FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- With the start of Russell Falcons Training Camp on Saturday coinciding with the sale of single-game tickets at 10 a.m., the Atlanta Falcons enter their prime selling season already with a 5-percent increase in 2009 season tickets over 2008, according to Dave Cohen, the team’s vice president of sales.
The Falcons’ miraculous 2008 turnaround, in which the team rebounded from the sentencing of quarterback Michael Vick to federal prison on dog-fighting charges and the departure of head coach Bobby Petrino in midseason in ’07 to earn its first playoff berth in four years, appears to be driving sales despite the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
“We exceeded what we thought we would sell in season tickets,” Cohen said.
Falcons Vice President of Marketing Jim Smith said the team had experienced “giant growth” in 2008 over the disappointments of 2007.
The Falcons would not reveal their actual number of season ticket holders.
Recent NFL-commissioned research that surveyed a large segment of 2008 season ticket holders identified perceived direction of the team, ticket affordability and whether or not fans feel valued by the team as key drivers of purchase behavior.
“We’re doing well in all three areas right now,” Smith said.
Said Cohen: “We have a great product. I equate it to, if you don’t have a product, you’re not going to sell.”
In 2008, the Falcons provided fans with a great deal of ammunition to demonstrate that they are on the right track. First-year General Manager Thomas Dimitroff was named The Sporting News NFL Executive of the Year; first-year Head Coach Mike Smith earned Associated Press NFL Coach of the Year honors, as he did from The Sporting News, and quarterback Matt Ryan likewise won recognition as the league’s offensive rookie of the year from The Sporting News and the AP.
Based on that 2008 11-5 performance and first-round playoff loss to eventual NFC Champion Arizona, expectations are high entering 2009 that the franchise will record its first back-to-back winning records in its 44 seasons.
In addition to the honors garnered by Dimitroff, Smith and Ryan, independent rankings and studies show a change in perception about the team for the positive.
The Falcons rocketed up from 2008 to 2009 in ESPN The Magazine’s rankings of all 122 North American pro sports franchises in the four major leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball). The Falcons rated No. 43 overall by the magazine, for whom financial analysis was performed by the University of Oregon and fan surveys were conducted by marketing research firms Maddock Douglas and GMI NetReflector. That was up from 119th in 2008. The Falcons received their highest ranking in the coaching category (18th overall) and second highest in the players category (28th). The ownership of Arthur M. Blank received a No. 40 ranking with a No. 14 ranking in the sub-category of “honest ownership.”
Among NFL teams, the magazine ranked the Falcons as the 11th best franchise and second in their market behind the Braves.
To help translate that into selling tickets, the Falcons have adapted two best practices within the last year that have bolstered sales: a new customer-service team focused on season ticket holder satisfaction and a dedicated group sales team.
Cohen said last year the team did not start selling groups until the season began. Entering this season, the team had created a two-person group and it already has sold more group tickets than it did all of last year.
Cohen said that the three-person customer service group is more “fan-centric” than in the past. The team hired Debbie Knowlan to be its director of customer service during the 2008 bye week.
That group was instrumental in calling season ticket holders to renew for 2009. (The team began renewals for ’09 earlier than it had ever done and also created a six-month payment plan for the first time.)
Knowlan’s group has created a Facebook page exclusively for season ticket holders that apprises them of news and benefits and reacts to their needs.
Beginning Saturday Cohen expects selling to heat up both in terms of season and single-game tickets.
“There’s no better time to sell than when people can see your product,” Cohen said.
To take advantage of that, the team launched what Smith called “a very small public relations blitz,” mostly centered around 15-second radio promos, to “create buzz” and highlight single-game sales. Those promos will run on AM sports talk 790 “The Zone,” Falcons Radio Home DAVE FM and V-103, as well as Clear Channel’s stable of local stations: 105.3 WBZY-FM, 640 WGST-AM, 96.1 WKLS-FM, 94.9 WUBL-FM, 96.7 WWLG-FM and 105.7 WWVA-FM.
Smith said he thinks the Falcons’ home schedule is advantageous this season. Among the big draws are Chicago (Oct. 18), Washington (Nov. 8), and Philadelphia (Dec. 6).
He said the home opener (Sept. 13 against Miami) always is a top draw and that traditionally New Orleans (Dec. 13) is the best divisional seller.
Pointing to an ESPN Sports Poll – separate from the magazine’s survey -- that defines the region for the Falcons market as the home state plus a 75-mile radius of the city, Smith said the Falcons have a fan base of a sizable fan base of 2.5 million people. (The ESPN Sports Poll was performed by research firm TNS Sport from January to December 2008 and included a sample of 2,300 people per month.)
Within that group, Smith said that 700,000 fans attended a Falcons game. That leaves an untapped resource of 1.8 million people to whom the team can sell.
Smith pointed out that since Blank bought the team in 2002, according to the ESPN Sports Poll, those who call themselves “avid fans” of the team have trended upwards, from 25 percent of the market to 34.8 in 2008.
The same poll found that in the same time period those who said their favorite sports league was the NFL rose from 13 percent to 18.6. Fans who said their favorite league was MLB fell from 20 percent to 9.6 and, surprisingly, those who said it was the NBA fell from 11 percent to 4.7, even as the Hawks remain the area’s only pro sports team with consecutive playoff appearances.
Cohen expects sales of single game tickets to be extremely brisk when they go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Saturday, but he also noted that fans have a great opportunity to lock down season tickets for the long haul.
“The opportunity to buy is now, when the fans can get them,” Cohen said.
RELATED LINKS:
- TICKETS: Information on Falcons ticket packages and premium seats
- TICKETMASTER: Buy single-game tickets online 10 a.m. Saturday
- SCHEDULE: Falcons 2009 Regular-Season Schedule
- SEASON TICKETS: Click here for season ticket information
- GROUP TICKETS: Click here for group ticket information
- TICKET PACKS: Click here for multi-game ticket packs
