Dave Muye, Vice President of Global Partnerships for Feld Entertainment, talks about the importance of their decentralized approach to local activation by understanding each market with boots on the ground in those markets.

Chris McAdoo:

Welcome to Fired Up, an original podcast from Ignite Fan Insights, powered by NASCAR, the National Sports Forum and the Association of Luxury Suite Directors. This is a podcast for sports business pros like you. We go behind the gates and beyond the numbers that keep sports fans coming back for more.

Chris McAdoo:

Our host, Chris Wise, is the brains behind Ignite Fan Insights, with a commitment to research and innovation for over 30 years. He knows the right questions to ask, and more importantly, what to do with the answers. Get ready for engaging, in depth conversations with sports industry leaders that will inspire you to take action, and connect with your fans. I’m Chris McAdoo, and this is Fired Up.

Chris Wise:

On today’s episode, we bring you Dave Muye, Vice President of Global Partnerships for Feld Entertainment. Think Disney on Ice, think Monster Trucks. If it’s a big brand and it’s global, they’re a part of it.

Chris Wise:

Well, the biggest thing, because you talked about all those shows, it’s really how they use fan data to continually provide the show that the spectator really wants and coming back for more.

Chris McAdoo:

Absolutely man. Let’s get on with it. We present Dave Muye.

Chris McAdoo:

All right. Let’s do it.

Dave Muye:

I’m fine.

Chris McAdoo:

You ready? All right cool. We’re here live at the National Sports Forum in Atlanta, Georgia. And our next guest that we are super stoked to have is Dave Muye with Feld Entertainment. Dave, thank you so much for joining us.

Dave Muye:

Yeah, I appreciate you having me.

Chris McAdoo:

Absolutely. I’m going to hand it over to Chris Wise, the general manager and the all around … The guy who’s been asking the right questions to get the right answers for over 30 years, with design sensory intelligence. Chris, take it away, man.

Chris Wise:

Okay, thanks. Give it to the old guy. Appreciate it. Dave, thanks. You live in Florida?

Dave Muye:

Yes, just South of Tampa.

Chris Wise:

Okay. Are you from that area?

Dave Muye:

I’m not. I’m originally from Western Pennsylvania, spent about 16 years in Chicago, and the last four I’ve been in that area. A lot of different places-

Chris Wise:

Got out in the snow.

Dave Muye:

Yeah.

Chris Wise:

Well go ahead and tell us more about yourself and your career and-

Dave Muye:

Sure.

Chris Wise:

And we’ll go from there.

Dave Muye:

Sure. Yeah. So actually I started right out of undergrad with a company called Pace Motorsports. Which was dirt bike racing, Monster Trucks, drag racing. We were bought and sold four or five times. So SFX, Live Nation, Clear Channel. And I was able to survive all of those. The Feld family purchased us about 13 years ago. And so I’ve been with them ever since. That came with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Disney on Ice. And now we have a whole host of family entertainment properties with Sesame Street Live, Jurassic World Live. Still have the dirt bikes and Monster Trucks. And I’ve been generally in a corporate partnership space the entire time. Account manager, and then ran that group for a while, and then got into the new business development side. Now I oversee all new business development for the company.

Chris Wise:

And within that, you’re touching all the different properties then all [crosstalk 00:03:12]?

Dave Muye:

Correct. Our group sells across all of the entire portfolio. So that’s some location based entertainment. That’s again, dirt bikes, Monster Trucks, family entertainment across the board. So yeah, it’s quite a robust portfolio.

Chris Wise:

What makes you tick professionally?

Dave Muye:

Probably the ability to put together deals that matter, makes sense, can be measured. So sponsorship programs that deliver results. But also, even though I don’t necessarily touch the physical property a lot, meaning the actual production of it, I really enjoy seeing how all of our collective work comes together. And you show up at an event, and there’s somebody there with their family, and their kids are having the time of their lives, seeing the characters or the trucks. So it’s a very rewarding experience to be able to see the product come to life that you spend months and months working on and putting together, and then to show up at the actual live event and see it happen.

Chris Wise:

Okay. It all come together.

Dave Muye:

Yeah.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. So how long have you been involved with NSF?

Dave Muye:

This is my 11th sports forum, and my sixth on the steering committee. So quite a while.

Chris Wise:

What impact has National Sports Format had on the industry and everybody in the industry?

Dave Muye:

I don’t attend probably as many conferences as a lot of people do, but I attend enough to know that this one is definitely different. And it’s different in a very good way in my opinion, in that Ron has really created a family and fraternity. You’ll hear him say it throughout the week, that it’s all about family and fraternity and networking. But the way he structured the conference, allows a lot of opportunity to meet people. It’s a very engaging conference. In fact, it kicks off each year with the newcomers breakfast. So it’s a great icebreaker for people that have never been to get out and meet some new people. That’s by far the biggest difference that I’ve seen, is the network of people that you can build. So over those 11 years, the people that I’ve met here have become very good friends. And we do things outside of this. So from an impact standpoint, he does a lot of great things and brings a lot of great people together to share ideas and all that, but really the networking and relationship piece of it, is what I think makes it stand out from other conferences.

Chris Wise:

Tell us a little bit more about Feld Entertainment, and how do you stay in touch? Obviously you’re looking for spectators, or you’re selling tickets. You want to sell tickets. How does Feld Entertainment stay in touch with, and have an understanding of what the offering needs to be to be successful?

Dave Muye:

We have a very, very smart group of people that handle that handle the marketing piece of us. And it’s the one decentralized piece of our business. So our promoters that actually put the events on sale and market them, live in market. So our headquarters in Florida where I’m out of, generally the entire business runs out of there. But we have 90-ish promoters around the country that live in market, so that when we’re going into Buffalo, they promote everything. Whether it’s dirt bikes, Monster Trucks, Disney on Ice, Sesame Street, whatever’s going into that market. So they know and understand the market, what the market’s looking for, how to best reach them, whether that’s a stronger digital campaign or stronger television or radio, or whatever it may be. So being in touch with the local markets and what they’re looking for, I think is one key component.

Dave Muye:

We also advertise fairly young, not necessarily cue kids, but we know our target audience and we know how to bring them through our pipeline. So generally people’s first entree to our events, is Sesame Street. That’s the youngest family demo for the most part with us. But then we continue to communicate with them through our database of, you’ve now maybe aged out of Sesame street, but here comes Disney on Ice, or Jurassic World, or whatever. So that ability to create a long lasting relationship with a family and bring them through, that also then leads to generational business. So maybe a set of grandparents now wants to bring their grandkids, or kids that went years ago to Monster Trucks and remember that unique experience, want to bring their kids when they’re older. So that’s what I think separates us a little bit, is creating that … I wouldn’t call it … It’s not necessarily fandom, but giving them a really unique, fun experience that they want to replicate across the board with us.

Chris Wise:

And you’re managing that database from the time they first experience you, until they can’t anymore?

Dave Muye:

Correct.

Chris Wise:

Wow. And then how are you able to use information from them to develop new properties, or even fine tune the properties you have?

Dave Muye:

Yeah. So we’re constantly looking at new IPs, new things that we can do, whatever that may be. We get a lot of inbound of IP that wants to maybe have a live show and what might that look like. And then also things that we’re personally developing. So yeah, we can go in and look and see what consumer trends are. We also use that information to even sculpt the shows that we already have. So if you think of Disney on Ice, they’re mostly compilation shows. So what’s the most popular Disney IP right now that we should include into a show? Is that Moana, is that Coco, is that Frozen 2? How should we do that?

Dave Muye:

With Monster Trucks, we generally control everything within the drivers, the trucks, all of that. So in those instances, we can pull the fans or look at our database, and talk to them about what truck they would like to see. So recently we’ve added a zombie truck to our lineup, because zombie’s way over index with what people wanted to see. We’ve added a shark truck called Megalodon, because people wanted to see sharks. So yes, we have that ability to not only look for new IP, but also adapt the IP that we already have, to best work for what people are looking for in the market.

Chris Wise:

When you talked about people in individual markets promoters, those are just local promoters, you don’t know them?

Dave Muye:

No they’re actual employees.

Chris Wise:

They are? Okay.

Dave Muye:

Yes, they are. So the way that we’re set up, again, we have the main office in Florida, and then we have six regional offices around the country, that those promoters office in and out of, or at least report into. So we have six regional vice presidents that are in the cities that you would expect. We’re Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, LA. And then those promoters either report in there, or actually sit in those offices.

Chris Wise:

Gotcha.

Dave Muye:

But they’re all employees, so all of the marketing materials, the general messaging of the overarching show, all of that comes out of the mothership in Florida, and then disperses out to the regions that they can then maneuver and adapt and use different pieces as they need to for their market. So it’s literally thousands and thousands of pieces of creative that they can pluck and choose and pull, depending on what they need or want for their market.

Chris Wise:

So mothership, but executes at a grassroots level?

Dave Muye:

Exactly.

Chris Wise:

Because they know the market better?

Dave Muye:

Yes. And that allows us a lot of unique opportunities, so we can offer … I’m in the partnership world, selling sponsorships. So we can offer very big national programs, that can get very granular and scale at the local level because of the way that we market the shows. So we can have an overarching national program that drives people into local retail, as a just a for instance, because we have all the local media that’s driving the local sales in those markets for a six or eight week campaign. So it allows us to be very flexible with how we scale partnerships as well.

Chris Wise:

Well I actually think that’s an interesting spot, because you’re talking about your sponsorships. And you started off with a really great, Instagrammable quote, “Putting together deals that matter.”

Dave Muye:

Yeah.

Chris Wise:

And how do you look at it from a … There’s your fan engagement, but then there’s also, you’re creating value for those sponsors, for the folks that come together. So how do you look at a deal like that? How do you make it matter to folks?

Dave Muye:

Sure. We try and be very much consultative sellers. So we don’t go in with a gold, silver, bronze package. We literally go in and have a bunch of conversations to figure out what makes them tick. Like what are you looking for? What are you missing in your current offerings that you’re doing? What’s the goal for you? Is it app downloads? Is it door swings at retail? Is it building your database? Is it strictly a branding play for you? What are the things that are going to matter in a program? And then we’ll come back and get the team together and have some ideation, and come up with a program that will deliver against those that they’re asking for. So all of our programs are completely unique in terms of, we have buckets of assets that we can pull from. But generally speaking, everything that we do is completely custom, to make sure that we’re delivering, whether it’s ROI or whatever acronym we want to use, but we’re trying to make sure that we’re creating value for the partner.

Dave Muye:

Because for us, we try and have longterm partnerships. We don’t have a lot of partnerships that come in and out. Most of our partnerships last for multiple years, multiple agreements. And that’s really important to us to build that trust with the brand and show them value. And again, the ability to scale. So maybe sometimes we may work with Procter & Gamble for instance, on one tour of Disney on Ice. And they say, “Wow, that really worked great. What can we do in this part of the country?” So we can scale by part of the country, we can scale nationally, we can scale by tour. We have a lot of flexibility. So if we can deliver value against one, oftentimes they come in and say, “What else can you help us with?” And we’re constantly launching new shows and IP and different types of things. So we’re doing some location based entertainment now. So how can that be different? Or how can we show someone value there as opposed to a touring model? So it gives us a lot of flexibility to create meaningful partnerships.

Chris Wise:

How do you maintain integrity of your brand?

Dave Muye:

Of our brand Feld Entertainment, or of the brands that we steward, like Disney and-

Chris Wise:

Yeah both.

Dave Muye:

Yeah. So ironically we don’t promote the Feld brand a lot. A lot of people are very unfamiliar with Feld. And as a sales group or a group within the organization, we spend a lot of time just educating on what our properties are and what we do. The best compliment that we get often is, is that, “I thought Disney did Disney on Ice.” So if someone says that I thought Disney did Disney on ice, we’re doing our jobs perfectly, because that’s a very high compliment in the world of sport and entertainment.

Chris Wise:

Yeah.

Dave Muye:

So the Feld brand has to stand for quality first, that’s directly from we’re family owned and operated and that’s directly from the family. Is that quality matters, quality first. So every Feld production that rolls out with the Feld name behind it or on, has to have a certain level of quality, fan engagement, all of the right things to make that show work and fit within the Feld portfolio. But as stewards of some of the biggest brands in sport entertainment in the world, so Disney and Marvel, and NBC Universal, and Sesame Street Workshop, it’s of the utmost importance that we absolutely carry those brands out in the way that they’re supposed to. So we’re very cautious of how we promote what partners we work with. They have to align with those brands. Not only our brand thoughts, but with the partner as well. With Sesame Street or with NBC Universal. So we work within their brand guidelines to make sure that everything, how we’re promoting the show, where we’re promoting it, who we’re partnering with, all of those things have to align with whatever show that we’re talking about, and what they’re their brand ideals are.

Chris Wise:

Do they approve all along the way? Do they have a say in it?

Dave Muye:

They do.

Chris Wise:

Okay.

Dave Muye:

Yeah, they do. But again, with Disney, we’re a 40 plus year licensee of the Walt Disney Company, one of the longest standing in the world. So it’s a very good relationship. We generally know the parameters that we can operate within. There’s some flexibilities there, they’re fantastic partners across the board. But then we also, on the flip side of that, with Monster Jam for instance, where we control the majority of the IP ourselves, we’re on the opposite side of that spectrum. It’s our IP that we need to control and be protective of, and careful [inaudible 00:14:10] license out to other people. [inaudible 00:14:12] the way Master Toy license with Spin Master that actually allows them to take Monster Jam to retail in the masses, to hundreds and hundreds of skews, whether that’s die-cast trucks to RCs, to ride-ons, to whatever. So we live in both worlds interchangeably.

Chris Wise:

That’s a good thing.

Dave Muye:

It is. It’s fantastic. If there’s nothing else that anyone takes away from Feld Entertainment, it’s a tremendous amount of flexibility and a very entrepreneurial business. Meaning we do a lot of things ourselves. We’re a completely vertically integrated company. So typically, if we need to do something, we figure out how to do it internally and build it ourselves, or tour it ourselves, or whatever the case may be. So very solution oriented.

Chris Wise:

Cool.

Chris McAdoo:

Let’s wrap it.

Chris Wise:

Let’s do it. Dave, thank you so much for joining us. Dave Muye from Feld Entertainment, or as some of us would know, Feld Entertainment, Disney, Marvel.

Dave Muye:

Yeah.

Chris Wise:

I love that when you you say that, “I always thought Disney made Disney on Ice.” This is the behind the scenes, the great stuff that I think people know the work that goes into making shows like that happen, the sponsorships, the partnerships and the value that’s created behind the scenes. Value that is flexible and value that’s built to scale. Anyway, Dave, thank you so much. Boom, boom.

Chris McAdoo:

Thanks guys. 14:30 buddy.

Chris McAdoo:

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Chris McAdoo:

Fired Up is hosted by Chris Wise and myself, Chris McAdoo. Thanks again for listening, tune in next time. And as always, you all stay fired up.