by The SII Team
The Sport Innovation Institute completed a fan experience study for the Indianapolis Colts during the 2016 season. The team set out to enhance the understanding of the fan experience on a Colts game day, evaluate the various touchpoints the Colts fan encounters attending a game, map the journey of a Colts fans from the time they leave their home to the time they return, identify pain points and opportunities for improvement within the fan experience, and add to existing data on the Colts.
Using the principles of design thinking, the researchers recruited 23 season ticket holder to participate in the study. Each season ticket holder completed a photo journal by texting in their photos and opinions every hour and completing a 30-minute interview. From this data, four primary motivations for being a season ticket holder emerged:
- Civic Pride: A concrete sense of pride in the city of Indianapolis is amplified by the Colts history and achievement
- Game experience: Seeking an immersive experience through game atmosphere, outcome, and community
- Friends and family experience: Regard for the Colts game as a platform to nurture family relationships and family tradition throughout generations.
- Business: Using the Colts game as a vehicle to sustain and develop a personal and social community.
While motivations are the internal state or drive for a fan’s decision to buy tickets, value is a variable for fan’s valuation of their decision. Knowing and responding to these variable is important to sustain a fan’s motivational decisions.
- Convenience: An easy and optimal game experience provides convenience to fans. These conveniences often include access, location, and familiarity
- Budget: Monetary value related to opportunity cost. Fans with family experience as a primary motivator often value this factor as they are juggling alternative experiences and costs
- Product: The quality of the game and team performance are viewed as a consumable product. This factor is critical for fans whose primary motivation is “game experience.” Alternatively fans who are not affected by the team’s performance generally view the product as a social experience.
- Presence: Immersion into the ephemeral atmosphere, culture, and community cultivated by the Colts games is a value that serves fans across all primary motivators.
The research team made recommendations to the Colts season ticket holder retention team based on the synthesis of data that would build a business-to-human approach to empathizing with each customer’s unique journey.
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