More Teams Gearing Up to Offer Option of Stored-Credit Tickets
from SportsBusinessJournal.com

By DON MURET
Staff writer
Published July 09, 2007

The Philadelphia Phillies’ “loaded ticket” has proved so successful that the club has expanded the program at Citizens Bank Park, and other teams are planning to adapt it at their own facilities.

The Phillies launched the loaded ticket, a ballpark admission with credit toward concessions and merchandise built into a bar code, when they opened their ballpark in 2004. Ticket holders for 350 Diamond Club seats behind home plate pay an extra $30 a seat and get $30 worth of stored value they can spend without reaching for their wallets. The club now has added 900 left-field seats to the program and eventually wants to include the entire park.

The Phillies declined to disclose per capita spending figures for loaded-ticket users, but Richard Deats, vice president of Phillies Enterprises, said, “We encourage them to use it, and 99.9 percent use the full value.”

When the Phillies and officials from concessionaire Aramark analyzed sales figures from the last three years, they found Diamond Club patrons with loaded tickets spent 60 percent to 70 percent more than those without the $30 credit, said account executive Rob Rae of IMS.

IMS sells the software to the Phillies that consolidates point-of-sale systems operating on separate platforms.

That technological challenge of getting multiple POS systems to work with loaded tickets has made teams cautious about following the Phillies’ lead. “Very few arenas and stadiums have one [universal] system,” Rae said.

“It’s a matter of getting the Chevy and Ford parts to talk to one another,” said Rick McLaughlin, the Texas Rangers’ executive vice president for business operations.

The investment isn’t cheap: The technology required to develop stored-value tickets can run six figures, Rae said. It also requires teamwork from the club, the concessionaire, the ticketing company and the tech provider.

However, interested in boosting their per caps, more teams are showing interest in stored-value tickets. IMS says it is talking to 11 major league clubs, eight colleges and five minor league facilities about tapping into the technology in the next two years.

The Baltimore Ravens, another Aramark client, tested loaded tickets in 2005 before launching their stored-value program last year for 8,200 club-seat holders at M&T Bank Stadium. The team plans to continue the program for the coming season. Other teams plan to start selling the tickets in the coming season (see chart).

Unlike the Phillies, the Ravens do not sell tickets loaded with credit. Instead, they let fans make the choice by going online and using their credit cards to add value through Ticketmaster’s Account Manager, an amenity exclusive to club-seat patrons.

Club-seat holders can’t use loaded tickets to buy Ravens merchandise at the stadium because the team’s third-party retail vendor, FMI, does not have the POS technology required to link to the stored-value system.

Baker Koppelman, the Ravens’ senior director of ticket operations and sales, said 30 to 40 people used the technology last season.

“I’m a little disappointed with the activity on it, but most of our club-seat customers aren’t companies and we need to promote it better,” Koppelman said.

IMS officials said they have encouraged the Ravens to take the Phillies’ lead and sell loaded tickets to take full advantage of the program, but Koppelman thinks NFL fans already paying $155 to $335 a game for a club seat do not want to be forced into a “use it or lose it” scenario with concession credit.

What could work, Koppelman said, is providing a season discount by offering seat holders the opportunity to load $700 worth of concession credits on their tickets for $500, and that’s something the Ravens could consider.

“I think there has to be a clear benefit for them to commit,” he said. “Paying in advance would certainly be a benefit for us, but it would give more value for them.”

On the college level, the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., is starting a stored-value ticket program for the coming school year. The athletic department will sell 1,800 tickets containing a $5 food or retail credit for three home football games and a $5 credit for several hundred center court seats for all 17 home basketball games. The school wants to sell stored-value tickets for more than half of Falcon Stadium’s 52,480 seats by the 2009 season, said Michael Saks, senior associate athletic director.

The expansion of the program at Citizens Bank Park this year was to 900 seats reserved mostly for group sales. The $20 ticket contains a $10 credit, allowing group leaders to pay up front for group members’ concessions.

“It’s still in an evolutionary phase in Philadelphia,” said Liza Cartmell, president of Aramark Sports and Entertainment. “We’ll take the [results] from the [Diamond Club] as well as the newer areas that are testing it, see how they play out and use that for our other operations.”

The St. Louis Cardinals, which does a lot of group sales business, could start selling loaded tickets next year at Busch Stadium. “I’m a big fan of what’s happening in Philadelphia and I think they’re definitely ahead of the curve,” said Joe Strohm, the Cardinals’ vice president of ticket sales.

Next up in Philly? “Later this year, we want to roll out the opportunity to buy individual seats online and through phone centers and add value on tickets anywhere in the ballpark,” Deats said. The Phillies and their food, ticketing and technology vendors are still working on that particular feature, he said.

“What we would really like is for season-tickets holders to call [the day before a game] and say, ‘Tomorrow, I’m bringing a real important client and I’d like to add a $40 credit.’”

Loading them up

The cost of investing in the technology used with loaded tickets has kept many teams from using the concept. The Baltimore Ravens are one of the few using stored-value tickets, offering them to club-seat holders at M&T Bank Stadium (right). Organizations using or considering stored-credit tickets, and the partners they are working with, include:

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