Proving Sponsorship Value

BBVA

MEASURING THE VALUE OF SPORTS SPONSORSHIPS

BBVA is a global financial institution with over €23 billion in revenue and nearly 138,000 employees. It sponsors numerous sports teams across the world, and its BBVA Compass headquarters are located in Birmingham, Alabama.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

BBVA’s legacy system made it difficult to manage company tickets & suites, and it was nearly impossible to run reports showing how live events were contributing to the bottom line. By switching to TicketManager, BBVA invested in an easy-to-use system with dozens of reports designed to show the value of client entertainment.

THE CHALLENGE

Rishi Naran knew something had to be done. As Assistant Vice President of Sponsorships at BBVA, he managed the company’s assets across many teams and venues. His responsibilities included managing suites and tickets for teams including the Cleveland Cavaliers, Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets, Miami Heat, and San Antonio Spurs. And the system BBVA was using to manage those tickets and suites was difficult to use.

Taking clients to these events was an important way for BBVA to build relationships—the kind that could lead to winning new business from current customers and attracting business from new customers. The bank’s team sponsorships provided numerous opportunities for BBVA to create memorable experiences for its clients, including player meet & greets, special fan merchandise, and watching a game from one of its suites.

But managing all these assets was not easy. The system BBVA used was cumbersome and inefficient.

“One problem was that approved tickets would not get removed from inventory,” recalls Naran. “That meant that we might have three different team members all requesting and getting approved for the same tickets. If it was a medium-demand event, my team would have to scramble to find additional tickets at the last minute.

But if it was a high-demand event, like the Rockets versus the Cavs, and we needed six more tickets for a suite designed to only hold 18 people, we were in trouble.”

In addition to inventory management, reporting was limited. The system was designed to only report basic usage data, and additional reports resulted in fees and administrative costs from their system provider. What’s more, the knowledge of how to run reports was only known to a handful of people, and when they were unavailable, so were those reports… unless BBVA was willing to pay additional fees.

It’s very important for us to be able to measure the return these entertainment assets are delivering. But getting these reports was difficult.

Rishi Naran
Assistant VP of Sponsorships

Summing up the situation, Naran says: “It was time to find a new way forward.”

THE SOLUTION

“With our previous system, extracting reports was daunting, and sometimes impossible. By contrast, there are numerous reports ready to view right away in TicketManager. It’s easy for us to measure the return these tickets are actually delivering.”

Migrating from BBVA’s previous system to TicketManager resulted in zero downtime:

“The transition was spot-on. We are responsible for a significant number of tickets, suites, and events and we didn’t miss a beat. It was a really solid roll-out.”

Today, BBVA manages tickets for its largest US markets in TicketManager.

TicketManager has been a great experience for us.

Rishi Naran