Cheeks in Seats, Heads in Beds: Building Travel Demand Through Sports with Travis Apple
What do Orlando Magic, concierge kickbacks, and the World Cup have in common? They all come up in this no-holds-barred conversation with Travis Apple—sports sales expert, author of “Hustle Your Way to Success in Sports Sales,” and host of the podcast 52 Weeks of Hustle.
In this episode, Travis and Mario dive into how travel and tourism professionals can better understand the inner workings of sports teams, and vice versa. From starting tourism departments for major franchises to why most teams miss out on millions in travel partnerships, Travis breaks down the real opportunities hiding in plain sight.
You’ll learn:
-
Why the sports industry’s real competition isn’t another team—it’s the boat, the beach, or the dinner theater
-
How hotels and tour operators can actually work with sports teams for group sales and cross-promotions
-
What travel professionals get wrong when pitching teams—and how to fix it
-
Fan behavior trends ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup
-
What sports and travel sales teams can learn from each other (hint: it's not about seats or suites—it’s about strategy)
Whether you’re in travel sales, destination marketing, live events, sponsorship, or ticketing tech—this episode is a front-row seat to how sports and travel can win together.
Follow Travis @52WeeksofHustle and grab his book anywhere hustle is sold.
Follow us @Tix2TravelPod on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube
Book your next event experience at tickets.xpotravel.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today on the pod we have Travis Apple. Travis, welcome to the pod. Thanks, Mario. Appreciate it. Excited for our conversation today. Is this a little odd? Usually you're the one doing all the interviewing.
(00:01):
I know.
It's always, it's always fun to be on the other side of the, the chair to think about like, all right, I think this is what Mario's gonna be thinking. Did I answer this well enough for Mario to say yes, or is he just shaking his head yes.
No, no. I think, I think you're, you're an expert. That's why I wanted to actually switch the microphone to put it back on you.
Yeah. Well here's the thing. You know, you, you've had a long career in sports, whether it be, you know, on the ticketing side, I'm sure you've still groups, the hills, you've done some sponsorship, you've done every, even working with technology companies in ticketing as well. When was the first moment you said to yourself, I'm gonna work in sports, I'm gonna have a career in sports?
Yeah. You know, probably like everybody, I grew up playing a lot of sports and always being around it. And then, you know, there's the realization of, hey. This probably isn't gonna go full time. What can you do? When I was in high school, you know, in addition to to playing three sports, I started writing for the local newspaper and going and writing women's soccer games, running volleyball games and just enjoying it.
And kind of realized like, hey, this could be a, a path, like I could still stay in sports. And you went to college then triple majored in electronic media production and journalism and communications. And then through some internship realized. Communications probably wasn't the direction I want to go, but I didn't wanna change my major.
I just wanted to start working. And so I've always had a knack for sales and you know, then yeah, the rest is history. I got into, got into sales right outta college with the Atlanta Hawks and the Thrasher at the time, and then have loved every second of it. So you weren't recruited to D one for
basketball at a high school?
No. It's kind of bs, you know. No, I shout. Shout out to communication majors 'cause I am one as well. And I remember, you know, getting outta school and wanting to be on the radio and doing all this stuff. And then I found out how much they made.
You know, I was the same way. You know, I had, I wrote for the, the newspaper in college.
I hosted a TV show, I had a radio show. And then, yeah, we had somebody come in, I think it was my sophomore year, and talk about financials. And even at the time when they were saying like, yeah, it's about 35 grand. And I was like. That doesn't seem like a lot. And I'm sitting there like, my college loans gonna be a lot more than that.
Like, you know, and, and I had, I'm a competitive person, you know, I always kinda say and, and do a lot of trainings. I say, is anybody greedy? Everybody kinda looks around the room like I. You've gotta be greedy. If you wanna be an admin, ask to be. Yeah. And you know, I think that's, I've always kinda had that entrepreneur spirit, so Yeah.
Like I think the communications kind of background has helped tremendously with sales. Yeah. And you know, I obviously still love the communication, which is why, you know, I, I hosted the podcast and, and things like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Just for the, the audience who's listening, Travis, this podcast is 52 Weeks The Hustle, which is a great name for a sales sports oriented podcast.
It was just really great. The reason why I, you were actually an inspiration for me to do this 'cause I saw you just churning out contest every week and I was like, wow, off. If he can do it, I can do it, but let me find my niche. Right? So, so that was so I like what you're doing and I kind of wanted to do the same thing because what I find is that one, you're doing it for people who are aspirational, who want to work in sports sales or the sports industry.
The thing could be said about. Travel and entertainment, right? It's like these industries. Industries are so sexy. Everybody wants to be a part of them, but they don't actually understand all the various components of it. And so every week you feature somebody who has been in the industry for a while, whether it's the team league, even some entertainment people I've seen in there, but it's like the.
Soon I have you. Yes, Janelle. What is like the top thing you see consistently from all of these people who you've interviewed that maybe wanna provide some wisdom to anybody who's listening to break into sports?
Yeah, and it's something that I, I certainly continue to lean on as well. Like, you know, look, my easiest answer could be hustle or work ethic.
And that's, you know, the name of the podcast and that certainly gets brought up a lot. But you know, the common theme is people, and I'm a big believer, it's starts and stops with people. Everything else will follow money, title, responsibilities to surround yourself with the right people. And so, you know, to your point on a, on a weekly basis, when I'm meeting with an industry leader or executive that, you know, we'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of their career and what, what are some key learnings?
And it's common. Like I had a really good mentor growing up. Or I was able to work around somebody really good to just push me in a way I've never been pushed before. And that's how, how I've been able to evolve and be really successful. And so I think the number one common theme that is discussed on the podcast is just the value of people.
Got it. Got it. That makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, I, I could say the same thing. It's about networking, it's about finding the right mentors and you know, of course, overall, just having the hustle and confidence to, to continue to go after it. Especially in, in worlds like ours, where we're sort of, you know, we're entrepreneurs, you know, to a certain degree.
(00:22):
So, and like I said, it's, it's always good to inspire people. Switching gears a little bit, you know, this is tickets to travel. We're talking to an audience of a lot of travel professionals, travel professionals, and so. There's this thing about scaling the business of sports packaging and using tickets to sort of drive travel demand.
Have you ever had any experiences where you've worked with someone in the travel industry, from a, from a team perspective? Have you ever worked with, uh, maybe a hotel or someone in the travel industry to sort of build out sports packages from the team or league level?
Yeah. You know, I'll go back and start out, like, I remember going to, I grew up in Ohio.
And my, my grandparents didn't have a lot of money, but I remember driving to Detroit one time and we were going to go to a Tigers game and I would, I was a huge Orioles fan. The Orioles were in town, and I just remember, you know, again, this is before internet, but literally like we stopped at like three or four different hotels till either my grandma found the price point.
I was a little kid. What is it? Price point or even availability. Even going there, you know, as the old atlas of like figuring out where we're going parking it and now looking back on it, like there was such a, an opportunity and there still is of like it be a one-stop shop. And so you know what, I've spent majority of my career on the team side and three of those venues, three of the teams I work for, one being the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, and my Marlins, they're all in kind of tourist markets and destinations of course.
Yeah. And so, you know, in Orlando there was a tourism department when I first started, and we ended up growing that department by multiple people. When I went to Phoenix and in Miami I started a tourism department from scratch. So it felt like there was so much opportunity there, and I think there's still a ton of opportunity in enhancements that can go along with that.
And so, yeah, I think that was a, you know, to, to your point of like. Just working directly, you know, even starting those, starting those tourism teams, you're meeting with the hotel GM to not only say like, is there an opportunity of kind of cross promotion, but you know, then when your concierge staff, what are they pushing?
What does that look like? Your, your tour operators, like, there was just so much opportunity and you, you'll look like on the team side, there's, there's two goals in ticketing. It's maximize revenue and increase sell through, right? You, you want to get as money as you can and put cheeks in seats. Quite frankly on the tourism ad and the travel ed people spend money and a lot of times they spend more money than local people.
I mean, think about the last time you went on a vacation, you kind of forget about budget at times. But with your, you do your whole market like budget is
always pretty
important.
Exactly. I mean, I, I always, I have to laugh too, 'cause you said cheeks and seats and so. It's, there's parallels, it's heads and beds, pents.
Yep. Or if you're in a resort, it's, it's butts and huts. Yeah. Depending that, yeah. Yeah. No, you, you could have that with, I think it's, it's interesting because that, that's the thing that drew me to this sort of merging of tickets, it with travel, is that the, the metrics are similar in the way that they, that they look at it.
Whether it's a stadium that has a certain amount of seats per section, or it's a hotel with different types of room types. The way that they speak about demand and supply and inventory or revenue management is very, very similar. Ironically, the systems don't really speak to each other, so I think from a scaling perspective, there's probably, you know, those guys at, you know, Ticketmaster or soho could probably do this at scale.
What you're talking about is, is tourism in general where the hotels, sorry, maybe the hotels, but also tour operators who are bringing in. International markets want to come to Miami and you have a relationship with them. And so talk me through the process a little bit. When that, when that happens, is it, is it more of a group sales function on the tourism side where they talk to a tour operator, let's say Germany, to bring them to the side?
To the, to the market.
Yeah, exactly. And even, you know, sports teams have started going to some of those international travel conventions and conferences to build that relationship because look. The, the one misconception I think of sports and even there's misconception internally in my opinion, when, you know, I'll ask a sales team like, who's your biggest competition?
You know? And if it's in Miami, if you say it's the Marlins, then they're saying the competition is the heat, the dolphins, the soccer club. However, in my opinion, that's actually not the competition because when people are buying tickets to those other sporting events, they see the value in sports entertainment.
Mm-hmm. Whether it's discretionary dollar or the entertainment dollar. The challenge as we think about Miami and any of the travel and tourist destinations is there's so much else to do with your discretionary dollar, right? You can go out on a boat, you can go to the beach, you can go to these events, you can go golfing, you can do anything else.
Many times 365 days a year, we have 44 81 games specifically. And so as you think about that, like it's a little bit of brand awareness that like when you're talking or when you're going to the convention to these tour operators. You want to get them to understand like it's front of mind, right. What's different when you concierge?
Like, I'll never forget this, like going into a concierge, one of the first times I started understanding this tour and I asked the concierge like, Hey, what are you pitching today? And they're like, oh, this dinner theater. And I'm like, why? And I worked, I mean, we had a game that night, right? They're like, because like it's a great, you know, they sales pitch, sales pitch.
(00:43):
Like it's great. It's amazing experience, great food. I said, all right, hey, I appreciate it. I'll stop you there. I'm working the magic. Why did you push the magic game? And they're like, honestly, like I get 50% of every ticket I sell from the dinner theater. And so you gotta think about like that is is the mindset you have to think about.
And so to kinda get back to your question in regards to like what type of sale it is, it can be a variety. It can be that tour operator coming and saying, Hey, I'm bringing a hundred people. We wanna make sure we have this group sale or this hospitality or suite or a game while we're in, while we're in town.
Or it might be more granular and individualized where it's, Hey, you're, you now have a hundred people at this hotel. How are we hoping and pushing that you're gonna come to our game versus all the other competition? Like never did I think a dinner theater was gonna beat out an Orlando Magic game, but,
well, I think that's more of an incentive.
Right. That, that's more of an incentive because, and, and that's how these concierge networks work, right? Like there are certain structures of, maybe they're called kickbacks, you know, or they're more structured kickbacks. And I think that's, that's an education piece that lots of teams and, and, you know, entertainment people in general don't really understand is that I think tourism in a specific market, like in New York or Miami.
They see these people all the time coming in and so, you know whether the price of the ticket or the dates are not lining up. You got something that's Evergreen 365, mostly 365 days a year that you have the dinner that they can get money on versus like, you know, when you play two, three times a week and maybe they're, they're there.
So it's, it's a different, a different value to the salesperson, which is the concierge in this, in this case, but exactly. Huge, huge point.
I think like, look, it's, you know, selling tickets, I mean, selling anything is difficult, right? Like I wouldn't fuck sales if it was just order taking, but getting people to think about, hey, going to a sporting event, this three hour kind of timeframe, right?
Like, and a lot of times it's, you know, on the team side, you're just constantly thinking about like, what could draw that potential audience. And like you, you use the example like somebody coming over from Germany, like they may just not like baseball. Well, what could that overall experience be that it just is a no brainer for them to come to a baseball game.
Right? So I think that's the constant thing we think about on the team side. And again, that doesn't even just, not even just tourism or travel, that's just, just in general, how can we sell out? And you know, again, put as many cheeks in seats as we can for every single game. And how do we really diversify our audience?
So I, I think that, you know, you guys have at least wor, are trying to work with tourism and travel professionals to a certain degree. There hasn't been a whole lot of travel people like really thinking about that because they're so busy with just sort of taking in all this traffic. I mean, maybe not, not lately because tourism's starting to decline a little bit over, you know, due to tariffs and all these different things that are happening.
But in general. They haven't really been able to work with teams directly or, or leagues or, or even venues in some cases. What, what do you think are some things that they should consider? Because me personally, Travis, I've, you know, I've been adjacent, worked in ticket, a talking to pitch, and the way a sports franchisees functions is a little bit different than, let's say a hotel or anywhere else, or a company in a lot of ways.
So what are sort of the, the things they should consider? I
think you hit to nail the head right there is like. From my, my experience and time on a, on a variety of teams and leagues. One, I had very few vendors or companies in the travel and tourism space reach out. And maybe it's to your point, maybe just didn't think about it that way.
Yeah. But a few that did, they came in, I felt like fairly aggressive of like, I know your business. Mm-hmm. And I think that is something, it is no different. Like when I, you meet with a hotel GM like. You're the expert of it, your hotel and everything about it. I don't, I've never been in your chair having that mindset and mentality and, you know, transparently, I, that's where I've been able to assist even in my own company of like helping people understand, 'cause like you, they've sat in their chair.
I think too many people have come in when they do and they just aren't, I, I know what you need. I know what you need. It's like, well that's not how a team works. 'cause you also gotta think. There are so many different verticals of a team will climb in that travel and tourism world like. You may be talking to me, let's call it the head of ticketing, but like you may want or need some marketing assets.
Like typically I don't have the yay, yay or Nays power on that, right? Mm-hmm. Making some sponsorship assets, things like that. And so understanding that there is quite a few decision makers within a sports team and in a tree. So I think one end, like go in kind of two ears, one mouse for a reason. You know, you do twice as much listening as you do talking, but I think just trying to understand.
Their business. You know, at the end of the day, the, the travel or tourism vendor, they have a value proposition. The team has a value proposition. What's your goal? To get them to marry together? Yeah. Is is the big thing, because, you know, there's just so many different. Nuances and things to think about when partnering with the sports team.
It's typically not as easy as, Hey, you know, it's, it's easy to call and say, I wanna buy 30 tickets. But if you want a free partnership and not a transaction, you've just gotta think about things a little bit differently.
Yeah, I would agree. I think the, the main difference, and I say this to people and they kind of, their head explodes a little bit, but a lot of teams, whether it be football, basketball, they're family businesses.
They're family businesses. Right. So you, you wouldn't approach it the same way. There's a a lot of different dynamics and you're right, there's sponsorship marketing and, and that hierarchy can change depending on the organization and, and how that the, the legacy team has been built over the years. Yep. So I don't think that's a, that's a consideration.
(01:04):
And it's interesting that you would think, 'cause you're right, a lot of travel people because. You know, I'll, I'll put it in perspective. You know, 15 years ago when I managed New York City for Expedia, I think I was managing 3 billion in net revenue. That was 15 years ago. Imagine what they're doing now, right now.
Yeah. So there's a little bit of ego that comes along with it where they're like, oh, well yeah, we know you guys have fans all over the world, but. We actually generate a lot more revenue. And I think that's what you're kind of discussing in a lot of ways. But, you know, being on, from a, a travel perspective and, and you're right, it's just about listening more, qualifying them.
Because a lot of those major distributors or big tour operators, they're just just getting whatever they want. Yeah.
No, I think the other piece of it is on the team side. You know, the, the look, it's always funny, right? You, you see these teams getting sold for billions of dollars. You've seen these players making millions and millions of dollars.
That doesn't always mean the business operations, you know, they're typically business operations or lean and me. Yeah. And so the, you don't have the resources. Even when I was starting some tourism departments with some teams, I would basically take it headcount. It wasn't being able to create new headcount.
And so I think there a huge opportunity. And I will say this, and, and I've talked to a lot of teams about this on a consistent basis, is like they don't have the resources or time or effort or energy to even like immerse themselves in at times to travel and tourism. They know out on money. So there's a huge opportunity for these vendors to assist and to make that person look good.
And so. I think a little bit of it's just be willing to, to have that partnership mentality. 'cause I think there's a lot of opportunity. I mean, it's, it's crazy to me, and I'm very bullish when this, when, when teams don't have a dedicated person in near every market to travel and tourism. I. Yeah,
well, I mean, it, it makes sense if you're in New York, Miami, San Diego, maybe San Francisco.
It's the middle America part that's probably a little bit different. But with all the things that are shifting, and you could probably speak more to this than, than I can, uh, you know, you have MLB opening day was in Tokyo. You've got the NFL going to, to Miami's playing Spain, and there's obviously going in the NBAs.
Pretty much global at this point. There's going to be this opportunity to merge travel with these, because whether they become actual teams in Europe or or in Tokyo and they sort of merge all these things together, these, these part, these type of travel ticketing team partnerships. Has to start to evolve.
Where do you kind of see this all going? Being more of a insider and just kind of understanding what's gonna happen with sports?
Yeah. I think you get the nail on the head like every, you know, professional league is continuing to get more and more global. I. By either playing, playing matches or games there, you know, there's some leagues, right?
The volleyball league League won volleyball. Like, you know, half the rosters are from, you know, overseas. And so you, you think about that, like there's so much opportunity. And so as you think about the future, whether that be five months, five years, or 15 years, like teams and travel have got to find ways to partner together because if not, they're both leaving so much money on the table.
Completely the end of day. Right. Kind of goes back to greediness, but like businesses, they wanna make money. Yeah. And there is not a single sports team out there that wouldn't like open their ears and eyes to say, all right, here's an op, here's an opportunity or an avenue to make more money. Yeah. I think that's a big piece of it is, you know, I think it's just gonna continue to grow, but I think what's gonna be scalable and sustainable is like, is there a true partnership?
Right, because there's, there's in transactions, as you know, transactions is like, I'll buy tickets here and there. That's not a true partnership. Like where's that true partnership that it's on both ends. There's a ton of value added. And so I think there's a, I don't have the, the magic bullet of like what it is, but if, but teams have got to continue to figure that out because I think there's so much opportunity there.
Yeah, I think, I think I'm, I'm better, a better sort of topic to discuss this. You know, this thing called World Cup that's coming next year. You know, you got, I don't know how many different markets within North America that they're gonna be in from a destination perspective. You know, I think they're all starting to get ready.
I think the tickets go on sale in a few weeks here. What, what are some words of wisdom other than them partnerships, do you think? I think the travel professional travel professionals could sort of look at to find out how to capture that fan behavior. 'cause you're also an expert in fan behavior, Travis.
Like you've seen how these people purchase. And so not saying that you, you'll understand fully the global impact of different people coming in, but just in general, any broad strokes about how fans buy tickets.
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple things to your point on the, the, the World Cup, which is in 2026, you know, venues went through a pretty thorough RFP to try to land that because the entire city, right, the entire state knows if they can get that match or multiple matches the amount of money that's gonna bring into the city.
And I think it'll look like a. Travel in a, as a whole. It's crazy to me like when there are, when there are games or big games, and you know, I won't name the city, but I was in the city a couple years ago for the national championship of college football and you know, it's a Monday night, well, typically in the, you know, restaurant industry for example, like, it's kind of a slow day on Mondays.
So all these restaurants and bars were closed. They, they missed out on so much money because they just didn't think about it and it just, you know, so I think. As it relates to like travel and tourism and, and companies out there like, think about things like that, right? Like, think about opportunities when it comes to the, the World Cup.
(01:25):
Like there are gonna be a lot of people traveling, many people, again, kind of back to that one stop shop. They wanna have their entire kind of agenda or itinerary mapped out when they book. And so to your point, like they're, they're already selling hospitality packages for the World Cup. Like those are the type of things we need to be thinking about right now.
I think too many companies wait and they're like, oh, hey, this year is the FIFA Club World Cup. You know? Right. And it's gonna be starting here in, you know, just a matter of weeks. Yeah. Like too many people are right now, like, oh, I wonder what it should I do. Like, I wonder who's coming in, how can I, it's gotta be that proactive mentality and mindset.
Yes. To ensure that you can maximize the revenue early on when people are book eat. Yeah, they're starting to plan that out in a variety, whatever, whatever your, your value is and whatever you're selling, can you get out in front of 'em now versus waiting till next July,
which is the irony, right? Because on the travel side, all you do is understand seasonality.
You know, you, you basically, you plan, you execute and you report and the. The issue here is that they don't consider a lot of live events as part of this. I think in a, on a market level, they do to a certain extent. You know, they understand that the Knicks are gonna be playing and when the schedule comes out, they're gonna, all those hotels around that the massive square garden are gonna have to fluctuate their rates a little bit.
Yep. But at the same time, it's, it's not, they're not really looking at it because again, I think it goes back to partnership. Like to. Find those tour operators or find those companies that are gonna be adjacent, who are gonna manage all of these people who come through. That'd be very challenging.
Another time along those lines, like in a hotel, like I was at a, a pretty large sporting event.
It was a World series and you go back to the hotel and look, it wasn't a clinching game, it was a World Series, but it was on a Sunday night and the hotel bar was closed and you have all these fans and they, that team, the visiting team won that game. Wow. Hands, they're dying to like have some fun and spend money and it's closed.
And so I think just, and again, I know that's granular, but those are little things. Yeah. You're not capturing some revenue that way. You're never gonna see the bigger picture.
Well, if it's, they're, they're small things and the bigger, I mean the bigger scheme of things, but it's really easy to execute. Stay open, stay up.
I don't think those are things, I think, you know, when people are, whether it be again, the, the World Cup or any event, any live event, to your point, like as they, as they're thinking about it, you know, in the travel or tourism chair, and again, I don't claim to be an expert at that, but like how are they engaging with that, with that audience that is coming forward?
Maybe their main reason is come to that live event. What else can they partake in and be a part of? And they, they need to have all those accommodations.
Well, I'll, I'll, I'll bump it up just a little bit more because we're, we're kind of getting there. I, I was, I had another show where a sta a buddy of mine who's been to several marathons.
He was talking about how at the hotel level or the destination level, they don't do a really good job with the sponsorship of, or the partnerships with certain brands to sort of accommodate runners. How, how do you think brands should think about fans? We now, I, I know as a broad. There's a lot of intricacy depending on what city and what, you know, what type of sport it is.
But like in general, back to sort of the fan behavior piece, like if I'm a credit card company, which I think they have that pretty much down, but like if I'm a, I don't know, a consumer packaged goods company or something, like what are some ideas that they, that a brand could take away about marketing to fans?
And then if you've seen any cool activations, that would be also interesting.
I'll, I'll tell you like, one is, is smaller example. So every year, you know, my wife and I, and we have a little one, we. We do a Turkey trot, so we're not big runners, but we do it trot Thanksgiving morning. We live in Nashville.
Well, every year when we sign up, you know, you'll get a shirt and you get your tags, your pickup is outta Dick's Sporting Goods. You pick up your stuff, you get, you know, 20% off anything you buy that day. Nice. Lo and behold, right? Every year we buy more stuff that we probably didn't even think about. And so like, those are the type of things is like, are you just, you know, from a brand perspective, like are you just.
Enabling your fans or enabling your potential buyers an easy path to spend money with you to make money. I think little things like that, again, that's a smaller example. Yeah. But as you think about fans, you think about brands, you know, every team has a, a pretty large sponsorship team, that excellent sponsorship dollars.
And it's, you know, again, depending on what your, what your value is or what your. Kind of thought provoking idea is, I think those are the things that are so important for people to think about is like, how do you just make it easy, you know, like, you know, I, I go back to even like some of these like surveys that you'll get when you buy a ticket or, or buy anything.
If you can make it where it's a three question survey and I can do it on my phone very quick. Great. When you make a 22 page document, yeah. You're just not gonna get the buy in. And so I think brands have gotta think about that as like, what can be easy. Right. Our, those lives move very quick as everybody, right.
(01:46):
And, and to the sports, like, you know, that's always the, the funny thing when you, you, you get done with one game and you're like, that was great, but tomorrow here's another, or in two days another, we've got it, you know, full gear. 'cause our ownership is gonna be screaming down our throats to make sure it's, it's, you know, enhanced and sold just as well as the last one.
And so whatever you can do to make it easy for the fan journey. Be a part of that. So when you think about, you know, you, you talked about like the marathon or the runs, like I think that's what Dick's sporty goods. Yeah. They're sponsor. I have no idea what money they put on it. Yeah. But I guarantee probably 70% of people that pick up their bibs that day are buying something.
Absolutely. Oh, you also hit, hit it on the head as well, is that it's about money. So that, that's the one thing I think sponsorship people in general, I make no bones about it, it's about the offer. So if I'm a brand. Be ready to talk about money to a certain degree. I feel like a lot of them are like shocked.
What? It cost a million dollars? Like yeah, of course. Do a little homework to understand how many. Fans are involved, or, or what the impact would be if you were doing something on social media and don't act like you're gonna get this for cheap. A a lot of times I think that would speed things up as well
and understand your audience, right?
Like if you're, you're doing a brand at a concert, like who's the, the right audience at that concert? If you're going at, you know, at a, a Sunday afternoon baseball game and you know, the theme is Kids Day, right? Like something that relates to kind of kids and family. Like, it's just understanding the audience, and I think that's, in my opinion, sales 1 0 1.
But I think most salespeople struggle with that, where it's like, I have got this pen and I'm gonna force feed this pen down your throat. It's like, understand what their capabilities and reasons are that they would potentially want buy that pen. Makes sense. Tell me that pen. Yeah. Oh yeah. Get rid of like, when you come into like a team, right?
It's like, oh, I can, I can give you, deliver this brand, or I can get you this, or I can get you that. Well, it's like, yep. Maybe that doesn't make sense from the team or, or what they're looking for. Yeah,
totally. I got, I got two more questions. One, you're unique 'cause you've worked for different entities in various sports.
What's the toughest sport to work for?
You know, I, I get asked that a lot, right? I've, I've spent a lot of time in baseball and basketball specifically, and, you know, on one end people are like, I don't know how you ever work in baseball. It's 81 game. But ly enough, every venue I've worked in has had more games or events.
Because you typically, yeah. Like you work in an NBA arena, you have 44 games. Yeah. You have another 70, 80 ticketed events between concerts and the ancillary events and so, right. You know, look, I think baseball is probably the most difficult and you know, for any listeners out there, my friends that are listening like, oh, basketball's harder, you know, whatever.
They're all difficult. Right. Baseball is just a unique challenge because it's, you know, on one end it's 13 weekends, you are gonna have a 10 game home stand. And as we just talked about, like the, the requirements, the expectations are to sell at the highest level for all of those. Right. And it's, it's a challenge.
Like if you have, Hey, I'm gonna have a 10 game home stand and you want to like work peak on peak and try to sell the the weekends, Friday, Saturdays. It's like you can't just drop the ball on that Tuesday and have 3000 people show up. And so I think it's just for 81 games. It's just constantly thinking about what's next, what's next, what's next?
Yeah. And it's, and it's a lot of late nights, right? Like nights and you know what, I was, no weekends. The worst part about working in baseball, I used to work for the Pittsburgh Pirates, so the weather is not always ideal is you'd have a 10 game home stand that would start on a Friday. So you knew both weekends were shot.
But then it was inevitable, like on Tuesday you'd have a three hour rain delay. The game wouldn't end until midnight and then the next late it would be a 15 inning game wouldn't end until midnight. You're like, holy cow. Here we are. So there are definitely some long nights, but again, going back to, to the venues, like there's, there, it's the same thing.
Like they're, they're all difficult, which is part of a lot of this conversation we're having today is like, it's all difficult, but there, there's, that means there's a lot of opportunity as well. Totally. I, I didn't,
I didn't think about it from a venue perspective. That would be the test actually. So, because you're, it doesn't matter music.
You got a festival, you got a concert, you got
like, oh, great. Like we just, you know, we, we had a great, you know, NBA game. It's like the next night we have a concert and then the next night, you know, Disney on Ice is coming in, or the circuses coming in for a week, and you know that
great.
(02:07):
That's
Nest. All right.
I'm a huge Warriors fan who's, who's going to the finals? Who just going to NBA five? Us.
You know, it's, it's gonna be interesting. You guys, you guys are so, like, I, I agnostic. My really good friends work for the Cavs. I grew up in Ohio. I'm not a Cavs fan, but my, oh, I have a lot of friends. They're dire Cavs fans, so I'm, I'm rooting for the Cavs.
But there's, there's gonna be some interesting ones. Like, you know, even like the Pacers, I think they could be a, oh yeah, so. And Lake Lakers were eliminated last night, so
that's interesting too. Right. It'll be a fun, it'll be a fun playoffs. Playoffs to watch. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you for allowing me to switch it up and put the microphone on you and you share your wisdom and experience here on tickets to Travel.
Let's do it again.
Yeah. Thank you, Mario. Appreciate it. You know, I've, I've loved what you're doing and obviously you and I hit it off very, very early on because we we're thinking alike, so hopefully beneficial for the listeners and yeah, I'm looking forward to doing it again.
And we'll definitely cover 52 weeks to hustle as well in the intro and and outro of this to get you some more listeners as well.
But thanks again, Travis. Appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today on the pod we have Travis Apple. Travis, welcome to the pod. Thanks, Mario. Appreciate it. Excited for our conversation today. Is this a little odd? Usually you're the one doing all the interviewing.
(00:01):
I know.
It's always, it's always fun to be on the other side of the, the chair to think about like, all right, I think this is what Mario's gonna be thinking. Did I answer this well enough for Mario to say yes, or is he just shaking his head yes.
No, no. I think, I think you're, you're an expert. That's why I wanted to actually switch the microphone to put it back on you.
Yeah. Well here's the thing. You know, you, you've had a long career in sports, whether it be, you know, on the ticketing side, I'm sure you've still groups, the hills, you've done some sponsorship, you've done every, even working with technology companies in ticketing as well. When was the first moment you said to yourself, I'm gonna work in sports, I'm gonna have a career in sports?
Yeah. You know, probably like everybody, I grew up playing a lot of sports and always being around it. And then, you know, there's the realization of, hey. This probably isn't gonna go full time. What can you do? When I was in high school, you know, in addition to to playing three sports, I started writing for the local newspaper and going and writing women's soccer games, running volleyball games and just enjoying it.
And kind of realized like, hey, this could be a, a path, like I could still stay in sports. And you went to college then triple majored in electronic media production and journalism and communications. And then through some internship realized. Communications probably wasn't the direction I want to go, but I didn't wanna change my major.
I just wanted to start working. And so I've always had a knack for sales and you know, then yeah, the rest is history. I got into, got into sales right outta college with the Atlanta Hawks and the Thrasher at the time, and then have loved every second of it. So you weren't recruited to D one for
basketball at a high school?
No. It's kind of bs, you know. No, I shout. Shout out to communication majors 'cause I am one as well. And I remember, you know, getting outta school and wanting to be on the radio and doing all this stuff. And then I found out how much they made.
You know, I was the same way. You know, I had, I wrote for the, the newspaper in college.
I hosted a TV show, I had a radio show. And then, yeah, we had somebody come in, I think it was my sophomore year, and talk about financials. And even at the time when they were saying like, yeah, it's about 35 grand. And I was like. That doesn't seem like a lot. And I'm sitting there like, my college loans gonna be a lot more than that.
Like, you know, and, and I had, I'm a competitive person, you know, I always kinda say and, and do a lot of trainings. I say, is anybody greedy? Everybody kinda looks around the room like I. You've gotta be greedy. If you wanna be an admin, ask to be. Yeah. And you know, I think that's, I've always kinda had that entrepreneur spirit, so Yeah.
Like I think the communications kind of background has helped tremendously with sales. Yeah. And you know, I obviously still love the communication, which is why, you know, I, I hosted the podcast and, and things like that. Yeah.
Yeah. Just for the, the audience who's listening, Travis, this podcast is 52 Weeks The Hustle, which is a great name for a sales sports oriented podcast.
It was just really great. The reason why I, you were actually an inspiration for me to do this 'cause I saw you just churning out contest every week and I was like, wow, off. If he can do it, I can do it, but let me find my niche. Right? So, so that was so I like what you're doing and I kind of wanted to do the same thing because what I find is that one, you're doing it for people who are aspirational, who want to work in sports sales or the sports industry.
The thing could be said about. Travel and entertainment, right? It's like these industries. Industries are so sexy. Everybody wants to be a part of them, but they don't actually understand all the various components of it. And so every week you feature somebody who has been in the industry for a while, whether it's the team league, even some entertainment people I've seen in there, but it's like the.
Soon I have you. Yes, Janelle. What is like the top thing you see consistently from all of these people who you've interviewed that maybe wanna provide some wisdom to anybody who's listening to break into sports?
Yeah, and it's something that I, I certainly continue to lean on as well. Like, you know, look, my easiest answer could be hustle or work ethic.
And that's, you know, the name of the podcast and that certainly gets brought up a lot. But you know, the common theme is people, and I'm a big believer, it's starts and stops with people. Everything else will follow money, title, responsibilities to surround yourself with the right people. And so, you know, to your point on a, on a weekly basis, when I'm meeting with an industry leader or executive that, you know, we'll talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of their career and what, what are some key learnings?
And it's common. Like I had a really good mentor growing up. Or I was able to work around somebody really good to just push me in a way I've never been pushed before. And that's how, how I've been able to evolve and be really successful. And so I think the number one common theme that is discussed on the podcast is just the value of people.
Got it. Got it. That makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, I, I could say the same thing. It's about networking, it's about finding the right mentors and you know, of course, overall, just having the hustle and confidence to, to continue to go after it. Especially in, in worlds like ours, where we're sort of, you know, we're entrepreneurs, you know, to a certain degree.
(00:22):
So, and like I said, it's, it's always good to inspire people. Switching gears a little bit, you know, this is tickets to travel. We're talking to an audience of a lot of travel professionals, travel professionals, and so. There's this thing about scaling the business of sports packaging and using tickets to sort of drive travel demand.
Have you ever had any experiences where you've worked with someone in the travel industry, from a, from a team perspective? Have you ever worked with, uh, maybe a hotel or someone in the travel industry to sort of build out sports packages from the team or league level?
Yeah. You know, I'll go back and start out, like, I remember going to, I grew up in Ohio.
And my, my grandparents didn't have a lot of money, but I remember driving to Detroit one time and we were going to go to a Tigers game and I would, I was a huge Orioles fan. The Orioles were in town, and I just remember, you know, again, this is before internet, but literally like we stopped at like three or four different hotels till either my grandma found the price point.
I was a little kid. What is it? Price point or even availability. Even going there, you know, as the old atlas of like figuring out where we're going parking it and now looking back on it, like there was such a, an opportunity and there still is of like it be a one-stop shop. And so you know what, I've spent majority of my career on the team side and three of those venues, three of the teams I work for, one being the Orlando Magic, the Phoenix Suns, and my Marlins, they're all in kind of tourist markets and destinations of course.
Yeah. And so, you know, in Orlando there was a tourism department when I first started, and we ended up growing that department by multiple people. When I went to Phoenix and in Miami I started a tourism department from scratch. So it felt like there was so much opportunity there, and I think there's still a ton of opportunity in enhancements that can go along with that.
And so, yeah, I think that was a, you know, to, to your point of like. Just working directly, you know, even starting those, starting those tourism teams, you're meeting with the hotel GM to not only say like, is there an opportunity of kind of cross promotion, but you know, then when your concierge staff, what are they pushing?
What does that look like? Your, your tour operators, like, there was just so much opportunity and you, you'll look like on the team side, there's, there's two goals in ticketing. It's maximize revenue and increase sell through, right? You, you want to get as money as you can and put cheeks in seats. Quite frankly on the tourism ad and the travel ed people spend money and a lot of times they spend more money than local people.
I mean, think about the last time you went on a vacation, you kind of forget about budget at times. But with your, you do your whole market like budget is
always pretty
important.
Exactly. I mean, I, I always, I have to laugh too, 'cause you said cheeks and seats and so. It's, there's parallels, it's heads and beds, pents.
Yep. Or if you're in a resort, it's, it's butts and huts. Yeah. Depending that, yeah. Yeah. No, you, you could have that with, I think it's, it's interesting because that, that's the thing that drew me to this sort of merging of tickets, it with travel, is that the, the metrics are similar in the way that they, that they look at it.
Whether it's a stadium that has a certain amount of seats per section, or it's a hotel with different types of room types. The way that they speak about demand and supply and inventory or revenue management is very, very similar. Ironically, the systems don't really speak to each other, so I think from a scaling perspective, there's probably, you know, those guys at, you know, Ticketmaster or soho could probably do this at scale.
What you're talking about is, is tourism in general where the hotels, sorry, maybe the hotels, but also tour operators who are bringing in. International markets want to come to Miami and you have a relationship with them. And so talk me through the process a little bit. When that, when that happens, is it, is it more of a group sales function on the tourism side where they talk to a tour operator, let's say Germany, to bring them to the side?
To the, to the market.
Yeah, exactly. And even, you know, sports teams have started going to some of those international travel conventions and conferences to build that relationship because look. The, the one misconception I think of sports and even there's misconception internally in my opinion, when, you know, I'll ask a sales team like, who's your biggest competition?
You know? And if it's in Miami, if you say it's the Marlins, then they're saying the competition is the heat, the dolphins, the soccer club. However, in my opinion, that's actually not the competition because when people are buying tickets to those other sporting events, they see the value in sports entertainment.
Mm-hmm. Whether it's discretionary dollar or the entertainment dollar. The challenge as we think about Miami and any of the travel and tourist destinations is there's so much else to do with your discretionary dollar, right? You can go out on a boat, you can go to the beach, you can go to these events, you can go golfing, you can do anything else.
Many times 365 days a year, we have 44 81 games specifically. And so as you think about that, like it's a little bit of brand awareness that like when you're talking or when you're going to the convention to these tour operators. You want to get them to understand like it's front of mind, right. What's different when you concierge?
Like, I'll never forget this, like going into a concierge, one of the first times I started understanding this tour and I asked the concierge like, Hey, what are you pitching today? And they're like, oh, this dinner theater. And I'm like, why? And I worked, I mean, we had a game that night, right? They're like, because like it's a great, you know, they sales pitch, sales pitch.
(00:43):
Like it's great. It's amazing experience, great food. I said, all right, hey, I appreciate it. I'll stop you there. I'm working the magic. Why did you push the magic game? And they're like, honestly, like I get 50% of every ticket I sell from the dinner theater. And so you gotta think about like that is is the mindset you have to think about.
And so to kinda get back to your question in regards to like what type of sale it is, it can be a variety. It can be that tour operator coming and saying, Hey, I'm bringing a hundred people. We wanna make sure we have this group sale or this hospitality or suite or a game while we're in, while we're in town.
Or it might be more granular and individualized where it's, Hey, you're, you now have a hundred people at this hotel. How are we hoping and pushing that you're gonna come to our game versus all the other competition? Like never did I think a dinner theater was gonna beat out an Orlando Magic game, but,
well, I think that's more of an incentive.
Right. That, that's more of an incentive because, and, and that's how these concierge networks work, right? Like there are certain structures of, maybe they're called kickbacks, you know, or they're more structured kickbacks. And I think that's, that's an education piece that lots of teams and, and, you know, entertainment people in general don't really understand is that I think tourism in a specific market, like in New York or Miami.
They see these people all the time coming in and so, you know whether the price of the ticket or the dates are not lining up. You got something that's Evergreen 365, mostly 365 days a year that you have the dinner that they can get money on versus like, you know, when you play two, three times a week and maybe they're, they're there.
So it's, it's a different, a different value to the salesperson, which is the concierge in this, in this case, but exactly. Huge, huge point.
I think like, look, it's, you know, selling tickets, I mean, selling anything is difficult, right? Like I wouldn't fuck sales if it was just order taking, but getting people to think about, hey, going to a sporting event, this three hour kind of timeframe, right?
Like, and a lot of times it's, you know, on the team side, you're just constantly thinking about like, what could draw that potential audience. And like you, you use the example like somebody coming over from Germany, like they may just not like baseball. Well, what could that overall experience be that it just is a no brainer for them to come to a baseball game.
Right? So I think that's the constant thing we think about on the team side. And again, that doesn't even just, not even just tourism or travel, that's just, just in general, how can we sell out? And you know, again, put as many cheeks in seats as we can for every single game. And how do we really diversify our audience?
So I, I think that, you know, you guys have at least wor, are trying to work with tourism and travel professionals to a certain degree. There hasn't been a whole lot of travel people like really thinking about that because they're so busy with just sort of taking in all this traffic. I mean, maybe not, not lately because tourism's starting to decline a little bit over, you know, due to tariffs and all these different things that are happening.
But in general. They haven't really been able to work with teams directly or, or leagues or, or even venues in some cases. What, what do you think are some things that they should consider? Because me personally, Travis, I've, you know, I've been adjacent, worked in ticket, a talking to pitch, and the way a sports franchisees functions is a little bit different than, let's say a hotel or anywhere else, or a company in a lot of ways.
So what are sort of the, the things they should consider? I
think you hit to nail the head right there is like. From my, my experience and time on a, on a variety of teams and leagues. One, I had very few vendors or companies in the travel and tourism space reach out. And maybe it's to your point, maybe just didn't think about it that way.
Yeah. But a few that did, they came in, I felt like fairly aggressive of like, I know your business. Mm-hmm. And I think that is something, it is no different. Like when I, you meet with a hotel GM like. You're the expert of it, your hotel and everything about it. I don't, I've never been in your chair having that mindset and mentality and, you know, transparently, I, that's where I've been able to assist even in my own company of like helping people understand, 'cause like you, they've sat in their chair.
I think too many people have come in when they do and they just aren't, I, I know what you need. I know what you need. It's like, well that's not how a team works. 'cause you also gotta think. There are so many different verticals of a team will climb in that travel and tourism world like. You may be talking to me, let's call it the head of ticketing, but like you may want or need some marketing assets.
Like typically I don't have the yay, yay or Nays power on that, right? Mm-hmm. Making some sponsorship assets, things like that. And so understanding that there is quite a few decision makers within a sports team and in a tree. So I think one end, like go in kind of two ears, one mouse for a reason. You know, you do twice as much listening as you do talking, but I think just trying to understand.
Their business. You know, at the end of the day, the, the travel or tourism vendor, they have a value proposition. The team has a value proposition. What's your goal? To get them to marry together? Yeah. Is is the big thing, because, you know, there's just so many different. Nuances and things to think about when partnering with the sports team.
It's typically not as easy as, Hey, you know, it's, it's easy to call and say, I wanna buy 30 tickets. But if you want a free partnership and not a transaction, you've just gotta think about things a little bit differently.
Yeah, I would agree. I think the, the main difference, and I say this to people and they kind of, their head explodes a little bit, but a lot of teams, whether it be football, basketball, they're family businesses.
They're family businesses. Right. So you, you wouldn't approach it the same way. There's a a lot of different dynamics and you're right, there's sponsorship marketing and, and that hierarchy can change depending on the organization and, and how that the, the legacy team has been built over the years. Yep. So I don't think that's a, that's a consideration.
(01:04):
And it's interesting that you would think, 'cause you're right, a lot of travel people because. You know, I'll, I'll put it in perspective. You know, 15 years ago when I managed New York City for Expedia, I think I was managing 3 billion in net revenue. That was 15 years ago. Imagine what they're doing now, right now.
Yeah. So there's a little bit of ego that comes along with it where they're like, oh, well yeah, we know you guys have fans all over the world, but. We actually generate a lot more revenue. And I think that's what you're kind of discussing in a lot of ways. But, you know, being on, from a, a travel perspective and, and you're right, it's just about listening more, qualifying them.
Because a lot of those major distributors or big tour operators, they're just just getting whatever they want. Yeah.
No, I think the other piece of it is on the team side. You know, the, the look, it's always funny, right? You, you see these teams getting sold for billions of dollars. You've seen these players making millions and millions of dollars.
That doesn't always mean the business operations, you know, they're typically business operations or lean and me. Yeah. And so the, you don't have the resources. Even when I was starting some tourism departments with some teams, I would basically take it headcount. It wasn't being able to create new headcount.
And so I think there a huge opportunity. And I will say this, and, and I've talked to a lot of teams about this on a consistent basis, is like they don't have the resources or time or effort or energy to even like immerse themselves in at times to travel and tourism. They know out on money. So there's a huge opportunity for these vendors to assist and to make that person look good.
And so. I think a little bit of it's just be willing to, to have that partnership mentality. 'cause I think there's a lot of opportunity. I mean, it's, it's crazy to me, and I'm very bullish when this, when, when teams don't have a dedicated person in near every market to travel and tourism. I. Yeah,
well, I mean, it, it makes sense if you're in New York, Miami, San Diego, maybe San Francisco.
It's the middle America part that's probably a little bit different. But with all the things that are shifting, and you could probably speak more to this than, than I can, uh, you know, you have MLB opening day was in Tokyo. You've got the NFL going to, to Miami's playing Spain, and there's obviously going in the NBAs.
Pretty much global at this point. There's going to be this opportunity to merge travel with these, because whether they become actual teams in Europe or or in Tokyo and they sort of merge all these things together, these, these part, these type of travel ticketing team partnerships. Has to start to evolve.
Where do you kind of see this all going? Being more of a insider and just kind of understanding what's gonna happen with sports?
Yeah. I think you get the nail on the head like every, you know, professional league is continuing to get more and more global. I. By either playing, playing matches or games there, you know, there's some leagues, right?
The volleyball league League won volleyball. Like, you know, half the rosters are from, you know, overseas. And so you, you think about that, like there's so much opportunity. And so as you think about the future, whether that be five months, five years, or 15 years, like teams and travel have got to find ways to partner together because if not, they're both leaving so much money on the table.
Completely the end of day. Right. Kind of goes back to greediness, but like businesses, they wanna make money. Yeah. And there is not a single sports team out there that wouldn't like open their ears and eyes to say, all right, here's an op, here's an opportunity or an avenue to make more money. Yeah. I think that's a big piece of it is, you know, I think it's just gonna continue to grow, but I think what's gonna be scalable and sustainable is like, is there a true partnership?
Right, because there's, there's in transactions, as you know, transactions is like, I'll buy tickets here and there. That's not a true partnership. Like where's that true partnership that it's on both ends. There's a ton of value added. And so I think there's a, I don't have the, the magic bullet of like what it is, but if, but teams have got to continue to figure that out because I think there's so much opportunity there.
Yeah, I think, I think I'm, I'm better, a better sort of topic to discuss this. You know, this thing called World Cup that's coming next year. You know, you got, I don't know how many different markets within North America that they're gonna be in from a destination perspective. You know, I think they're all starting to get ready.
I think the tickets go on sale in a few weeks here. What, what are some words of wisdom other than them partnerships, do you think? I think the travel professional travel professionals could sort of look at to find out how to capture that fan behavior. 'cause you're also an expert in fan behavior, Travis.
Like you've seen how these people purchase. And so not saying that you, you'll understand fully the global impact of different people coming in, but just in general, any broad strokes about how fans buy tickets.
Yeah, I mean, I think a couple things to your point on the, the, the World Cup, which is in 2026, you know, venues went through a pretty thorough RFP to try to land that because the entire city, right, the entire state knows if they can get that match or multiple matches the amount of money that's gonna bring into the city.
And I think it'll look like a. Travel in a, as a whole. It's crazy to me like when there are, when there are games or big games, and you know, I won't name the city, but I was in the city a couple years ago for the national championship of college football and you know, it's a Monday night, well, typically in the, you know, restaurant industry for example, like, it's kind of a slow day on Mondays.
So all these restaurants and bars were closed. They, they missed out on so much money because they just didn't think about it and it just, you know, so I think. As it relates to like travel and tourism and, and companies out there like, think about things like that, right? Like, think about opportunities when it comes to the, the World Cup.
(01:25):
Like there are gonna be a lot of people traveling, many people, again, kind of back to that one stop shop. They wanna have their entire kind of agenda or itinerary mapped out when they book. And so to your point, like they're, they're already selling hospitality packages for the World Cup. Like those are the type of things we need to be thinking about right now.
I think too many companies wait and they're like, oh, hey, this year is the FIFA Club World Cup. You know? Right. And it's gonna be starting here in, you know, just a matter of weeks. Yeah. Like too many people are right now, like, oh, I wonder what it should I do. Like, I wonder who's coming in, how can I, it's gotta be that proactive mentality and mindset.
Yes. To ensure that you can maximize the revenue early on when people are book eat. Yeah, they're starting to plan that out in a variety, whatever, whatever your, your value is and whatever you're selling, can you get out in front of 'em now versus waiting till next July,
which is the irony, right? Because on the travel side, all you do is understand seasonality.
You know, you, you basically, you plan, you execute and you report and the. The issue here is that they don't consider a lot of live events as part of this. I think in a, on a market level, they do to a certain extent. You know, they understand that the Knicks are gonna be playing and when the schedule comes out, they're gonna, all those hotels around that the massive square garden are gonna have to fluctuate their rates a little bit.
Yep. But at the same time, it's, it's not, they're not really looking at it because again, I think it goes back to partnership. Like to. Find those tour operators or find those companies that are gonna be adjacent, who are gonna manage all of these people who come through. That'd be very challenging.
Another time along those lines, like in a hotel, like I was at a, a pretty large sporting event.
It was a World series and you go back to the hotel and look, it wasn't a clinching game, it was a World Series, but it was on a Sunday night and the hotel bar was closed and you have all these fans and they, that team, the visiting team won that game. Wow. Hands, they're dying to like have some fun and spend money and it's closed.
And so I think just, and again, I know that's granular, but those are little things. Yeah. You're not capturing some revenue that way. You're never gonna see the bigger picture.
Well, if it's, they're, they're small things and the bigger, I mean the bigger scheme of things, but it's really easy to execute. Stay open, stay up.
I don't think those are things, I think, you know, when people are, whether it be again, the, the World Cup or any event, any live event, to your point, like as they, as they're thinking about it, you know, in the travel or tourism chair, and again, I don't claim to be an expert at that, but like how are they engaging with that, with that audience that is coming forward?
Maybe their main reason is come to that live event. What else can they partake in and be a part of? And they, they need to have all those accommodations.
Well, I'll, I'll, I'll bump it up just a little bit more because we're, we're kind of getting there. I, I was, I had another show where a sta a buddy of mine who's been to several marathons.
He was talking about how at the hotel level or the destination level, they don't do a really good job with the sponsorship of, or the partnerships with certain brands to sort of accommodate runners. How, how do you think brands should think about fans? We now, I, I know as a broad. There's a lot of intricacy depending on what city and what, you know, what type of sport it is.
But like in general, back to sort of the fan behavior piece, like if I'm a credit card company, which I think they have that pretty much down, but like if I'm a, I don't know, a consumer packaged goods company or something, like what are some ideas that they, that a brand could take away about marketing to fans?
And then if you've seen any cool activations, that would be also interesting.
I'll, I'll tell you like, one is, is smaller example. So every year, you know, my wife and I, and we have a little one, we. We do a Turkey trot, so we're not big runners, but we do it trot Thanksgiving morning. We live in Nashville.
Well, every year when we sign up, you know, you'll get a shirt and you get your tags, your pickup is outta Dick's Sporting Goods. You pick up your stuff, you get, you know, 20% off anything you buy that day. Nice. Lo and behold, right? Every year we buy more stuff that we probably didn't even think about. And so like, those are the type of things is like, are you just, you know, from a brand perspective, like are you just.
Enabling your fans or enabling your potential buyers an easy path to spend money with you to make money. I think little things like that, again, that's a smaller example. Yeah. But as you think about fans, you think about brands, you know, every team has a, a pretty large sponsorship team, that excellent sponsorship dollars.
And it's, you know, again, depending on what your, what your value is or what your. Kind of thought provoking idea is, I think those are the things that are so important for people to think about is like, how do you just make it easy, you know, like, you know, I, I go back to even like some of these like surveys that you'll get when you buy a ticket or, or buy anything.
If you can make it where it's a three question survey and I can do it on my phone very quick. Great. When you make a 22 page document, yeah. You're just not gonna get the buy in. And so I think brands have gotta think about that as like, what can be easy. Right. Our, those lives move very quick as everybody, right.
(01:46):
And, and to the sports, like, you know, that's always the, the funny thing when you, you, you get done with one game and you're like, that was great, but tomorrow here's another, or in two days another, we've got it, you know, full gear. 'cause our ownership is gonna be screaming down our throats to make sure it's, it's, you know, enhanced and sold just as well as the last one.
And so whatever you can do to make it easy for the fan journey. Be a part of that. So when you think about, you know, you, you talked about like the marathon or the runs, like I think that's what Dick's sporty goods. Yeah. They're sponsor. I have no idea what money they put on it. Yeah. But I guarantee probably 70% of people that pick up their bibs that day are buying something.
Absolutely. Oh, you also hit, hit it on the head as well, is that it's about money. So that, that's the one thing I think sponsorship people in general, I make no bones about it, it's about the offer. So if I'm a brand. Be ready to talk about money to a certain degree. I feel like a lot of them are like shocked.
What? It cost a million dollars? Like yeah, of course. Do a little homework to understand how many. Fans are involved, or, or what the impact would be if you were doing something on social media and don't act like you're gonna get this for cheap. A a lot of times I think that would speed things up as well
and understand your audience, right?
Like if you're, you're doing a brand at a concert, like who's the, the right audience at that concert? If you're going at, you know, at a, a Sunday afternoon baseball game and you know, the theme is Kids Day, right? Like something that relates to kind of kids and family. Like, it's just understanding the audience, and I think that's, in my opinion, sales 1 0 1.
But I think most salespeople struggle with that, where it's like, I have got this pen and I'm gonna force feed this pen down your throat. It's like, understand what their capabilities and reasons are that they would potentially want buy that pen. Makes sense. Tell me that pen. Yeah. Oh yeah. Get rid of like, when you come into like a team, right?
It's like, oh, I can, I can give you, deliver this brand, or I can get you this, or I can get you that. Well, it's like, yep. Maybe that doesn't make sense from the team or, or what they're looking for. Yeah,
totally. I got, I got two more questions. One, you're unique 'cause you've worked for different entities in various sports.
What's the toughest sport to work for?
You know, I, I get asked that a lot, right? I've, I've spent a lot of time in baseball and basketball specifically, and, you know, on one end people are like, I don't know how you ever work in baseball. It's 81 game. But ly enough, every venue I've worked in has had more games or events.
Because you typically, yeah. Like you work in an NBA arena, you have 44 games. Yeah. You have another 70, 80 ticketed events between concerts and the ancillary events and so, right. You know, look, I think baseball is probably the most difficult and you know, for any listeners out there, my friends that are listening like, oh, basketball's harder, you know, whatever.
They're all difficult. Right. Baseball is just a unique challenge because it's, you know, on one end it's 13 weekends, you are gonna have a 10 game home stand. And as we just talked about, like the, the requirements, the expectations are to sell at the highest level for all of those. Right. And it's, it's a challenge.
Like if you have, Hey, I'm gonna have a 10 game home stand and you want to like work peak on peak and try to sell the the weekends, Friday, Saturdays. It's like you can't just drop the ball on that Tuesday and have 3000 people show up. And so I think it's just for 81 games. It's just constantly thinking about what's next, what's next, what's next?
Yeah. And it's, and it's a lot of late nights, right? Like nights and you know what, I was, no weekends. The worst part about working in baseball, I used to work for the Pittsburgh Pirates, so the weather is not always ideal is you'd have a 10 game home stand that would start on a Friday. So you knew both weekends were shot.
But then it was inevitable, like on Tuesday you'd have a three hour rain delay. The game wouldn't end until midnight and then the next late it would be a 15 inning game wouldn't end until midnight. You're like, holy cow. Here we are. So there are definitely some long nights, but again, going back to, to the venues, like there's, there, it's the same thing.
Like they're, they're all difficult, which is part of a lot of this conversation we're having today is like, it's all difficult, but there, there's, that means there's a lot of opportunity as well. Totally. I, I didn't,
I didn't think about it from a venue perspective. That would be the test actually. So, because you're, it doesn't matter music.
You got a festival, you got a concert, you got
like, oh, great. Like we just, you know, we, we had a great, you know, NBA game. It's like the next night we have a concert and then the next night, you know, Disney on Ice is coming in, or the circuses coming in for a week, and you know that
great.
(02:07):
That's
Nest. All right.
I'm a huge Warriors fan who's, who's going to the finals? Who just going to NBA five? Us.
You know, it's, it's gonna be interesting. You guys, you guys are so, like, I, I agnostic. My really good friends work for the Cavs. I grew up in Ohio. I'm not a Cavs fan, but my, oh, I have a lot of friends. They're dire Cavs fans, so I'm, I'm rooting for the Cavs.
But there's, there's gonna be some interesting ones. Like, you know, even like the Pacers, I think they could be a, oh yeah, so. And Lake Lakers were eliminated last night, so
that's interesting too. Right. It'll be a fun, it'll be a fun playoffs. Playoffs to watch. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you for allowing me to switch it up and put the microphone on you and you share your wisdom and experience here on tickets to Travel.
Let's do it again.
Yeah. Thank you, Mario. Appreciate it. You know, I've, I've loved what you're doing and obviously you and I hit it off very, very early on because we we're thinking alike, so hopefully beneficial for the listeners and yeah, I'm looking forward to doing it again.
And we'll definitely cover 52 weeks to hustle as well in the intro and and outro of this to get you some more listeners as well.
But thanks again, Travis. Appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.