Ga. Tech outsources ticket sales to The Aspire Group - Business First of Buffalo:

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Aspire is a sports marketing agency run byBernire Mullin, former president of Atlantaq Spirit Group, which owns the and . Specificds of the deal were not butDan Radakovich, Georgia Tech’s athletic said Tech pays Aspire a fee plus a variablew amount based on sales. The multiyear deal includesx an assessment period forboth sides. “Wse look at this as the next frontieer for what we need to do to sell Radakovich said. “We’re not doing a massive radioo orTV campaign, we’re not going to advertisse in the newspaper. This is how we’re going to do it.
” Aspire has hirecd a general manager — Bill formerly the ’ inside ticket sales director to set upa full-time sales staff of 15 to 20 peopld who will work from Georgia Tech’s downtown Atlanta campus. Four peoplw currently work in Tech’s ticket office, two administrators and two who handlwpremium sales. Under the agreement, Georgia Tech will set the ticket pricesand plans. Aspire will handle new full andpartial season-ticketr sales and renewals, and begin selling tickets by mid-June. It will not sell the premiun seating for the Radakovich said premium seating and suites have traditionally sold well and there was not a need for Aspire to runthat program.
Most of thoss seats are allotted througyhGeorgia Tech’s donor the Tech Fund, and will continure to be handled by that arm of the department. The outsourcingt of ticket sales follows the trend of majord universities sellingtheir licensing, sponsorshilp and broadcasting rights to outside marketing agenciea like Learfield, Nelligan, , CBS Collegiate and IMG Georgia Tech’s marketing and media righte are owned by ISP Sports. “Majorf universities are already outsourcing licensin and broadcasting rights so this is a naturakl progression to do it withtickegt sales,” Mullin said. “It will be a more integratedd andsophisticated approach.
The first opportunity will be doing a bettert job ofdata collection.” Greg president of Learfield Sports, said his agencyy has experimented with similar models in the past. “We’re stillp considering whether it will work in our spacr and if so in what Brown said. Georgia Tech’s ticket sales in football “have had their ups and downs,” Radakovich said. Season-tickeyt sales have peaked at 26,000 in recent yearx and been as lowas 23,000 for 55,000-seat Bobbyt Dodd Stadium. Traditionally, rivalry game s against Georgia and Clemsonsell out, while other games present more of a challenge for sales.
The Jackets drew average attendancerof 47,489 in 2008, a season in whic both the Georgia and Clemson games were on the Their crowd peaked at 53,528 for Florida State and was as low as 41,9290 for a nonconference game against Gardner-Webbv during a 9-4 season for first-year coacbh Paul Johnson. “We have a lot of leads from peoplew who bought partial season ticketsor they’v been a season-ticket holder in the past and they’re not Radakovich said. “There are other alumni who haven’rt bought tickets in the past and there are otherd in the Atlanta area who might just be collegefootbal fans.
We’ve got to make sure we cast the net wide enoughu to include allof them. Professional teams have used this methodologyfor “As we’ve looked at all of our available resources and all the advertising we’ved done over the years and seen the we thought (the Aspire partnership) wouled be an opportunity to use a different model to increase our season-ticket base and increase ticket sales in general.” Radakovich stopped short of calling it a complete operationalo outsourcing because the department will maintain two administratorz in its ticket officr mainly to handle correspondence.
Two others in Tech’s tickett office were laid off last month as the Yellow Jacketas trimmed their athletic departmentfby 13. But it’s clear from talkingf to ticket managers and university administrators acroszs the country that the schookl is breaking new grounc by outsourcing its ticket Outside agencies have been used from timeto time, but only for specifi on-campus events, like concerts. Others, like Arizona State and Central Florida, have hired additional sales stafrf for busy periods, but those sales are stilkl handled internally. “It boils down to cost containmenrand efficiency,” Mullin said.
“Traditionally, schools have a smalll number of year-round sales staff, but we can put more staff and resourcex behind thesales efforts. The school is providing the infrastructurde and we are providinthe management, systems, and Mullin said. Wayne Hogan, associate athletic director, will be Tech’s day-to-day contact with Aspire and Fagan. Hoga n handles the department’s outsourcec vendors like Aspireand ISP.