How Louisville Turned a Local High School Football Rivalry into Revenue

The Challenge

As a way to drive additional revenue The University of Louisville hosts the rivalry game between two of the best high school football teams in the state – St. Xavier and Trinity – at their L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium every year. But with a busy collegiate schedule of their own they needed a more efficient and productive way to sell tickets – the options for fans were to either drive to one of the high schools (inconvenient for the droves of fans not associated with either school) or to wait in an absurdly long line at the Louisville stadium the day of the game. These physical ticket options resulted in more labor and fewer sales and data collection than the university would like. Louisville needed a streamlined option for the digital age that would ensure they collected valuable data while also giving their high school partners the tools to efficiently sell and market the tickets on their own. 

The Solution 

The Cardinals are old pros at selling digital tickets to their own games, but they needed an option for this event that was easy to set up during their already hectic selling schedule. The Louisville team was able to quickly set up separate groups links for each school – that corresponded to a separate side of the field for each respective fan base – and send them to the high school ticketing staffs to act as group leaders and blast out to their own fans. They were also able to put up QR codes on-site for the game, creating the ability for fans who showed up without a ticket to quickly buy tickets, all without the need for staff on site to sell them. This combination of digital options saw the game far outsell its pre-digital iterations. The result was greater reach for the highschools, less work for the University of Louisville and more convenient purchasing options for fans. 

Future Marketing

Selling tickets digitally also allowed University of Louisville to capture a huge amount of fan information that could be used for future marketing. Because this was not a game featuring the Cardinals, this event provided a large number of new fans to the database, new fans that were already pre-qualified as sports lovers. The sales team was then able to take this data (down to where the fans sat) and use it to convert new University of Louisville attendees and even season ticket holders. 

Takeaways

• If you aren’t doing stadium takeovers, they can be a great source of additional revenue and a goldmine of new user data
• If you are already doing stadium takeovers, going digital can help drive additional ticket sales and data collection, all while reducing time spent on sales
• QR codes on-site cut down on ticket wait time at venue and eliminates the need for additional ticket sales staff
• FEVO helps make sales for big ticket events much more efficient than the traditional methods of in-person ticket sales