IRVINE, CA and EAST LANSING, MI--(Marketwire - Apr 10, 2012) - Paciolan, the leading provider of ticketing, marketing, and fundraising solutions in college athletics, announced today that Michigan State University (MSU) has signed a 10-year partnership renewal with the company. With the renewal, MSU will be implementing Paciolan's Access Management for football, stadium-wide, as well as its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. MSU has been working with Paciolan since 1988.
"Paciolan is a trusted partner that enables us to offer innovative services that enhance our relationship with our fans, season ticket holders and donors throughout every aspect of our operation," said Mark Hollis, director of athletics for Michigan State University. "We look forward to leveraging new tools provided by Paciolan to continue to raise the bar for all Spartan fans."
A proven athletics program, MSU won a share of the 2011-12 Big Ten regular season basketball championship as well as the Big Ten Basketball Tournament. MSU also achieved its second back-to-back 11 win season in football and won the Big Ten Legends Division, which earned it a spot in the first ever Big 10 Football Championship game, followed by a victory at the Outback Bowl.
After successfully implementing Paciolan's Access Management scanning for basketball and hockey, MSU plans to extend this process to include football, stadium-wide, for the 2012 season. Once Access Management is installed, Spartan fans will also be able to resell tickets, or transfer tickets online to friends or family, if they cannot attend a home football game.
MSU will also be adding Paciolan's CRM solution, which will allow it to enhance its ticket sales efforts, and efficiently manage relationships with Spartan season ticketholders and donors. MSU will also be able to accurately document every transaction and enhance its communications process to provide personalized services for each Spartan fan.
By enhancing the online experience and leveraging the Paciolan ticketing system, MSU secured record online adoption rates, including selling 100 percent of all student season tickets online and delivering all of the tickets digitally to their student IDs. MSU also drove 60 percent of all their season ticket renewals online and sold nearly 70 percent of all single tickets through the Internet.
Last year, MSU partnered with Ballena Technologies to offer an online reseating process complete with a full 3D rendering of the Breslin Center along with integration into the Paciolan system to purchase tickets. Because the process was such a fan friendly experience, the MSU administration decided to implement the online Ballena/Paciolan interface to handle seat upgrades and changes for football, hockey and basketball for each season moving forward.
MSU is also the leading college athletics institution in the country in the area of online display ad retargeting, which serves online ticketing advertisements to fans that browsed an event, but didn't purchase tickets.
"We're thrilled with our retargeting results which allowed us to deliver timely ticketing offers to fans," said Wendy Brown, assistant athletic director of ticket operations for Michigan State University. "Through this innovative marketing technique, we've generated over $225,000 in incremental revenue with a return on investment of $43 earned per every $1 spent."
"Michigan State has a proven track record of success with its athletics initiatives, and we're very proud to be working with such a great program," said Dave Butler, chief executive officer of Paciolan. "It's been very exciting working alongside them as they continue to conquer new territory leveraging our industry-proven ticketing, marketing and fundraising solutions. We look forward to implementing our Access Management scanning solution for football and to taking their customer engagement to new levels with our CRM system."
About Paciolan
Founded in 1980, Paciolan is the leader in venue enablement, powering ticketing, fundraising and marketing technology solutions for leading organizations across North America. Collectively, Paciolan powers over 500 live entertainment organizations that sell over 100 million tickets annually. Primary markets include college athletics, professional sports, performing arts, arenas and museums. Paciolan is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast-Spectacor.
Visit www.paciolan.com for additional company information.
Comcast-Spectacor
Comcast-Spectacor (comcast-spectacor.com) is the Philadelphia-based sports and entertainment company which owns the Philadelphia Flyers (NHL), the home arena for both the Flyers and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, the Wells Fargo Center, and four Flyers Skate Zone community ice skating and hockey rinks. In addition, Comcast-Spectacor is also the principal owner of Global Spectrum, the fastest growing firm in the public assembly management field with more than 100 facilities throughout the United States and Canada; Ovations Food Services, a food and beverage service provider; New Era Tickets, a ticketing and marketing company for public assembly facilities; Front Row Marketing Services, a commercial rights sales company; FanOne, a digital fan marketing company; and Paciolan, the leading provider of venue enablement, ticketing, fundraising and marketing technology solutions.