A rendering of the new Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., home of the 49ers. The 49ers is one of WealthEngine's sports clients. (Photo from Levi's Stadium)
Though WealthEngine has been around for more than two decades, the analytics, research and marketing company based in Bethesda, Md., has only recently gotten into the sports game. As big data and analytics make their way from the clubhouse to the front office, WealthEngine has created a new tool for helping teams price their suite and premium seating inventory, inking a deal with the San Francisco 49ers in 2010 through Legends Hospitality Group, which has a sales consulting contract for the National Football League team.
“About a year ago the ALSD (Association of Luxury Suite Directors) conference — which I didn’t know from my ABCs — had just ended and we started getting calls left and right from different sports teams interested in learning more about us,” said Sr. VP, Head of Sports Practice at WealthEngine James Dean. “The reason was that some representatives from the 49ers sales and marketing team were on a panel at ALSD 2012 and started talking about WealthEngine, which we had no idea about.”
“We probably picked up a half-dozen customers just from that and, all of a sudden, we’re in the sports industry,” he added.
WealthEngine is joining a growing number of companies getting in the sales lead generation business. Firms like Turnkey Sports and Entertainment and JCA are helping teams prospect single ticket buyers and determine if they can be upsold to season ticket or premium seat status using public records, transactional history and behavioral modeling often based on profiles of their most avid consumers.
Prospect lists can include more than a person’s name, address and phone number, but also their business information including title and number of employees, their number of properties with real estate values, marital status, and age. Information even reaches into a person’s interests, listing their hobbies, sports played, favorite spectator sports and charitable giving.
“Ultimately, it’s great, rich intel to develop a rapport from a sales perspective. You really understand what a person’s wealth looks like,” said Dean. “The more you get to know your customer, you can create a better fan experience and set marketing and advertising.”The WealthEngine data is ‘agnostic,’ in that it can be integrated into existing ticketing and CRM systems. Each prospect is given a wealth score, taking into account the net worth, liquidity, total assets and income.Different types of packages are available, depending on how much data a team or company requires as well as how many IDs are needed for the sales force. The platform works as a yearly subscription, with the lightest spend coming in at around $2,000-$3,000, all the way up to around $50,000.
“The average sports team spend at this point is probably about $5,000-$8,000,” Dean added.
The 49ers use the data for prospecting at the new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.
“WealthEngine has been really great from a macro level for getting in front of a lot of people,” said Mike Drake, director of Levi’s Stadium suite and premium sales. He added that it’s been especially valuable when looking at a new stadium, because history shows that just around 30 percent of suiteholders follow a team to a new venue.
“Information about an individual is very important because you can tailor your pitch around a person’s interests or what they might be worth,” said Drake. “If you find an individual and understand the company they are with and have the research on it, you can tailor that pitch to a longer-term suite deal because you know they have ‘x’ number of employees and are worth ‘x’ amount.”
So far, suite sales for Levi’s Stadium are ahead of schedule. About 85 percent of the available suites have been sold with contracts averaging more than 14 years.
“Our renewal rate in the sports business, though we’re new, is at 100 percent, which is generally unsustainable,” said Dean. “But the buzz is based on reality.
“Ultimately, WealthEngine is a solution that helps clients sell their product.”
Interviewed for this story: James Dean, (240) 722-4373; Michael Drake, (408) 579-4403