The Business
Sharks Sports & Entertainment (SSE) is the parent company of the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League and San Jose Barracuda of the American Hockey League. It oversees all areas of operation of the city-owned SAP Center at San Jose, the premier sports and entertainment venue in Santa Clara County. Established in 2000, SSE manages three public Ice facilities throughout the Bay Area; Sharks Ice at San Jose which includes the state-of-the-art Tech CU Arena, Sharks Ice at Fremont, and the Oakland Ice Center. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., SSE remains steadfast in its pursuit to pioneer the future of sports and entertainment while connecting diverse groups of people for the good of the organization and our community. As SSE says, “We are all #TealTogether.”
The Challenge
The world of professional sports involves much more than just the event itself. It encompasses everything from parking to in-house food and beverage, ticket sales, retail, venue maintenance, and staffing.
To stay competitive and meet the growing demands of fans, SSE set out to gain a comprehensive view of its organization. With multiple third-party systems across departments, SSE’s data was siloed, making it difficult to generate reports or track metrics in real-time. This lack of visibility was hindering informed decision-making and strategic planning.
SSE needed a centralized system across the business to gain valuable insights into fan preferences, identify areas for improvement across employee processes, and drive better results.
“The future of CX is about unleashing the power of our technology and data to serve our customers better. Every person should have the information they need, … at the moment they need it, based on the best channel possible.”
The Solution
Consolidating and correlating data for a 360-degree view of the business.
Realizing the need to future-proof its business with a cloud-based IT infrastructure, SSE implemented the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) as the foundation of its digital transformation. SAP Datasphere integrates and correlates SSE’s data from different vendors and systems across ticketing, parking, food and beverage operations, e-commerce retail, and employee management.
With one source of truth and deep insights, SSE can connect better with fans while optimizing event management and profitability.
Fostering a loyal and engaged fan base
From hockey games and concerts to local events, ice sports, and work in the community, SSE strives to create platforms to bring people together. To create a unified fan experience across these varied touchpoints, SSE needed to integrate its digital and in-person interactions, delivering personalized engagements on a larger scale.
Using SAP Customer Data Platform, SSE gains a 360-degree view of each customer, consolidating activity information such as ticketing, attendance, and account data, while SAP Customer Data Cloud manages customer consent and profile details. SAP Emarsys Customer Engagement handles real-time, personalized e-mail campaigns through advanced segmentation, ensuring fans receive content relevant to their interests. These insights are then integrated into SAP Sales Cloud, improving pipeline and activity management capabilities for account managers. This approach helps boost proactive retention efforts and loyalty.
Looking ahead, SSE remains committed to advancing its customer relationship strategy by integrating additional data sources, enriching the customer profile with new dimensions, and leveraging embedded artificial intelligence (AI) such as the SAP CX AI Toolkit to not only meet but exceed expectations.
The Impact
Together with SAP, SSE drives business innovation and achieves its goals on and off the ice by enabling employees to self-serve and make informed, strategic decisions with confidence.
SAP Analytics Cloud provides SSE employees with a unified access point to gain insights from data. With user-friendly dashboards, SSE can visualize, analyze, and identify patterns in its consolidated data sets. This has led to reduced redundancy, improved data governance, and eliminated various manual processes to facilitate seamless collaboration across the organization.
For marketing and sales, the correlation between front and back-end customer data helps the San Jose Sharks better understand the habits and tenure of season ticket holders. In 2024, these efforts led to the quick deployment of a personalized renewal campaign that achieved a 75% open rate, 28% click rate, and surpassed industry standards with an impressive 87% renewal rate.
For venue operators, real-time monitoring of entry points at SAP Center makes it possible to adjust staffing based on attendance and parking data if entry traffic exceeds the expected baseline by more than 10% before and after the event.
With SAP CX and SAP BTP solutions, SSE delivers exceptional experiences to fans and optimizes business operations. Together, the possibilities are endless.
“Last season was the first time that we utilized SAP CX for our Sharks season ticket renewal campaign, and the results were incredible. The technology enabled us to improve renewal rates from 71% to 87%. That is an unprecedented jump, so it had a significant financial impact on our business. We also saw open rates of 75% to 80% and engagement rates on emails up to 26%. We attribute these improved numbers year over year to the ability to segment based on data coming from the SAP CX system.”