Sprint Center

Sports Business Journal
Web development firm puts its experience into arenas’ sites
By: Don Muret

A former Charlotte Bobcats marketer and his business partner are changing the mind-set for how arenas operate their Web sites.

Brandon Lucas, previously director of marketing for the NBA team, and James Sack own Carbonhouse, a Charlotte-based Web development firm. Sack, a creative advertising designer, started the company 10 years ago and partnered with Lucas in 2006.

Carbonhouse has deals with nine arenas, including four big league buildings: AT&T Center, RBC Center, Prudential Center and Target Center.

Lucas and Sack bank on their event marketing experience to educate clients on the most effective ways to sell more tickets. In the process, they have formed a cooperative network for those buildings to share best practices for online operations.

It’s an edge they feel they have over conventional IT professionals that arenas typically use for Web development, often “two guys in the garage” who lack an insider’s knowledge of “what a Saturday [onsale] at 10 a.m. is about,” said Lucas, son of veteran Indianapolis concert promoter Dave Lucas.

“Coming from a marketing background, it’s about trying to infuse our platform with the intelligence that an arena marketer can update the site when they want and how they want, add more video, audio and other information, with the push of a button.”

As Carbonhouse continues to evolve, its principals see social media as an effective tool for arenas to heighten awareness of their venues and events.

SPRINT CENTER, another client, was one of the first arenas in the country to tie its site directly to Twitter and Facebook, according to Lucas’ research. The AEG-managed venue started its social-networking operation in late May and recently surpassed 3,000 friends on Facebook.

“Social networking by itself is not the answer [to filling seats], but it is a critical component, a deliberate strategy to invite our ‘friends’ to buy tickets,” said Shani Tate Ross, Sprint Center’s director of communications and marketing.

With Facebook, visitors to Sprint Center’s site can share information, photographs and video taken at events with their friends. On the back end, Sprint Center officials push a button that automatically sends event information to Facebook, Lucas said.

Sprint Center plans to use social media to promote NBA and NHL preseason games this fall in Kansas City and three college events in 2010, including the Big 12 Conference men’s basketball tournament.

EASY DOES IT: Two teams moving from the Metrodome to new Minneapolis stadiums exceeded their expectations for using a new online tool to relocate thousands of season-ticket holders.

Ballena Technologies, whose Seats3D product has been used by more than 180 facilities for patrons to select seats virtually, developed an add-on about a year ago called Seat Relocation Management System for teams reseating fans in an existing venue or moving into a new building.

The Minnesota Twins and the University of Minnesota Gophers, the first two sports clients to use SRMS, have seen 85 percent to 90 percent of their existing season-ticket holders use the technology, providing individual seat views, to buy their new seats at Target Field and TCF Bank Stadium.

The process saved the MLB club and the school’s athletic department many hours they would have otherwise had to spend meeting personally with season-ticket holders in a marketing center to choose their seats, officials said.

It sure beats the primitive process that the Timberwolves used to relocate season-ticket holders from the Metrodome to Target Center in 1990, said Jason LaFrenz, the school’s assistant athletic director of marketing and ticketing.

The Timberwolves used stick pins and a seating diagram, said LaFrenz, who was with the NBA club for its first 16 years. “It was basically, ‘Here’s the map, where do you want to sit?’” he said.