IMG to sell GSU’S tickets

Georgia State’s athletic department is outsourcing its season-ticket sales in an attempt to increase its revenues.

The Panthers finalized a three-year contract Thursday with IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions to sell season and group tickets.

Tiffany Daniels, senior associate athletic director for external affairs, said the goal is to sell at least $1 million in tickets in 2012-13 with increases to $1.2 million in the second year and $1.4 million in the final year.

By contrast, using its own sales team consisting mostly of parttime employees, Daniels said Georgia State projects it will fall $240,000 short of its goal of selling $980,000 in tickets for the 2011-12 athletic year. Georgia State made up the difference in revenue with better-than-projected performances in corporate sales, multimedia rights and other revenue streams.

“We need [these increases] to continue to grow the fan base,” Daniels said.

Daniels said they would have outsourced the sales even if Georgia State hadn’t agreed to join the Sun Belt Conference earlier this month. FBS football requires an average attendance of 15,000 per game. Georgia State averaged 14,286 fans last season.

“Moving into FBS, those attendance milestones are necessary to maintain,” she said.

IMG, whose client list includes Tennessee, Penn State and Texas-san Antonio, will receive 30 percent of sales revenue in the first year, with that percentage increasing to as much as 40 percent, if certain goals are met. IMG won’t receive less than 30 percent or more than 40 percent in any year.

Georgia Tech did something similar in 2009, outsourcing its ticket sales to the Aspire Group in a three-year deal that paid a similar percentage. Tech exercised a two-year option last year that extends the deal through 2013.

As IMG moves forward, Daniels said that fans can expect a better customer-service experience, including follow-up thankyou calls, for example.

“A big part will be groups,” Daniels said. “Our intent is to grow season tickets. That’s our bread and butter. You can supplement that through the sale of groups.”

The outsourced operation will be run at the GSU Sports Arena with three full-time employees using GSU’S database of 106,000 contacts.

Georgia State’s ticket-sales operation was staffed by four permanent part-time employees and was supplemented by as many as eight students. They were supervised by a manager, Kyle Mckeon, who will assume more responsibilities on the development side, and an assistant athletic director for development, Kevin Miller, who recently accepted a job with West Virginia’s athletic fundraising organization. GSU is looking to fill that position.

Daniels said using fulltime people, trained in ticket sales by IMG, was one of the selling points. “They are wearing the IMG armor with a Georgia State jersey,” Daniels said. “We wanted someone well-versed and trained ... to continue to service our fans and to continue to improve the experience.”