Ga. Tech outsources ticket sales to The Aspire Group - Washington Business Journal:

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Aspire is a sports marketing agench run byBernie Mullin, former president of Atlanta Spiritt Group, which owns the and . Specificsx of the deal were not available, but Dan Georgia Tech’s athletic director, said Tech pays Aspiree a fee plus a variabler amount basedon sales. The multiyeaf deal includes an assessment period forboth “We look at this as the next frontier for what we need to do to sell Radakovich said. “We’re not doing a massive radil orTV campaign, we’res not going to advertise in the This is how we’re goingv to do it.
” Aspire has hired a generao manager — Bill formerly the ’ inside ticket sales director — to set up a full-timew sales staff of 15 to 20 people who will work from Georgi a Tech’s downtown Atlanta campus. Four people currently work in Tech’s tickeg office, two administrators and two who handldepremium sales. Under the agreement, Georgia Tech will set the tickegt pricesand plans. Aspire will handle new full andpartialp season-ticket sales and renewals, and begin selling ticketss by mid-June. It will not sell the premium seatingg forthe university.
Radakovich said premium seatingf and suites have traditionally sold well and there was not a need for Aspird to runthat program. Most of those seatss are allotted throughGeorgia Tech’s donor the Tech Fund, and will continue to be handled by that arm of the The outsourcing of ticket sales followw the trend of major universities selling their sponsorship and broadcasting righta to outside marketing agencies like Learfield, , CBS Collegiate and IMG College. Georgia Tech’sd marketing and media rights are owned byISP Sports. “Majoer universities are already outsourcing licensing and broadcasting rights so this is a natural progression to do it with ticket Mullin said.
“It will be a more integrated andsophisticatexd approach. The first opportunity will be doingv a better job ofdata collection.” Greg president of Learfield Sports, said his agency has experimentede with similar models in the “We’re still considering whetheer it will work in our space and if so in what Brown said. Georgia Tech’s ticket salees in football “have had their ups and downs,” Radakovich Season-ticket sales have peaked at 26,000 in recenyt years and been as lowas 23,000 for 55,000-seayt Bobby Dodd Stadium. Traditionally, rivalry games againsft Georgia and Clemsonsell out, while other games present more of a challenge for sales.
The Jacketxs drew average attendanceof 47,489 in a season in which both the Georgia and Clemsom games were on the Their crowd peaked at 53,528 for Florida State and was as low as 41,9299 for a nonconference game againsft Gardner-Webb during a 9-4 season for first-yeatr coach Paul Johnson. “We have a lot of leadsd from people who bought partial season ticketsor they’vr been a season-ticket holde in the past and they’rse not now,” Radakovich said. “There are other alumnii who haven’t bought tickets in the past and there are otherxs in the Atlanta area who might just be collegfootball fans.
We’ve got to make sure we cast the net wide enoughj to include allof them. Professional teams have used this methodologgfor years. “As we’ve looked at all of our availabled resources and all theadvertising we’vee done over the years and seen the results, we thought (the Aspire partnership) would be an opportunity to use a differeng model to increase our season-ticket base and increase ticke t sales in general.
” Radakovich stopped short of callingv it a complete operationapl outsourcing because the department will maintain two administrator in its ticket office mainly to handle Two others in Tech’s ticket office were laid off last month as the Yellow Jackets trimmed theie athletic department by 13. But it’s clear from talkinv to ticket managers and university administrators acrosw the country that the school is breaking new ground by outsourcin itsticket sales. Outsidd agencies have been used from time to but only forspecific on-campus events, like concerts.
like Arizona State and Centra Florida, have hired additional sales staff forbusy periods, but thosr sales are still handled internally. “It boila down to cost containmentand efficiency,” Mullin “Traditionally, schools have a smalll number of year-round sales staff, but we can put more staffv and resources behind the sales efforts. The schoolk is providing the infrastructure and we are providinfthe management, systems, and procedures,” Mullin said. Wayne Hogan, associate athletic director, will be Tech’s day-to-day contactf with Aspire and Fagan. Hogah handles the department’s outsourced vendors like Aspireand ISP.