The Numbers

If a company takes a client to a sporting event, what is the potential return on that investment? That’s what customers ask all of the time of Spotlight Ticket Management, a Calabasas company that manages 9 million sports and concert tickets each year for clients from giant companies such as Wells Fargo & Co. to small law firms. Chief Executive Tony Knopp thinks he knows the answer. The average ticket price across all sports in the Spotlight system is $154. And in return, a company gets about three hours of face time with a client –representing $161,544 in potential business. “There is a significant return on investment,” Knopp said. “When there’s not much difference between Firm A and Firm B, getting clients into a game with their kids could make all the difference.” Still, while the $154 is a hard figure, the potential business figure is a softer number, Knopp conceded. That’s because Spotlight obtained the number, which it uses for marketing purposes, from its software, which requires that employees enter the amount of potential business in play when they request a ticket. But after the game, it’s difficult to connect final sales back to a day at the ballpark. And the system doesn’t require companies to say if a deal was reached. “There’s no way someone buys something solely because of going to a game,” Knopp said. “It’s what you’re trying to influence, which is what we track.” Kelly Riggs, founder of sales consulting firm Vmax Performance Group in Tulsa, Okla. agreed that it’s hard to define cause-and-effect with purchase decisions. In fact, he thinks the effectiveness of sports events as a sales tool largely depends on the follow-up relationship. “It’s very easy to rely on the event to create the business transaction, which is a huge mistake,” he said. “If the salesperson says, ‘We went to the game, so how about a little something for me?’ that’s not going to work 95 percent of the time.” – Joel Russell