How One AHL Team Turned a Playoff Push Into Next Season’s Group Sales Strategy

This week, we take a look at how the Coachella Valley Firebirds used FEVO’s group sales capabilities to drive significant playoff sales while also booking group commitments for the 2023/24 season.

The Challenge

Playoff games are an inarguably good thing for an organization. But they do pose unique problems: like, say, the need to offload last-minute tickets when a team unexpectedly goes to Game 7 in three out of four playoff series … in their inaugural season, no less. That’s what recently happened to the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds, putting them in the enviable-but-tricky position of needing to fill a ton of unsold seats on a two-day turnaround.  

How could they quickly move tickets and find new fans in big numbers without incurring all the extra work of creating new offers and landing pages for every single additional game? And would it even be possible with much of their fanbase consisting of Canadian snowbirds who had already flocked back north for summer?

The Solution  

With the help of FEVO, the Firebirds filed all their group offers to a single, gated-URL calendar page that fans could return to time and again. With FEVO’s straightforward offer-building, the team was able to quickly add additional games to this landing page as needed. "It was amazing! We weren't making new pages and we weren't making new promo codes,” says Group Sales Manager Tarah Kelly. “By the end of it, [fans] knew that they could use the same page and the same code to purchase tickets for Round 5 that they used for Round 1."  

And a small caveat made this strategy even more productive: for group leaders and individual group buyers to access the gated landing page, they had to send a commitment form for a group event … for next season. Using this marketing tactic, the Firebirds were able to book an unprecedented number of commitments for the following season, all while adding frictionless upsells like premium access for group buyers directly within the FEVO checkout. In one fell swoop, the Firebirds successfully leveraged playoff excitement to expand their pool of potential premium clients and get a head start on group sales for the 2023/24 season.

We would not have had the success we did this playoff season without the power of FEVO’s software. The ability to create a single, gated URL where we could house all of our playoff offers plus provide unique discounts and upsells gave our reps the time to work closely with our group leaders to drive demand for next year's season.
–Tarah Kelly, Manager, Group Sales, Coachella Valley Firebirds

Need help creating offers with FEVO?
Learn how to create an Offer landing page here.
Learn how to create a multi-day event here.