On this episode of Fired Up, Steve LaCroix, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for the Minnesota Vikings, provides great insights on how the Vikings focus on the fans’ emotional connectivity with the game and the team.

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 to 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:

Today we’ve got Steve LaCroix, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the Minnesota Vikings.

Chris Wise:

So Steve, thanks again for joining us. Chris told us some of your career. If you would, just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your career, and then go right into what makes you tick, what ignites your professional fire.

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, thanks guys. I appreciate you having me part of this, and excited to dive a little bit further. As you described, a lot of responsibility, but just a fantastic team to do all the heavy lifting, and so it’s been a great run over the decades.

Steve LaCroix:

But no, I grew up in Illinois. I was the son of a high school track and cross country coach, and really just always was around sports and wanted to be in sports as a career, but didn’t necessarily want to go the teaching and coaching route, and so went to University of Iowa, undergrad. Started in engineering, still not sure why. It didn’t work out so well. Ended up in marketing, with a marketing degree in the business school, and then stumbled on this Masters of Sport Management. Only a handful of universities in the country at the time, we’re talking in the late ’80s, had this type of degree.

Steve LaCroix:

And so I went to Western Illinois university and just fell in love with the business of professional sports and landed an internship with the Indiana Pacers selling tickets over the summer to get the final credits of my degree, and stuck there full time and grew through that organization over 10 years. We built a new arena, Conseco Fieldhouse at the time, now Bankers Life Fieldhouse, soon to be, I think, another name upcoming. And then I was recruited to the Minnesota Vikings in 2001 by the previous ownership group, under the premise that they were going to build a new stadium here in Minnesota in a couple years, in the early 2000s. And lo and behold, it took really 15 years later till we opened up the US Bank Stadium and made it through the transition of the new ownership team and the Wilf family and their partners in 2005, and was able to experience building a new NFL stadium, hosting a Super Bowl, and being part of the management team that opened a new practice facility on that 200-acre development that you mentioned, that we named Viking Lake.

Steve LaCroix:

So it’s been quite the journey, and the journey’s certainly not over. And it’s been a lot of fun along the way, and a lot of people to help with that success. As far as what makes me tick, I just really believe in… Hire really good people who are really loyal, passionate about what they do. We love competitors in our business, and what I mean by that is just the competing for… Whether that’s the next sale or competing for that next best idea in their respective departments, we want our folks to be collaborative, with a teamwork mentality, and really just build a great culture that executes strategically. So it’s maybe not rocket science, but it’s just one of those where, as long as you start with the baseline of having really good people around you, it can be a really fun, inspiring process with a ton of success that comes along with it.

Chris Wise:

Tell us a little bit about the market itself and the way the fans… I mean, you’re a storied franchise. How did the fans embrace the team and all that you bring with that?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, we were founded in 1961. We are really the most-followed sports brand in the upper Midwest, not just the state of Minnesota. But really North Dakota, South Dakota, maybe about two feet into Wisconsin to the east, and then really Des Moines north is really what we call Vikings Country. And so we’ve got a fan base over multiple states. They’re super passionate. We haven’t gotten over the hump of raising that Lombardi Trophy yet, and when we do, it’s going to be so special for our fans. But they’re really loyal. They care, they are opinionated, which is great, and they follow all that we do. And so, really just a matter of continuing to keep them engaged and hitting the right buttons with them.

Chris Wise:

Good deal. I want to talk a little bit about the National Sports Forum. They’re celebrating 25 years, and we’d love to know, what’s one thing that embodies the impact of NSF to the front office staff? When people think of sports, they don’t usually think of front office staff and what it means to the game and to organizations, and so I’m really interested in what the impact may have, from the very green, the people that are just entering the business, to those that are well-seasoned.

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, I really think it’s the uniqueness of the format. Ron Seaver and his team has done a really good job of… It’s multiple sports leagues at multiple levels within those organizations. So if you’re new to the business, you can network with your peers, network with those that have been around a long time, like me and others. You always get the local venues of the host city engaged. There’s some great sessions that you have best practices to take away. But there’s a nice balance of, it’s not just panels speaking to groups, it’s interactive sessions, it’s some good social and networking time. And I just feel like it’s the secret sauce to the National Sports Forum, is really how they pull those multiple days of agenda together, where it’s not just the same thing year after year or day-to-day during each respective year. So it’s really the uniqueness, I think, that’s what makes it so special, and certainly near and dear to my heart.

Chris Wise:

How many years have you attended or been part of it?

Steve LaCroix:

Well, I started in 2001 in Cleveland, was my first, and then decided to go back to… Next year it was in Houston, and then from there, I was hooked, and served on the steering committee for a decade or so. I missed a few along the way as we were building US Bank Stadium. That tends to take over your life at uncertain times. And so I think I missed a few along the way, but I was at least there in spirit, and the Vikings organization has always been a strong supporter. We have multiple folks from our sales and marketing team that attended across multiple disciplines. And so it’s really something that hasn’t been just something personal, but it’s been really important to our organization as well.

Chris Wise:

You have someone else on your staff that’s on the steering committee now, right?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah. Yeah. So Dannon Hulskotter, our VP of Marketing and Fan Engagement, and I had been on the steering committee for quite some time, and I pulled him aside, said “Dannon, I’m calling the bullpen, buddy. You’re taking my spot.” And Ron was open to that. Dannon’s been a great contributor to carry the torch on behalf of the Vikings represented on the steering committee.

Chris Wise:

I’m going to switch gears a little bit and go… You’d told us that you had attended the Super Bowl in Miami. Big event, a hundred seasons for the NFL, and this kind of capped off that season. Talk a little bit about that event from a fan perspective, not only there, but the millions watching it at home and in bars and venues all around the country. Talk a little bit about that, again, from the fan perspective, what it meant, and the challenge, but the uniqueness of that that brought people to the sport, or got them excited about the sport.

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, it was my 19th consecutive season Super Bowl attending. My wife Sue and I have been to the last 19, starting with my ’01 season in New Orleans, I believe. And so it’s interesting that it’s gotten bigger and bigger every year. The weekend becomes more and more intense as far as the activities. Obviously the game is the game, and that has grown, as far as viewership and the halftime entertainment, and there’s a lot of viewers that may tune in just for the halftime entertainment versus the game of football, if you’re in other parts of the world. But it’s just one of those things where it’s really, I believe, the top sporting event in the country, if not the world. And it’s just so neat to see how each city is different in how they approach it, what the vibe is.

Steve LaCroix:

Obviously, Miami has had 11 Super Bowls now. The weather on game day was… You couldn’t script it any better. When we hosted two years ago, it was a little chillier, and we were an indoor venue, but it was one of those types of things where our market really rallied, and we had 10,000+ volunteers that wanted to be part of it. They knew it was a once-a-generation type of thing, to host the Super Bowl in the Twin Cities. So it’s just really neat to see how each year’s a little bit different. And like I said earlier, it just gets bigger and bigger, as far as the intensity of the weekend and what that game means to, not just the league, but also the partners that are affiliated with it, and all the ancillary parts of our sports industry business tend to be involved in some form or fashion over the course of those multiple days.

Chris Wise:

Wish I could have been there.

Chris McAdoo:

Well, actually, I’m looking over to our producer, old Brad Carpenter, and you were there!

Brad Carpenter:

I was there. I was at the Twin Cities. I didn’t get to go to the game. I was doing an activation for Pizza Hut, so I was working and I was playing a lot of Madden, but I didn’t actually get to go to the game. But the interesting thing about that is, it speaks to how, like Steve’s talking about, how not just the game, but the experience itself has gotten bigger and bigger.

Chris McAdoo:

So it’s not just the Saturday, it’s the week leading up to it, right?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, it’s really… Obviously it’s a huge ordeal, a massive ordeal for the two teams that are playing and their respective fan bases. It should be, and it usually is, a huge deal for the local market and those that live there to have Super Bowl experience come to their market and their city. And then there’s all the ancillary fans of… Whether or not you work for a corporation that’s entertaining that weekend, or you’re a league sponsor or some type of corporate affiliation. And so it’s a mix of fans of the two teams, of league affiliates, and a bunch of other sports fans. So it’s really kind of the melting pot of the US’s top sport being football.

Chris Wise:

Let’s flip over to US Bank Stadium. You’ve got, now, four seasons, right, under your belt at the new stadium? Seems like just yesterday, but with-

Steve LaCroix:

[inaudible 00:11:52].

Chris Wise:

Yeah, I know, right? With fan expectations and technology changing so, so rapidly, along with emerging fans needing more to engage, how do you assess what shifts need to happen in your facility and in your operations to maintain relevance?

Steve LaCroix:

Well, fortunately we had the foresight to create the right connectivity, as far as just the capacity to lead into the future. We wanted to be ahead of the curve there and not be one of those buildings that five years in, or three years in, or whatever, you’re looking and saying, “Man, we’ve got to rewire and add more bandwidth to do what we need to do.” So we’re good there. What we’re focused on, for the Minnesota Vikings perspective, is that the fan experience is first and foremost to everything that we do, whether that’s our game production, how we welcome people, how we assist them during the game. It’s all about the fan experience, and we rank very consistently at the top or near the top of fan and game experience on the NFL surveying.

Steve LaCroix:

So we take a lot of pride in that, and we want to continue to be passionate that when you come to a Vikings game as a Vikings fan, we want the investment to be worth it and for you to walk away and say, “You know what? That was…” Hopefully we won, and if we didn’t, at least you’re saying, “That was a great time. I want to do that again, and that’s very unique versus sitting on my couch or in a sports bar and watching.” And we appreciate the fans that do that as well, but we need to fill the stadium and make sure that… A sold-out stadium always looks better on TV, obviously, and we really look at it as a home-field advantage, of, how can we keep our fans engaged and a asset to our team on the field?

Chris Wise:

What do you do to nurture first-time fans? Do you identify them? And then what do you do to nurture them so they continue to come back to the live experience?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, we have some fan packs, as far as first Vikings game, some surprise-and-delight. Obviously we’ve gotten a lot smarter on knowing who our actual fans are in the building through our mobile ticketing. We lead the league, as far as the percentage of fans and attendees that use their digital ticket on their phone to enter. Close to 98%, which is great. So we’re getting smarter and smarter each season, of knowing exactly who is in the building. And when we can realize that it’s a first time attendee, we’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that we have some type of a touch-point with them. Obviously you can’t hit everybody, but we try to maximize the best that we can to make sure that they walk away with “Man, they knew that that was my first game,” or “that it was my birthday,” or “my anniversary,” and other things through our database and analytics group, that we can continue to broaden the education of knowing who our fans are.

Chris Wise:

Sure. Do you play well with the other major league sports teams in town? And do you do collaborative things to get people to come to events, whether it’s soccer or baseball or basketball, whatever it might be?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, we’re absolutely good friends, and we play very well with them. It doesn’t matter what sport it is. We feel like we’re, in theory, competing for the same dollars, but let’s do it the right way. Let’s collaborate. Now, it’s a little bit more difficult, based on the various league rules and what you can do league-to-league, as far as packaging tickets across multiple teams and multiple venues. But it’s definitely a “Let’s all play in the sandbox nicely together,” and we love it when the other teams win, because that just raises the mojo in the market. And if every team is winning, that’s not a bad thing. It’s just, you don’t want to be in a place where every team is losing, necessarily. That can be a little bit tougher on those that follow and live here. And so it’s just one of those that we definitely try to work together. We see each other a ton, whether that’s just doing business or socially and personally, and respect what they do on a day-in day-out basis, and try to help and assist when called upon.

Chris Wise:

I’m going to jump to… How important is the implementation, for you, of alternative revenue streams? And I’m thinking e-sports and gaming and what that will hold for us. Or are there other things that you look at, from a alternative revenue stream?

Steve LaCroix:

Well, I think any new or alternative revenue stream is a good thing. I think, finally, as a professional team, we have, as well as many others have, figured out how to monetize our digital media streams. And e-sports is a big deal. Our ownership group just launched a Call of Duty franchise, hosted the inaugural event for that league in our marketplace a few weeks back. And that’s separate from the Minnesota Vikings and our Vikings revenue streams, but it’s certainly where the world is going. Gaming, our NFL league office is still trying to figure out all the different ways that teams can engage and potentially monetize. Sports betting is not legal in the state of Minnesota at this point, so we’re not necessarily a trendsetter, but we’re watching what other teams and states are doing.

Steve LaCroix:

Then you mentioned, towards the open, as far as Viking Lakes… Again, separate from the Vikings revenue bucket. But our 200-acre Viking Lakes, which is really 160 of the 200 acres, versus 40 of the acres are our Vikings headquarters, Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center, and the adjacent TCO Stadium, is really where I have a lot of focus on, eventually, a thousand apartment units. We have an Omni Viking Lakes Hotel that’ll open in October of this year. Very unique. Omni, to the Twin Cities market, is new. And so we have all kinds of cool ideas of what we want to do with those other acres, whether it’s some other corporate headquarters, and there’s a lot of things that we can do that are live-play-work type of mentality to how we activate this space that we have here in Eagan.

Chris McAdoo:

Well, hey, I’m going to, I’m going to jump in here, because I feel like we have heard a lot about about the things that you guys are doing to bring in folks, and like you said, Steve, surprise and delight them. Right? And I think that sounds like it’s trying to be carried over through the development of the new complex, of everything. And I want to know, from your perspective, as of doing this probably for the course of two decades, and seeing the impact to the changing generations that are coming in. Grandpa, son, and grandson isn’t necessarily guaranteed to come to the game anymore. And so I think it’s an interesting thing to, one, to bring in those e-sports, to embrace the new things, from a revenue standpoint, as well as a fan-engagement standpoint. All that.

Chris McAdoo:

But I have a really… Maybe a simple question is, what’s one of your favorite memories, over the past two decades, from a fan engagement or an athlete and a fan interacting? What’s some of the things that gets you excited that have gotten you excited and just proud to be where you are?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, boy, that’s a tough one, to just say one or two things. I mean, what really resonates is the… For example, the Minneapolis Miracle in the playoffs a couple years ago, and to be in that stadium, to have that play happen, to walk-off touchdown when no one in the world thought that we could do that at that time, and what that meant, not just for our fan base, but to be there in person and to experience that is… You cannot replicate that. And so those are the kinds of moments, they don’t come along very often, but those are the kinds of moments that you really appreciate what you do and what that means to the fan base.

Steve LaCroix:

And again, I didn’t throw the ball, catch it, and run the end zone, but that fan base was there, primed for the evening. And everything that happens outside those white lines, we can impact. And so that’s our focus, is, how do we win off the field, game in and game out? And it’s just come so far in the two decades that I’ve been here, coming from the Metrodome to US Bank Stadium, and what that experience is, to be in that stadium. The Metrodome was… It served its purpose. It was loud. Once you got to your seat, you were fine, but otherwise there were really no other amenities. Whereas here, we’re trying to use our fans, activate their crowd prompts via video when we need it. And our Skol Chant ritual and our Gjallarhorn Ritual and things that we just could not do in the previous venue really make it unique. So we’re really proud of those types of traditions that we think are going to be here for a long, long time with this organization and future generations.

Chris Wise:

With that in mind, thinking about the incredible experience of being there for something like the Minneapolis Miracle, the Big Catch, or any of those kind of things, the things that are hard to describe but easy to feel. And with that in mind, what do you think right now is the greatest threat to that? The greatest threat to getting people in those seats to live sports attendance?

Steve LaCroix:

Well, I think if you lose the integrity of the fan experience, and making it unique and special to be there, I think that is a slippery slope. I think if your venue does not have connectivity… We have a soon-to-be-24- and a soon-to-be-22-year-old, and if they cannot connect through their social media, I think that’s a problem. And that’s, I’m assuming, why some college football venues are struggling to get college students to attend games in certain cases. They’re not willing to give up that connectivity for that amount of time, if it’s an older, larger football stadium on a college campus. And so we need to be careful on pricing people out. Obviously it can be very expensive to go to a live sporting event, when you have to get transportation there, whether that’s Uber or you have to pay to park, and food and beverage, and the ticket itself, and so on and so forth.

Steve LaCroix:

And really, the TV home viewing experience is so good, in the NFL and other sports as well. It’s a fine balance of, again, that you want to be sold out and have, in our case, 66,000 people in the building, and hopefully having them as engaged as you can, and then a bunch of people watching at home. That’s a great combination. I think when you start to fall out of line is when your team is not very good on TV to watch, or you’re watching on TV and nobody’s there live. You’re kind of wondering, why am I watching this at home on TV? So they really go hand-in-hand, and if you can find that right balance, I think that really pays off in the end.

Chris Wise:

It’s amazing. You talked a second ago about… You said you didn’t catch it. You didn’t throw it. But in the work we’ve done, we’ve seen where the fans that we’ve talked to… Oh, the emotional impact. That they do feel it. They have thrown it. And if they drop it, they feel just as if they were the ones that dropped it. It’s amazing, the impact that you have, that emotional impact, that actually creates the fans, to come time and again and have that engagement. And it’s not a cursory relationship. You have an intimate relationship with thousands of people. And to hear what you’re doing is inspiring.

Steve LaCroix:

I say all the time that apathy is the killer of sports teams. If your fans fall in that world of not really caring, that’s troubling. And so you want them to be excited for you and happy for you, even mad at you if you lost the game or you didn’t sign the free agent that they wanted. But you just want them engaged and emotionally a part of what you’re doing. And so I just think that, if we can continue to do that, we’ll continue to have a very strong fan base and eventually get over the hump to win that world championship.

Chris Wise:

Steve, you’ve been awesome. I’m out of questions. Is there anything else that you really like to share with your peers and other folks that are involved in the business? Or about to come into the business, that have that glimmer in their eye, like you had early on, of… What do they need to do? How do they move forward, and how’re they going to succeed with the world that’s evolving around them?

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah. I would just say that, when those that are trying to break into the sports business, whether you’re trying to figure out what to do with your life as you choose a career, or whether you have that degree in something that’s potentially related to sports… There’s a lot more opportunity, because there’s a lot more teams now that are a lot larger than they were when I started. But that said, there’s a lot more degrees in various areas that can be involved in sports, and so we’ve become a very specialized business. And so marketing, it can be 19 different departments, in our case.

Steve LaCroix:

And so it’s just one of those where you can be a specialist. You can be a graphic designer that didn’t have any idea they were going to work in sports and work for our, in our case, our True North in-house ad agency and design team. And so there’s a lot of different ways, whether it’s a team photographer to a analytics expert to… I could go on and on. We’ve become very specialized, but all those specialties need to work together and be collaborative to make the business side of the organization really work out effectively.

Chris Wise:

And you’ve led the way within your organization, as far as bringing all those new disciplines to the table.

Steve LaCroix:

Yeah, it’s surreal to look back to what I came into in ’01 to where we are now, and we have more than doubled in size as far as our organization, since the mid-2000s, a good chunk of that being in various sales and marketing areas. And we now have a legitimate analytics team, a legitimate in-house agency. Our Vikings entertainment network is really a broadcasting company here at TCOPC, and so they create all of our content, and it’s just been really fun to see all these talented folks come together and really do what we do. And then you look back in the rear view mirror to when I started in the business, and it’s just shocking on how far our industry has come, and ideally how much better we’ve gotten in interacting with our fans and knowing who they are and giving them what they want, whether that’s specialized content to opportunities for just interacting with our players to us impacting the community. And there’s just so many different ways that we run as a business now than we did in previous generations and decades.

Chris Wise:

Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining us today on Fired Up. I do believe we have accomplished our mission of getting behind the gates and beyond the numbers with Steve LaCroix of the Minnesota Vikings. And one of the big takeaways that I have here… Steve, you talk about bringing in great people, right? If you’re the average of the five people around you all day, make sure those five people are… Like you said, are they dedicated? Are they creative? Are they willing to collaborate? And above all, when it comes to sports, are they willing to go that extra mile for that first-time visitor or that long-time season ticket holder? Steve LaCroix, we love you. And just like Lizzo, you know everybody loves the Minnesota Vikings.

Steve LaCroix:

Love it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Skol Vikes!

Chris McAdoo:

Thanks for listening in. 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 fans, at no cost to you. Your fan club subscription includes our e-publications, podcasts like this one, exclusive blogs, quarterly 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!