Baseball’s Brewers Hope CRM Efforts Are On-Base

When baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers opened a new stadium in 2001, the team drew more than 2.8 million attendees — a franchise record. Two losing seasons, however, trimmed the number of people going through the turnstiles to 1.7 million, and management will be hard-pressed to reverse this trend.

But it’s going to try by reaching out to fans. Chicago Cubs fans.

To be sure, the team will be contacting Brewers fans as well. But a Harris Interactive poll earlier this year found that the Cubs, despite being inconveniently based one state south, were the second-most-popular sports franchise in Wisconsin, behind only football’s Green Bay Packers.

There are reasons for this: The Cubs have a much stronger recent record, and a roster featuring several highly visible players. The Brewers, who are under pressure to slash payroll, probably will trade one or both of their All-Star players before the start of the 2004 season.

This presents quite a challenge for NuEdge Systems, a CRM consultancy the Brewers tapped in October. Fortunately, assembling a customer database is less of a hurdle than it would be in some other industries, according to Don Layden, NuEdge’s president.

Sports fanatics are more likely to opt in to receive information and offers. And tickets ordered online or through “will call” windows offer a chance for data capture. Additionally, Major League Baseball may provide general attendance data.

Furthermore, as an Experian subsidiary the Brookfield, WI-based consultancy has access to a variety of demographic and psychographic data.

Much of the database initially will rely on transaction information, however. Local fans who have bought tickets to games against other teams will receive solicitations for when those teams return (Come see the Cubs — or whomever — play in your back yard!), as well as to these teams’ rivals (Come watch the Brewers take on longtime Cubs rivals the St. Louis Cardinals!).

Through NuEdge’s analytics programs, the Brewers will be able to analyze fan spending behavior, such as by section (Do the field seats buy more souvenirs, while cheap seats spend more on potables?). It also will provide quantifiable evidence — or refutation — of the theory that fans who are given tickets by their firms spend more than those who purchased their own.

Once the Brewers’ marketing plans for 2004 are settled, their primary aim will be filling seats. “[Attendance is] now below 2 million,” Layden says. “There is a live opportunity to get fans to come more often. But as [the Brewers] gather more data, will they look at profitability? I think they will.”