IBM and Ottawa's Senators Sports & Entertainment Team Up to Transform In-Arena Fan Experience

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Oct 26, 2015, 04:57 ET

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM INSIGHT 2015 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that the Ottawa Senators professional hockey club plans to apply behavior-based, predictive analytics technologies from IBM to gain a deeper understanding of their fan base as individual consumers. This will allow the entire Senators Sports & Entertainment organization, including marketing and ticketing teams, to personalize communications, enhance the in-stadium experience, and increase ticket sales.

Global sports market revenues are projected to rise at a compound annual growth rate of 3.7 percent from $121.4 billion in 2010 to $145.3 billion in 2015¹ and customer-generated data is the most commonly collected types of external data.²IBM Behavior Based Fan Insight is a breakthrough customer intelligence solution that will give business professionals in marketing, sales, operations, and finance fast access to actionable insights. The solution will become generally available in November, and the Senators Sports & Entertainment plan to use the solution beginning in the 2015-16 season in five key areas:

Fan Insights and Clustering: To help identify and make sense of fan attitudes, behavior trends, and psychographic characteristics to identify individual fan preferences and offer more personalized interactions.
Fan Experience Effectiveness: To provide visual analysis of fan interactions and uncover opportunities for greater brand and fan interactions.
Lead Scoring: To help drive more effective target offers for renewals, upsells and incentives for new customers to maximize revenue.
KPI Dashboard: To help track the success and ROI on key initiatives and campaigns, review and audit all fan metrics, and enable business user discovery and analysis.
Data Warehouse Strategies: To aggregate all data source opportunities including governance, data capture opportunities and existing sources into a cloud-based warehouse.

"We have an incredibly dedicated fan base that supports our team and players at every turn. We want to make sure we don't just thank them for their support, but ensure their experience is second to none," said Peter O'Leary, chief marketing officer and vice-president of ticketing with the Ottawa Senators. "Working with IBM, we'll not only have the chance to collaborate with a tremendous local partner, but we'll be able to gather new insights on our fans that will allow us to be more efficient in our operations and provide a more personal and enhanced experience for all of our guests."

"Fans attending games at arenas like Canadian Tire Centre are no longer a 'captive audience' to organizations thanks to the advent of smartphones and other technologies. Teams need to take additional steps in order to engage their fans on a higher level," said Alistair Rennie, General Manager of Analytics Solutions at IBM. "With access to more data about fans than ever before, the Ottawa Senators understand that this data can be an incredible resource for engaging their fans where, when and how they want to be reached while increasing their own operational efficiency."

For more information on IBM Analytics, please visit www.ibm.com/analytics

¹ "Changing the game: Outlook for the global sports market to 2015"; PWC, https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/hospitality-leisure/pdf/changing-the-game-outlook-for-the-global-sports-market-to-2015.pdf
² "Analytics: The upside of disruption", IBM Institute for Business Value, www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/2015analytics/

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SOURCE IBM