Episode 11: Behind the Scenes with The Dallas Stars

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Podwalk. I'm your host, Radhika Sveri, Professor of Practice at the Southern Methodist University. And this is a podcast conversation with industry experts on brand, consumer, and human-centered design. If you'd like to watch the video of this recording, tune in to our YouTube channel called Podview. (upbeat music) Joining me today is Matt Bowman, Chief Revenue Officer of the Dallas-Stars Club. Matt is a veteran with 17 years of experience in multiple organizations. He's worked with the NBA, NFL, and NHL to name a few. And today we're gonna talk about three key topics, hot topics. We're gonna talk about hustling in a tough market, expanding the market for better ROI, and of course fan experience. Welcome, Matt. It is such a pleasure to have you with us. - Thank you so much for having me, Radhika. It's great to be here. - Fantastic. So Matt, as I was talking to people at SMU and outside about you coming to the podcast and the pod view, people were so excited. And I will tell you a few years ago, when I used to talk about the stars. I lived in Vermont, and you know, familiar with hockey, and when I would talk about the stars, I don't know if I'd gotten that level of excitement as I see today. And so I'm curious, as you have gone through the many stops starting with the bases, then you worked for the Dallas Cowboys, now you're with the stars, and have held several positions with the stars. What's the one thing that really excites you about coming to work every single day? Radhika, I am incredibly fortunate that I get to work in a job that I love. I love simple things like driving to the arena on a game night. I like walk into the building, I like seeing our fans, I like seeing our building full, and our product is unbelievable. So at the end of the day, that is our product. That's what we're selling and promoting, and I'm very fortunate to have a great product to sell. And that's what gets me excited every day. - And I think that excitement is certainly transforming into excitement with the fans and all of us, the rest of us in the community. So thank you for that. So you know, as you've gone through your 11 years with the Dallas stars, and you've had several different positions you were in sales for a while. Then you ran marketing, you're now the chief revenue officer, you were the CMO. So 11 years is a long time, and I'm curious as to, what is that one thing that you think really worked for you that has helped you stay on and really enjoy the moment that you have with the Dallas stars? - Yeah, I mean, the growth that I've had, I think, first off, it's attributed to great leadership and mentorship that I've had. So that's one, but I think from me, what I've always strived to do is never be put into one box. Coming up through ticket sales in our business, it's easy to get the tag of, you know, Matt's a ticket sales guy. And that's all he's gonna be. I really made sure to say, I gotta expand my skill set. And as I got to be the head of ticket sales, I said, I need to learn more about marketing because these two things, revenue generation and tickets and marketing are so intertwined. And I think I have the intelligence to say, I don't know everything. And I need to go and talk to the head of marketing, but also the people that do the day-to-day work and say, you know, what is it that you do? How do you write email copies? Why did we post this on our social media channels? Well, we're trying to do. And I just over time learned enough to say, I know how to put this all together. And that's kind of how marketing and ticket sales became part of my will. - And just sort of roll up your sleeves and ask a lot of questions. Ask the right questions as you're going through this. - No enough to know you don't know everything 'cause you don't, in fact, you probably don't know enough about enough and ask questions, learn, and always continue to build your skill set. - And that's certainly a very humble approach. So as we talk about learning and continuous learning, there's so much changing in the industry as well, which again, accelerates the need for accelerated learning. And as you think about the hockey industry, a lot has changed, a lot has changed in five years, a lot has changed in this last decade post-COVID-2. What is the one thing that stands out that you think has shifted in the industry that comes to mind? And then perhaps one thing that you feel, you know what, it hasn't changed. In all these years that I've been with the Dallas stars, this is the one thing that hasn't shifted. - Yeah, I think in the last decade, there's been a real recognition both at the NHL league level and at our local club levels that hockey and the NHL, we need to be more culturally relevant to more people. And so I think what you're seeing is a lot of outreach to audiences that may not have traditionally been hockey fans. Some of the stuff that we've done at the league level and the club level has worked. Some of it has been failure, but we're trying. - And you learn from that failure. - We learn from those failures. And, you know, I think we look at, you know, we're comparing ourselves a lot to cultural sports in Dallas like the Cowboys and the Mavericks and the Rangers. And we always feel like we have more work to do to be culturally relevant to more people. And that's where our energy is. But one thing that has stayed really consistent, Radica has been our product and that is our game. And I think our game itself, I would put our live event experience up there with any other sport. I didn't play hockey growing up. But once I got into the business and learned about the sport, two or three games is all it takes where you say this is incredible. - This is incredible. - It's fun. It's a party. - It's high energy. - High energy. So we just need to get that in front of more people that otherwise may not be paying attention. - Yeah, and I can attest to that. I was the first time I met you. I was at the Indian Cultural Night at the Dallas stars and interviewing the first South Asian NHL player. And that's when we talked about you coming to this podcast. And I wondered then and I would love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts of how you have began penetrating the market. So as you think about the hockey as a sport being tough in the South, in general, Texas, neighboring states, in a heart, hockey is not a hot sport. Then you start thinking about Dallas being so cosmopolitan between the South and North of Dallas. And you guys are doing a tremendous job of expanding that market and penetrating that market. So talk to me a little bit about market segmentation. How have you began expanding within Dallas? What are some of the challenges that you see as you're doing that and how is that helping generate growth? - It really starts with data. So we do a lot of, first, you know, even today we're looking at what does the market look like? And based on companies we work with like you go or marketing, we deal with who are the Dallas stars fans we have in this market? Who are not? Who are fans that people that could be fans that have the potential to be interested in us but are not yet interested in us? Who is never going to be interested in us? Okay, that's, we can put those to the side. But then we've less developed strategies to try to segment those potential fans that deliver content, sales messages, advertising. Let's try to get in front of those audiences to just generate a little bit more interest because we think we have something to offer those audiences. They may just not know it yet. - Yeah. - And some of those cross sections are made with ethnicity, like we did with the Indian Cultural Night or like we've done with our Hispanic outreach. Some of those are with our gender through we're trying to get more women and girls to be interested in hockey. We cross section it a lot of different ways and then develop strategies to try to each attack each one of those audiences. - And it's beyond ticket sales because it's also inspirational to communities as they learn more about the sports, as parents learn more about the sports, introducing them to their children. So it's also inspirational for the community to bring on players who may traditionally not be hockey players. I think it's sort of like win-win in so many different ways. And it is sort of, it's a tough market. I think hockey is just a tough market in general. So, and you guys have done this tremendous job achieving so much because today when I go to a bar, I see hockey games on television. It's not something that necessarily saw 10 years ago. So it's much more about the sport has become much more prevalent in homes and people talk about it more. People are willing to watch it more. What advice would you have for others in similarly tough industries? How do you hustle through those tough times? How do you roll up your sleeves? You talked about that a little bit more and just keep going when the going gets tough. Well, first off, have a team that wins. And I know that every sport or not every company obviously is a team. But I think how could you translate the concept of a winning team into your business? I think that can be translated in the ways like creating viral content on social that engage with your product. Certainly for us, winning is the driver. And so the first reason why we've had so much success because our hockey operation has built a great team. We went to the Western Conference Finals this year. My job then is to make sure that we're maximizing that opportunity on the ice wherever it is. There's been years when we haven't had great team success. How are we making sure we're holding the business together and growing incrementally? If we do win, the pressure is even more on me in my group to say, are we fully taken advantage of that? Because the market is paying attention. The interesting thing about Dallas is because there's so much opportunity. We talked about variety. Once your run is over, this city goes on to what's next. And thankfully, our Texas Rangers are playing great right now. And now they're getting a lot of the sports consciousness. And our run to the Western Conference Finals, even though it was only a month ago, seems like ancient history. So we have to use this opportunity in the off season to continue to engage fans that maybe for the first time paid attention to us last year during that run. Yeah. So talk about fan experience because you're absolutely right. It's that constant engagement. And it's that constant engagement in a world that is overwhelmed with information today. It's overwhelmed for our attention as fans. So we find it overwhelming as so many messages come at us. So let's talk a little bit about fan experience earlier when we were speaking about the total experience at the stadium. You were talking about how the journey starts from the time that someone parks their car in their parking lot to the time they leave. What have you guys done? And I know you have done tremendous. But walk us through a few examples of what you have done or are doing to improve to elevate that fan experience. Yeah, we call it-- and this isn't-- we didn't coin this phrase, but really the driveway to driveway experience. When you leave your driveway to go to the game, how's the traffic? Where do you park? How do you get to the building? How's the game experience? All the way to the end of the game? These are elements that we try to look at all the time. I will say that we've got the bones of a really, really great fan experience. And I think our fans will say that. What we need to do is always look at tweaks. How do we make parking better? How do we make the travel from the parking garage to the building in February easier? Seamless. Seamless. More comfortable. How do we make standing in concession lines quicker, faster? How do we use technology to allow someone to-- if they can't make it to a game, return a ticket, get credit back. Use that credit to make me buy a T-shirt the next time they come to a game versus having to fumble with your wallet. All of these things are, I think, elements that we're always looking to tweak. And I think it's iterating. It's not a lot of times massive overhalls. It's improving, improving, chipping away to make things just a little bit better game-to-game season to season. Yeah, talk a little bit about the app experience you just made reference to the app as you were talking about. Someone not being able to come to a game, perhaps, leaving that seat empty because they couldn't come in the last minute, something happened. And you now are giving people the option of trading their ticket in or giving their ticket back and getting credit in their mobile wallet, which you're going to accumulate. It's sort of like a frequent flyup program. But if you want to use an analogy with your season's tickets or just your tickets, how does that work? And what advantage do you see for both you all as well as for your fans? How is this going to be a better experience for them as they continue? Yeah, we view our Dallas Stars app as kind of the center of the fan experience. We've gotten to a point now in our industry where pretty much all tickets are now mobile. When I started, there were no mobile tickets. It was all paper. You went from paper to a PDF that you printed out at home. To now, it's all digital. And that provides us all kinds of benefits, like no one who you are when you come to a game. Yeah, it just makes the ability. Flexibility, so your tickets there. Now, when we talk about an unused ticket, that's really detrimental to our business. We want people if you have a ticket to come to the game, because if you don't, an empty seat means a loss of per cap revenue and FNB emerge. It means a quieter building. A quieter building. A tougher place for our team to win. And if you think about a ticket, it's a perishable item, because when that date is over, you can't get it back. So that's lost product to put it in terms of other industries. And so our thought is, instead of not coming, and just burning that ticket that you purchased, what if you could turn that ticket in and get credit back? And then that credit, which lives in a mobile wallet in your app-- Accumulates. Accumulates. And it's integrated with our point of sale at the concession stand. It's integrated with our point of sale at the merch store. It's integrated with our online merch store. So you can use that Dallas Stars wallet-- Very flexible approach-- To purchase all kinds of things, because you didn't go to the game. Yeah. And so that disappointment becomes satisfaction in a sense, because you're like, OK, I couldn't go for the game, but-- 100%. I have these credit points, and I can use them for a future game. These empty seats, tickets that we used to say before they're on your phone, tickets that stayed in your drawer with the biggest enemy. Now, it's unused tickets in your phone. And so there's always going to be that element, but how do you turn that into a positive-- Into a positive-- Into a positive-- Yeah, it also takes the fear away of buying a ticket, because sometimes you have that fear that, oh, I'm going to spend a couple of hundred dollars, and what if I can go? So it reduces that fear, which motivates purchase as well. So from just so many different avenues, that's such a fantastic brilliant idea. And how does that-- let's talk a little bit more about the experience when you are in the stadium, in the venue. You have a lot of corporate sponsorships. You were talking about that earlier. Talk to me a little bit about how the corporate sponsorships work, and how do they work along with the Mavericks, because the building is shared between all the Mavericks and many other events that happen there. So how does that behind the scenes-- how does that all work? I like to think sports teams are because the original influencers, right? We have big audiences. We always have. And so advertisers are attracted to that, because if they can align with us in our audience, which is significant, then maybe that brand can rub off on all of our fans. And that can help, obviously, their brand and their business. And so that's the way we approach corporate partnerships, is we go to major brands like AT&T, Toyota, American Airlines. And we have conversations with their CMOs and their VPs of marketing to say, here's how we can help you grow your brand. We ask, what are you trying to do? What are your main business objectives? What audiences are you guys trying to engage with? How do those audiences line up with how the Dow Stars fanbase looks? We marry those two together and deliver assets to help accomplish that mission. And that's really the crux of how corporate partnerships work for us. Yeah. And the assets are shipped between the different teams. Is a partnership between the Mavs and the Stars? Mark Cuban and Tom Galardi are two owners. Are basically two main partners that help manage the American Airlines Center, our building. And so the assets within that building are shared assets. And we, as a partnership, have to agree, OK, let's go approach Toyota and pitch the Lexus Club as an opportunity for them to name a hospitality area. We have to do that in partnership with the Mavs first. And then we go to Lexus and say, Lexus, would you guys like to be the entitled partners for this club? It's a very collaborative approach between the different stakeholders that are a part of this. And very different, because a lot of teams have their own building, some of them own their own building. And they can just say, we want to make a decision and go to a partner. We oftentimes have to work in conjunction with our partners, the Mavs, to get those done. Makes it stronger. You have multiple brands that you're working with. So let's talk a little bit about data. As you are working on fan experience and elevating that fan experience, what has been some of-- what are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing in utilizing data to give fans a real-time experience? As they're looking for content, they're looking for ads. They're looking for scores. It's just real-time information as they're going through that experience. I would post the game. What are some of the challenges? And how are you using the data? Hockey is a unique sport, and then it's so fluid. Baseball was the original kind of analytics sport. Because you have a pitch. You have a hit, or a out, or an error. All those stats lead into a story of what happened in that game. Hockey is a little different in that it's a lot harder to measure things like puck possession, time on ice, how fast was a player going? How fast did the puck go? The league has done a really good-- a lot of good work lately over the last decade to try to build up those analytics so that we can start to track these things. Why do these things matter? They matter because for one, fans like them. Number two, we can say, what was the fastest shot tonight? Brought to you by-- Yeah, it's a concert. Yes. It also really starts to come into play in a lot of markets, not hours yet, when sports betting becomes reality. Because all of this data feeds the sports books to help them understand how do we create lines, and how do we get people to bet on our games. There's a revenue opportunity that's massive with sports gambling. In addition, there's a fan engagement opportunity there that people want to say, I'm at the American Airlines Center, the stars are up two to one, and I think they're going to win. I want to put 10 bucks down to see if they're going to win the game. I need to put 10 bucks down. But I'm only going to win five, because the data is saying that it's likely the stars are going to win. And so you're going to have to risk more to win more money. That kind of data, I think, is the future for us to generate more fans and also just better in form, existing fans. Better in form. It's more information. It's more excitement, as well, as you talk about the betting. So you talked a little bit about the vision. So it walked me through what's next? From an innovation standpoint, you've been with the Dallas stars club for 11 years. What's next in your mind that will take Dallas stars as a team, as a franchise, even further upon? Yeah, I mean, I think this, certainly the analytics is going to help feed our hockey. We're already really engaged with this new data that we're getting, and our guys are so smart and learned how to leverage that data to find little edges in a salary cap board to just make it that much better. So that, certainly, on the ice is where we're going. We're looking at things like AI. Yeah, we're monitoring AI really closely. We already use AI in some small fundamental ways. If you go to our Dallas stars website today, you'll have an opportunity to chat. That chat is an AI-powered chatbot. If you tell that chatbot, I'm interested in a 10-game package. The chatbot knows to send that conversation to an actual human and start a conversation that we can maybe pitch a 10-game package to you. In addition, we're working with platforms, like one called Wolfcycle. We've got 70,000 roughly single game ticket buyers every year. There's no way my ticket sales reps can call to say, hey, buy a season seat. This Wolfcycle will go and send emails that appear to be coming from a human being. But if we get a response, it's positive in the form of I want to buy a ticket plan, for example. Again, it funnels it over to a sales rep. We're not yet in the place where AI is creating content, video content, or anything like that. See some horror stories of people trying it at the point. Yeah, especially at the moment. At the moment. But we're monitoring it really closely. But I can want to just ascribed as a fantastic way of also giving a better experience to people as they're looking for either purchase of tickets or just attending at the venue as well. So tell me a little bit about yourself. Just to sort of bring it back home. You are the chief revenue officer at the Dallas stars. You've had this just exceptional journey over the last 17 years, working with three fantastic organizations, multiple sports, done a lot, seen a lot. What's your legacy, what would you like to leave the world with? Well, I want first is for my kids and my wife to think that I'm a good husband and a good father. And I hope this job is demanding. And I do really work hard to balance-- I'm sure you do too-- to balance that career aspiration with making sure you're there for your kids and being a part of their lives and helping them grow. And I hope that I'm setting an example for my kids so that they can say, I want to do what that does or I want to be like that in my own way. That would be a great legacy for me. From a professional perspective, I look at myself as a cog in this Dallas stars machine, a small piece. The team is the biggest piece. The coaching staff, whether we win or not, but I think our success as an organization, I'm going to benefit from it. That will be my legacy, hopefully, is that we can go be a top NHL franchise on and off the ice. And the role I play in that will be what I'll hang my head on at the end of the day. Fantastic. I absolutely love what your legacy and your hot process and leaving your children with some inspiration and inspirational words. So thank you so much. I have very much enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for coming to SMU and giving us so much information to think about. It was so cool to really hear the behind the scenes of how it works, how you'll work with your partners in bringing the sport forward to the community. So thank you. And I'm going to attempt to recap and please jump in if I've missed anything. So Matt, we have talked about hustling but strategically using AI, using data and hustling in a very tough market and just sort of rolling up your sleeves, learning and moving forward, whether it's through market segmentation or through technology. You've also talked about fan experience. And I really enjoyed hearing how, at every point, at every touch point, you all are considering how to elevate that fan experience for your growing fan base. And lastly, the servant leadership and your thoughts on the legacy that you want to leave, which is really just being there as a good father, as a good human and leaving the world better than you found it. So thank you again, Matt. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This has been a lot of fun. And you know, best of luck to all the students and everyone listening. And thank you for having me. It's been an honor.