On this episode of Fired Up, Josh Young, Vice President of Ticket Sales for the Miami Dolphins, shares how maintaining a strong sense of and connection to the community makes all the difference.

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. 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 to connect with your fans. I’m Chris McAdoo, and this is Fired Up.

Chris McAdoo:

Hey, you all, and welcome to Fired Up. We’re here live at the National Sports Forum 25 year anniversary here in Atlanta, Georgia. We’ve been having a great time, and we’ve been having the opportunity to talk with a lot of fantastic people. For instance, Josh Young is going to be joining us in our next episode from the Miami Dolphins. I’m Chris McAdoo, and I’ll be kind of kicking this journey off. Then I’ll hand over to Chris Wise, the General Manager of Designsensory Intelligence and the man who brings you those great stats, those great, incisive insights. Would you call it that?

Chris Wise:

No, just insights. [crosstalk 00:01:39].

Chris McAdoo:

It’s fine. You were shut down.

Chris Wise:

Yeah.

Chris McAdoo:

It was 100%. Without further ado, I’m going to hand it off to Chris Wise. Take it away.

Chris Wise:

Thanks, Chris. Josh, thanks again for coming and joining us.

Josh Young:

Yeah, happy to.

Chris Wise:

Just tell us a little bit about you, yourself, your career, those things that really excite you. What really ignites your professional rigor?

Josh Young:

No, that’s a fair question. So my background, right now currently Vice President of Ticket Sales for the Miami Dolphins. I’ve been in Miami for about three and a half months now. So prior to Miami, I was with the Expansion MLS club in LA, LAFC, and had a chance to participate in that project. I came in shortly after the stadium opened to carry them through their first year and a half or so. But really fun project where you learn a lot because you don’t have any background, no historical data to go by. You’re just going by intuition and trying to build it as you go. So that was a lot of fun. An incredible group of people.

Josh Young:

And then prior to LA was in Cleveland with the Browns. So I’ve returned back to the NFL at this point. But another incredible experience with a great group of people and really a lot of the formative years of learning the strategy behind what we do from a business perspective there. And then prior to that, was in minor league hockey for a long time. So I was in Houston with a minor league hockey team. We shared the arena with the Rockets. And we were owned by the Wild. So we had really good resources, but it was still minor league hockey. And if you can sell hockey in Houston, you could probably sell about anything.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. Well, we try to sell hockey in Knoxville, Tennessee too. So it’s-

Josh Young:

Hey, it can be done.

Chris Wise:

It is.

Josh Young:

If we can sell in Houston, then we can do it there.

Chris Wise:

You can do it anywhere. But what really ignites your professional fire? What really gets you going every day?

Josh Young:

Yeah. Well, I got lucky because there’s nothing I would have been as good at or enjoyed as much as sales. And I know that when I got out of school, I was not doing sales. I was helping a friend open up a bunch of restaurants, and it was miserable work. And I’m grateful that I did it because then when I landed into sales, I was like, all right, this I enjoy. Are you kidding me? They pay me to call people and talk to people. That’s not a bad gig. So I got really lucky to get to do that. And I think over time, this industry is really small. And you come to an event like this, there’s a thousand plus people here, and you know most of them. It’s a very small industry, especially the longer you’re in it.

Josh Young:

And I think what drives me now on top of the fact that each group that I’ve had a chance to work with I want us to be the best at what we do, but I know a lot of the people who are doing it to the other teams. And frankly and selfishly, I want to be a little bit better than they are. And it’s fun. It’s a good, friendly, competitive rivalry, but I stay in really close contact with a lot of my peers who oversee specifically ticket sales departments. And I’m more than happy to share best practices. They’re more than happy to share with me.

Josh Young:

But at the end of the day, I got to find a way to be a little bit better. And that really drives me. And I think it drives the groups that I’ve had a chance to work with and have had the chance to work with me because if I have to be a little bit better, then so do they. And we’ve got to find ways to do things a little bit more effectively, a little bit more efficiently. So I would say that’s definitely the driving factor behind it.

Chris Wise:

Okay. So a bit of competition. I hear you love the competition against your peers, for sure. And I’m just going to ask this question talking about ticketing and the way people consume now. So I’m sure you’ve had to look at different ways to offer and stimulate from the tried and true or changing landscape of season ticket sales and how you offer different packages and get people to the new fans as well as get your-

Josh Young:

Always changing.

Chris Wise:

Yeah.

Josh Young:

Consumerism is changing. Consumerism is not what consumerism was before. Retail has a totally different definition now. And so, yeah, it’s completely evolving. The one thing that’s really unique about our product, the one thing that’s unique about it is you can consume it from anywhere. I watch more live sporting events on my phone than I do anywhere else now. So I’m an example of the person that I don’t want to be happening in the United States of America. I don’t want people doing that, but I do. So consumerism is changing. But the one thing that’s really unique about us is the live experience, the live entertainment. And what we’re learning over the course of probably about the last three to four years is that the generation that we’re most afraid of, the Gen Z, the millennial, while they are consuming much more via digital mobile, they still want a unique live experience. They want experiences that they can’t get anywhere else, and that’s what we’re able to provide.

Josh Young:

So it’s not that the season ticket or the live attendance is going away. It’s just the reason that they’re trying to consume it. They’re actually probably not there to see Jordan hit the dunk anymore. They’re probably there for the selfie with the court in the background that shows all their friends look where I was. I was here. It’s a little bit more of me and I have to be involved in it somehow, but there’s still the appetite for that. So the reason they’re buying is changing, and then how they’re buying it is changing. I walk up to a stadium now, and without a ticket, I just click on my phone and I walk into the building. I buy it, it shows up on my phone, I scan in, and away I go.

Josh Young:

Think about the way you travel now. The way you travel, you used to have to have a travel planner. You paid somebody to schedule a trip, like us coming to Atlanta. Now I don’t need to do any pre-planning. I can buy my plane ticket on the way to the airport. I can HotelTonight when I’m sitting on the plane and get the hotel. I can check in when I walk in. It’s just a different way, but I’m still consuming it. So we’ve got to think about that. We got to be really progressive, not just about how people are buying right now, which has evolved, but how are they going to be buying in three to five years because that could be completely different. This phone could go away. That might not be a product that anybody’s using in 10 years. It may be a different format. It’s just crazy. So we have to be a little bit more progressive in how we think about that.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. I’m one of those futures that also thinks that NFL football, we’re not going to have real players soon. They’re going to be holograms, and all the players are in the back room doing this.

Josh Young:

Which that’s happening now.

Chris Wise:

And we’ll consume.

Josh Young:

[crosstalk 00:07:35] sports. Yeah.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. But you’ll still have people still come to the venue. And there’ll be holograms that are life size that are running up and down the field. No one gets hurt, and we’ll still consume. It’s a different experience, and it can still be social. So I go off on those tangents sometimes because knowing that the fans just want. And through our research, it’s all really about the totality of the experience. It’s not just the game. It’s so much more.

Josh Young:

That’s exactly right. Yeah. In Miami, it’s really a good case study. And in a lot of ways, LA was too. The type of live experience product that you’re consuming now, it’s not just a seat and a ticket that gets you to a seat. You have to have a common area, a social area. You’ve got to have incredible food and beverage offering. You’ve got to have a design to a space that feels completely unique to your brand based on what they purchase. That makes them feel like they saw value in that as well. So if it’s a premium space, it better have a premium feel, it better have a premium type of experience. And as you’re seeing the new stadium they built in LA for the soccer club for LAFC, the new SoFi Stadium that they built. The Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, they tore that down to the studs and rebuilt it with a completely new experience that you walk in and you wouldn’t even know you’re at a stadium. That’s part of the experience that people are looking for. So yeah. It’s not just the game anymore. It’s the whole experience around it.

Chris Wise:

Let’s jump to NSF for a minute. Would really love to hear from your perspective the impact that NSF has had on the industry, people like you and others that you are friends with and what impact it’s having.

Josh Young:

Yeah. So it’s interesting because I had a conversation with somebody just this morning, and they were talking about, yeah, when I got to Detroit, it was actually because I met so-and-so here at the Sports Forum, and they carried on, we stayed in touch, and then years later we were able to put together a project where we could work in Detroit together. So I think because this industry is so small, you have to network in a positive way. Otherwise, opportunities aren’t going to come your way because everybody else is networking, and it’s going to go to the person that they know, that they’re familiar with and that they’ve probably had a little bit of exposure to over time to see if they’re really good at what they do.

Josh Young:

So from a career perspective, that’s a no-brainer. But I think the other piece and what I’m really encouraged by and why I agreed to commit to the steering committee, which is a little bit of a task… It’s not just you get a badge with a different color on it. There’s some work that goes into it.

Chris Wise:

Dang.

Josh Young:

But it’s content driven by people who are working in the industry. So I’m working with some peers on the steering committee to put together the content, excuse me, that we’re sharing with everybody. And I think that’s what makes it a little bit different, because we’re in it. We’re in those weeds, and we’ve navigated some of that landscape. Either we want to share what we’ve learned or we know people who do it a little bit better than us and we want them to share it so that we can learn.

Josh Young:

And I think that’s the real value of an event that’s designed the way the Sports Forum is designed, is that it’s actually content driven by people who are working within the industry. It’s not just some big corporation that’s deciding mobile ticketing and gambling and sports. Those are the two hot items that people are going to talk about. You’ll see that we’re actually tackling content and issues that everybody’s facing from people who are actually working in it, which is a little unique.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. I guess from that boots on the ground perspective that everyone here is a practitioner, the folks that you’ll have an idea, you’ll take that idea, and somebody around here we’ll see if it works. And I think that’s a really cool thing. And then you guys, from everybody we’ve talked to, you are opening to sharing those things with each other, sharing what works, what doesn’t. Like you’re saying, the rising tide [inaudible 00:00:11:10]. And so one of the things to kind of get back a little bit, especially with the eSports, facing those fears head on, like what does that look like kind of stuff. And you said a couple of great things about getting involved and being willing to evolve. And so where do you guys as the Dolphins or you’re talking about some of those experiences, what are some of the things that you’re doing to make that experience full?

Josh Young:

Yeah. Well, so it’s interesting because the Dolphins, I’m very fresh to that, right? And I’m learning as we go specifically what drives purchasing behavior, what drives people to want to continue to be involved with it at maybe a season ticket level, a premium level, as a suite owner, whatever that may be. One of the things that we learned in LA, which was a unique case study because it was so new, was the way they designed that whole franchise. The way they built that from the ground up is a blueprint for how, A, you would build a franchise from the ground up, but also a blueprint for how you would look at it as if you’re coming into an established franchise like the Dolphins and how would we do something a little bit different.

Josh Young:

The one competitive advantage they have in LA is it was built based on feedback and based on direct involvement with their fan base. So that fan base started as 12 people. Then that 12 people called their friends because they were listening to them and said, oh, you need to get involved with this. And the next thing you know, you’ve got several thousand individuals who have input on exactly how this is being built. They changed the colors of the team at one point. When they rolled it out, it was black, red and white. And then over the course of time, somebody within the supporters group said, no, black and gold, we need to be black and gold. And everybody rallied around that. So, okay, black and gold. When they built a supporter section, they wanted safe standing. Their supporters were adamant about safe standing. Wasn’t allowed in MLS. Ownership pushed it through with league office, and now they have safe standing.

Josh Young:

And so quickly, they realize, okay, this is actually ours. I’m bought into this because it’s mine. I have ownership over it. I have stake in what’s happening. And I think that’s a model that needs to evolve with some of the more established franchises as well. And in some cases, it’s going to take a real fresh look because you’ve just got this set way of doing things that may have worked for 20, 30, 70 years, and you’ve got to take a fresh look as to how involved are they and what does that involvement look like for this marketplace and how can we give them more of that, how can we give them some of that input so that they have a sense of ownership in what’s happening, because that, to me drives loyalty in a real challenging climate like the one that we have where it’s just so easy to consume it from a phone. It’s so easy to consume it in other ways. That sense of ownership will drive the ability to really push from a true membership perspective.

Chris Wise:

So you pointed to the case study in LA from the ground up. How do you stay in touch with your fans or your audience to stay relevant, to gather their input and how to use it to nurture that? And what do you do? How do you do that?

Josh Young:

Well, one of the easiest ways is the fact that every one of these franchises that are being represented at the forum right now have armies of ticket salespeople that are talking to fans every single day. And even I’m guilty of this, that at times, there’s a disconnect between what they’re actually telling your sales people on the phones or your service people on the phones and how you’re acting on it. You’re just assuming everybody’s an outlier. You can make the assumption, oh, he’s just mad because the team’s not playing well. Oh, he’s just mad because that concession stand screwed up that day. But at the end of the day, if you’re really open to listening and getting feedback, that’s the simplest form because it’s happening on a daily basis. You are getting real time feedback from people who are consuming your product.

Josh Young:

A couple of examples that I’ve seen as well as the use surveying in LA really surprised me. I was always a little bit skeptical of the whole survey process. Who’s going to take the time to fill it out? Is that data really good for us? But we really started to learn, and we got a lot of insight from some of the surveying that we were doing in Los Angeles. And people were really open to filling it out. We were getting response rates at like 30, 40%, which is astronomical from a post game survey or whatever. But when we really started to dig and quantify that data, we were able to really identify areas where we had gaps. And again, that’s direct data coming from people who are consuming the product that are willing to take the time to fill it out.

Josh Young:

So we started taking that steps further. We were hosting design sessions where we were bringing 100 different either ticket buyers or members or different segments that we wanted to kind of separate out and bringing them in to spend a day with us for really productive design sessions, which you could think about that in another form. It could just be like a focus group, but that wasn’t how these were structured. These were actually we present you with an issue. Hey, parking’s really challenging in downtown LA. You guys are parking here, you’ve experienced it, so give us the three things that you’ve noticed as you’re pulling in. What would you change and why? And how’s that going to affect it?

Chris Wise:

So you’re letting them do the ideation. They’re-

Josh Young:

100% they’re doing the ideation, and then they’re coming up with a solution. Now, as we’re guiding that along, we’re saying, okay, now keep in mind, LAPD is not going to allow you to turn left on Figueroa at this particular time of day. We’ll take that off the table. And at the very end of the day, they will have really good ideas, but then they also have a little bit more of an understanding as how decisions are being made. And that’s a group that goes back and plugs back into the fan base. They go back and talk to their friends. They go back and talk to the people that were sitting next to them at the game also complaining about parking. And they’re explaining to them, yeah, you know what, not as easy as it sounds, and here’s why. So again, it’s that sense of ownership. That just makes a really big difference. But that was one of the unique pieces, a couple of the unique pieces that I’ve learned along the way as to how you actually make that feedback actionable.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. And it is easier to collect data. It’s the life I live every day, collecting data, especially in the sports world, because people are so passionate. They have an emotional connection-

Josh Young:

Super.

Chris Wise:

… to the team. Yeah. The response rates that we do in sports far exceed any other industry that we work in. And it is that passion. And they’ll tell you everything, things you don’t even want to go there. They’ll tell you that. But then it is taking that and putting into good, actionable work, getting it done.

Josh Young:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s been the fun part because I’ve had exposure in a couple of different markets now. And you take a market like Cleveland and the Browns in Cleveland. Now, my record in Cleveland, I think I had 15 wins over the course of about five and a half years. That was a challenging sales climate for sure. But that market and that fan base, they live and breathe Cleveland Browns. It is a fabric of northeast Ohio. And a bad year for us we would still renew over 90%. On a one and 15 year, you’re probably going to renew at 92% or something crazy like that. So it’s been interesting getting exposure in different markets because what works in Cleveland doesn’t work in Miami. And what works in Miami wasn’t going to work in LA. You have to gain that feedback. You have to be able to evaluate it and analyze it in a way that it can be productive for this market, for this fan base in this situation. So it makes it a lot of fun. Never the same thing. It’s not cookie cutter, that’s for sure.

Chris Wise:

We’ve done work for an MLS franchise relatively new in second season. Won’t name them. But we profiled everyone in their stadium by section and have tailored the sales call based on a better understanding of the type of people that buy in that section. And it’s amazing what the results can be by just understanding them more deeply, more intimately. So you can have a conversation other than, well, they’re 25 years old and have 10 kids or whatever. But yeah, it’s just-

Josh Young:

Yeah, and it’s funny because, for our industry, that stuff is uber progressive, That is like, okay, what’s happening tomorrow type of stuff. But you look at other industries that do any type of ticketing, airlines, things like that, they’ve been doing that for 10 years. They’ve been profiling their customer base and sending them very specific, targeted messaging based on the type of profile you have, versus your profile would be you’d receive a different type of message. They’ve been doing that forever. And it’s so new for us that I feel that’s part of the… One of the things that also really excites me about our industry is we’re catching up, not as fast as we should be, but we’re catching up.

Chris Wise:

Getting there.

Josh Young:

And it means there’s that much more room for us to go. So it’s really encouraging, and it forces you to want to learn a little bit more as you go as well.

Chris Wise:

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about a little bit more about alternative revenue streams. There are other game days and there’s games. Coming back a little bit to eSports or to betting, and then we’ll do where that’s going to go for the whole league eventually depending on state by state basis, or even other ways to use the franchise or the venue. What are you doing in terms of alternative revenue streams?

Josh Young:

Yeah. Well, Miami is a great case study for that because it’s a very visionary group led by Tom Garfinkel, Jeremy Walls and an incredible senior leadership team there. And they have a vision for having an entertainment hub in Miami. And it’s not just Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami Dolphins. It’s how can we make this an international destination where any type of major event can happen here and we can utilize the building. These stadiums eat money. They just eat. On a daily basis, those things eat dollars because it’s so expensive to operate. So dark days are a death blow to any stadium. You just can’t have dark days. And that’s why arenas do so well because they’re so easy to transition from one event to another. But Miami is a good example because we’ve got an international destination from a city perspective, and we want to create a venue that creates an international destination for any type of event that you could host.

Josh Young:

So we brought in Miami Open, tennis being a very heavy international fan base. And we built out this entire campus that’s absolutely incredible and likely one of the best in North America from a tennis perspective to create these really cool, authentic to Miami experiences that you can’t get anywhere else through Miami Open. We’ve gone down the road and we’ve investigated do we bring a Formula One race to the stadium and run Formula One around the stadium and utilize that campus in a completely unique way to any other track on the Formula One schedule. And then obviously the Dolphins. How do we maximize what we’re doing with the Dolphins? We’re going to host this major draft party. We’ve got a ton of draft capital this year, and we’re going to use it. And how do we leverage that facility and create an awesome experience for people who want to come celebrate what could be the beginning of, hopefully, a major improvement from a team performance perspective?

Josh Young:

So it’s how do you utilize that facility, and then there’s all the ancillary things that start to come into it all. MLS just started eMLS because they see value in the eSports space. It’s endless. It really is endless. And it’s just the most creative people who are finding ways to make it actionable that are going to monetize it in the long run. I won’t pretend to be one of the most creative people, but there’s an endless opportunity for it.

Chris Wise:

And you continue to look at it, I bet.

Josh Young:

Continue, you have to. Yeah.

Chris Wise:

Talk about, we may have touched on it just slightly, generational impact of what you do. People come to a sport usually around the age of 10. And they can stay with it until the day they die, or they get disillusioned in their 20s and go away and never come back. How do you deal with just different generations as they go through their life cycles as sports fan? How do you deal with generational differences?

Josh Young:

Yeah, that’s really interesting. The NFL… This data’s probably about four years old now, so I apologize for spinning old data out. They’d run a study about three or four years ago, and they knew that if they could get a kid to wear a jersey by four years old that that kid had an 80 to 90% more likelihood of actually being an engaged fan through the rest of their lifetime. But it was that critical window that by the time they were four or five-

Chris Wise:

Four years old?

Josh Young:

… they’ve got to have a Jersey on their back. Otherwise, we risk them being affiliated or having an allegiance somewhere else. And there’ve been really intentional in how they’re targeting that. Football is family, that old campaign from two years ago. Heavy, heavy youth football initiatives all around the country, A, from a safety perspective, but B, just to get more and more youth involved in football because they’re playing the long game. They understand that the earlier I can get somebody committed to a football team and paying attention with a jersey, the more likely they are to remain involved with either that franchise or just with the sport for the long run. So that gets really interesting when you think about it from that perspective, but then you’ve got to think about how they’re consuming it.

Josh Young:

It kind of goes back to what we’re talking about at the beginning. The way a millennial is going to is going to consume the product now is completely different than their parents. And I’ve evolved. I don’t know if I technically qualify as a millennial, but I wasn’t buying anything on my phone. I wasn’t scanning my plane ticket with a phone four years ago. And now I haven’t printed a paper ticket in I don’t know how long. It’s just different. So we have to find ways to get ahead of what that consumerism is going to look like and be able to provide products and experiences that cater to that type of consumer and how they’re going to evolve. So I think it’s very different. I also think that some things remain the same. They were running gladiators in Rome at the Colosseum, and that ability to be in with a group of people and feel the excitement and energy of something amazing that’s going to happen and that collective community, you can’t beat that experience because it’s 2,000 years old now. It’s a proven concept.

Chris Wise:

It’s in our DNA.

Josh Young:

That’s exactly right.

Chris Wise:

We’re competitive by nature.

Josh Young:

That’s exactly right. And so you’ve got to play on both sides of the fence, so to speak. But yeah, that’s going to continue to evolve. And that’s why it’s fun coming to an event like this, because you would walk through the vendor area, walk through the sponsor village, and you’re going to see incredible technology that didn’t exist or nobody was thinking about applying to our industry two years ago. Every year, you see something you’re like, okay, wow, that’s just out there. So yeah. It’s consistently evolving.

Chris Wise:

I’m out of questions. You got anything to wrap with?

Chris McAdoo:

No, I think that’s a great place to wrap it up. And Josh, kind of the takeaway that I get here, the most important thing is the ability for teams, organizations, don’t take your fans for granted. And in fact, go that extra step. Listen to them, bring them into the process so it creates that, not just short term gains, but longterm ownership.

Chris Wise:

Right.

Josh Young:

I’d say that’s exactly right. Yeah. Ownership being key.

Chris McAdoo:

There we go. So that’s awesome. Josh Young, thank you so much for joining us. Again, this has been Fired Up, a product of Ignite Fan Insights. And we’ve been live from the National Sports Forum 25th anniversary.

Chris McAdoo:

Thanks for listening. And if you like what you heard, be sure to subscribe. And if you really like what you heard, please leave us a five star review and tell all your friends. Also, thanks to the good people that power Fired Up and Ignite Fan Insights at NASCAR, the National Sports Forum and the Association of Luxury Suite Directors. To learn more about Ignite Fan Insights and what that exclusive content can mean for you, visit ignitefaninsights.com and subscribe today. It’s a wealth of information all about the fan at no cost to you. Your fan club subscription includes our e-publication, podcasts, like this one, exclusive blogs, quarterly e-newsletters and timely webinars that keep you, not only up to speed on what your fans are doing, but ahead of the curve and ready to take on anything that comes at you. 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.