the peak of my anxiety that night. So, I found it incredibly therapeutic to write about a solution to avoid these problems.
SeatGeek helping partners learn about fans in each group-ticketing buy
SeatGeek’s newest feature is Parties , an effort to make life easier for the fan who’s in charge of the family/friend group attending an event.
Here’s how it works: Users can become hosts and create a group through Parties, which then sends out an event invite link. The people in that group can either sign in or create SeatGeek accounts to claim their tickets. Should a person in the group need to cancel plans, the host can remove them from the group and send a new invite to someone who can make the event.
The key is that a fan with multiple tickets never loses ownership of said tickets, removing the potential transfer headache before it starts. That value for SeatGeek users is matched in its benefit for partners: the injection of new fan data.
Russ D’Souza, SeatGeek’s co-founder and president of supply, highlighted that the unknown fan is still a major pain point for team and venue partners. SeatGeek research estimates that venues know about 40% of its attendees.
“The fastest way to the heart of any executive in the sports industry is telling them you’ll be able to help them identify more customers, because it’s this problem they are so frustrated by,” D’Souza told SBJ. “Because they have these amazing events they put on, and they see a fraction of people who scan at the event – compared to the airline industry, where the airlines know everybody.”
SeatGeek partners with sports teams that span the top five men’s leagues in North America as well as the NWSL. It also has deals with the LPGA and the PGA of America. The Parties feature (which is now available) came out just in time for the September kickoff of NFL season. SeatGeek works with six NFL teams -- the Cardinals, Commanders, Cowboys, Ravens, Saints and Titans -- and also has a league-wide deal for secondary ticketing integration.
Victoria Ugarte is a senior product manager at SeatGeek, and she oversaw the creation of Parties. She said the function took more than a year to develop. The project began with initial research that showed the majority of SeatGeek users were not using the ticket-transfer function. But they also discovered that after the pandemic, more event attendees wanted ticket access because group members were often not showing up at the same time.
“We wanted something that was easy, that felt secure and allowed hosts to maintain control while giving our fans access to everything a ticket has to offer,” Ugarte said.
One ticket to rule them all
Having the information for the entire party boosts both the ingress into a venue -- one ticket scan per person is quicker than a single person scanning multiple tickets and clogging up the entrance -- and also comes with the security bonus of identifying information a team wouldn’t have otherwise known (i.e., a person who is scanned in by someone else, like the previously highlighted ingress example). SeatGeek account creation requires name and email address as the only required information.
The Parties feature prompted SeatGeek to create a new ticket access model, which is patent pending for the company, that could reflect who was attached to an individual ticket on the ticket operation side for partners while giving SeatGeek users the flexible to invite or remove different people from their group.
Ugarte said that SeatGeek put Parties through its own test environment to work through as many potential use cases as possible. There was also gradual experimentation with different functions of the feature, followed by beta testing with MLS team partners in May, which generated useful, on-the-ground feedback and proof of new fan data acquisition.
“It’s not a totally new problem,” D’Souza said. “But in the world of sports, where you’re putting all this money around a very small number of events and you want to make sure those buildings are as full as possible -- it's all expiring inventory -- there's a real desire to make sure that you capture that fan data to build up the future generation of your sports fan.”
Why ScorePlay refreshed its branding
Digital asset management platform ScorePlay has seen its customer base and offerings bloom during the last three years.
Originally founded as a content management tool in 2020, the New York-based ScorePlay now provides all-encompassing media infrastructure for team and league clients. ScorePlay has approximately 160 sports-related partners, which includes summer additions of the LPGA, Nets, UEFA and Roland Garros.
Because of the growth, ScorePlay CEO and co-founder Victorien Tixier said the company saw the need for an identity upgrade. It debuted this week with a new logo, typeface and website to go along with the addition of a fuchsia accent color to its branding.
“The rebrand was about more than just aesthetics,” Tixier said. “It was about redefining our identity to match the advanced solutions we now offer. We went from startup to established player, and that needed to be reflected.”
Tixier said that ScorePlay spoke with roughly 12 different agencies before finding Associate, a design services firm based in Brooklyn. Two Irish companies -- Post Studio and Estd -- produced the new website.
Keeping the name
While so much was updated, Tixier added that ScorePlay never considered a name change because of the value the moniker has in the sports industry.
“The reality is that once we conducted our customer interviews, we realized that the only part of our brand that was recognizable was our name -- that startup called ScorePlay, rather than that brand,” Tixier said.
He also shared that the company name came in somewhat random fashion. During one of their early brainstorming sessions, the founders decided they wanted to blend the essence of sports (Score) with the media management component (Play). That realization came while the group listened to a Coldplay song. It dawned on the founders to put those components together.
“The name just clicked,” Tixier said.
Speed reads
- Catapult created a new sideline video solution for the upcoming 2024 college football season, rolling out the new service with the SEC. The product got a boost after the NCAA Football Rules Committee permitted tablet use for in-game video replay earlier this year.
- My colleague Joe Lemire chronicles the crucial role athlete endorsements play in the adoption and growth of performance technologies such as Hyperice and Therabody -- and how it can lead to a partnership arms race.
- YouTube is rolling out several new features for its second year as the NFL’s "Sunday Ticket" provider, improving its multiview options, a new video player and fantasy football integration, reports my colleague Rob Schaefer.
- Lemire also writes about his experience with using AI-boosted biometric trackers such as Whoop and Oura when it comes to putting.
- FC Bayern Basketball made its installation of ASB GlassFloor’s LumiFlex LED court permanent at its home arena, BMW Park, as part of a deal that runs through 2030, writes Schaefer.