Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

Recommendations

Info

and we drove to the Olympics. She was so excited. She couldn’tbelieve she was going to check something like this off her bucketlist. She was sparkling and delightful and excited. We walked inand watched Muhammad Ali light the cauldron, we saw all theOlympians walk in with all their colors. She had such a good time.The next day, back in the office, word starts spreadingaround. “Did you hear what Cohen did? He blew off hisplans and took a grandmother to the Olympics.” And therest of the team starts following suit, going above andbeyond for our customers. It trickles down from the top.That was a big epiphany on being customer-centric.What sports are popular these days? Where is demand goingup or down? Esports is coming on strong. There’s definitely amarket. A lot of money’s being spent. We’ll sell tickets thereif we see an event that we think is going to sell out. Wrestlingis still in there too. People like WWE and cage stuff.How involved is TicketCity in the ticket-buyer’s wholeexperience? Do you offer other services? Some people want torent a nice house or get a great parking spot, so we have a lot ofthat contracted. So we do some hospitality. But times are changing.You have to have your specific laser-like focus on what you want tobe good at. If you try to do parking, hospitality, hotels, and tickets. . . it’s a lot. Our focus is still on acquiring and selling tickets.The business is changing at the speed of light, though.They don’t sell nearly as many season tickets anymore. Youhave big companies that try to aggregate all the inventoryand then keep the market high. But I think the pendulumwill swing back the other way and season ticket holderswill start to buy packages again. History repeats itself.Ever since I’ve known you, you call yourself the ChiefEnergizing Officer, not the chief executive officer. Why isthat? One of my big roles has been to put together a greatteam, rally the troops, be the marketing guy. I have a lot ofenergy. When I come in, I’m high-fiving and chest-bumpingmy people. I’m there for them any time they need me. They dothe heavy lifting, and I’m there as a Chief Energizing Officerin case of emergencies. I’m almost like an insurance policy.I’ll give you an example. At the Seattle Super Bowl, people hadordered a bunch of seats from people who put spec inventory onour site. Some of those had sold at $3,000 but the day of the gamecomes and the market is at $10,000. So now we get the call: “I’msorry, Randy, our tickets didn’t come through. We can’t deliver.”“What?”As TicketCity, I’m still responsible for all these tickets. One guywas like, “You don’t understand. I sold these to a drug dealer inCosta Rica and he’s going to kill me.” And that guy was sitting thereat our office in Phoenix for three days, crying, hoping to get hisseats. And we were able to get him his tickets. But there are tonsof stories where we just didn’t have the inventory, from peoplewanting to propose at a game to people fulfilling lifelong dreams.As Chief Energizing Officer, I don’t run from those problems.You’ve got to meet with every customer head-on. And, at thatSuper Bowl, we ended up giving everyone all their money back,plus an additional $2,000 a person, per ticket. And I threw abig party out there for them. All the food and booze included.So they didn’t get to go to the game, but I was there, they wereable to lash out at me and yell at me. It was overwhelming. Itwas the best-worst experience of my life. But we got everybodytaken care of. Sometimes it takes extra energy to go, “Woo,woo! Stand back, nonbelievers. Let’s make this happen!”So that’s a bad day at work. What’s a good day at work atTicketCity? What gets you up in the morning? I still love whatI do. We make dreams come true. We put a lot of smiles onpeople’s faces. We show up and help make sure people get the bestexperience they can, with the right seats that fit their needs. Weeven coach them, help them get exactly what works best for them.What about from the employee perspective? Is it easy to hirepeople into the ticket industry? I’ve been really lucky. Theaverage TicketCity management employee has been with ustwenty-something years. They’re still here. They’re still fightingthe good fight. We have some legends in the ticket industry. AndI’m considered one of the godfathers of the ticket business now.Is the legal landscape pretty stable right now for the ticketbusiness? There’s always battles, man. It’s yin and yang.After calling us the scalpers of the world for a long time, nowit’s more like “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” But there’salways legislative battles. We fought things from Texas toCanada. But the law in Texas is pretty wide open. You cansell a ticket for whatever here. It’s not like in New York,where you could only sell 20 percent over at one point.People aren’t selling from the street anymore. There’sa lot of companies out there, Gametime or SeatGeek,where you’re able to actually sell tickets online.Companies have basically taken the street scalper out ofthe loop. They’re still out there, but not as much.Since you’re probably one of the world experts on UT athletics,how do you feel about where the program is headed? I’ll steala phrase from our athletics director, Chris Del Conte: “Ladiesand gentlemen, the bar is open.” People are excited. You can feelthe energy. And the money’s flowing into that program.Any final thoughts? I tell people all the time, “Love what you do.Do it well. And keep on doing it.” I’m still showing up and fightingthe fight and trying to get 1 percent better every day. That’s whatwe preach around here. How do you get your company getting 1percent better every day? How do you be the best you can be?76 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 2020
CATCHINGTHE PERFECT PASSInnovation often springs from the unlikeliest of places. Take the unnoticed football program of IowaWesleyan in 1989, where head coach Hal Mumme and assistant coach Mike Leach developed anoffensive strategy that would change the sport forever. New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzerfinalist S. C. Gwynne tells that story in The Perfect Pass, delivering a portrait of two unconventionalminds at work. Gwynne spoke with us about why the story of Hal and Mike caught his attention andwhat management lessons may lie in their reinvention of offensive strategy. Gwynne’s latest book,Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War, is available now.You’re known as a historian. How did you happen on this storyabout football? It started with a Texas Monthly article that Iwrote about Mike Leach, who had his great run at the nationalchampionship in 2008 with Texas Tech. That game againstTexas in Lubbock, the Crabtree catch, that was the greatest singlegame in the history of Texas Tech. Period. Everybody at Techcan tell you what happened in that game second by second.I went out to cover Mike and the team with the idea that wewould put him on the cover, as we did. We put him on thecover in September 2009 with a pirate patch on his eye. I washanging out, reporting the story, talking to Mike, the coaches,and everybody. I wanted to understand the offense, because Ididn’t. And I knew hardly anybody else did, either. Mike wouldroutinely put up large numbers of points against you, and youcouldn’t figure out how he was doing it. And you couldn’t stop it.Before that, there had only been one significant article writtenabout Mike Leach. Michael Lewis, one of my absolute favoritewriters, had written a cover story about Leach in the NewYork Times Magazine, “The Most Offensive Mind in Football.”Lewis did a lot of things in that article, but he hadn’t gotteninto where the Air Raid offense came from. And so I asked.Mike starts telling me about Iowa Wesleyan back in theeighties and this guy Hal Mumme who I’d never heard of. Thething that really caught my ear was when he said: “In the offseason, Hal and I would get into this old car and we’d driveTexasCEOMagazine.com77
Page 1 and 2:
Q1 2020THE BUSINESS OFTEXASSPORTSTI
Page 3 and 4:
Letter from theOWNERGreat CEOs crea
Page 5 and 6:
INSIDE Departments6 [MANAGEMENT]OUT
Page 7 and 8:
CEOs; as you can see, the outsiders
Page 9 and 10:
FeatureDid you know when you were s
Page 11 and 12:
Featureimplemented. People told me,
Page 13 and 14:
P O D C A S TEach week on Ask a CEO
Page 16 and 17:
money.” They went on to share wit
Page 18 and 19:
The Eyes18 Texas CEO Magazine Q1 20
Page 20 and 21:
THERE’S ASAYING IN OURWEIGHT ROOM
Page 22 and 23:
WHAT CEOSCan Learn fromEXCEPTIONALC
Page 24 and 25:
STARTUP SUCCESS:A STARTUP FUNDRAISI
Page 26 and 27: out how much to raise in order to a
Page 28 and 29: 7WITHFeatureMark CubanQuick Questio
Page 30 and 31: Want to WorkfromCOWBOYS HQ?HERE’S
Page 32 and 33: Our approach, starting with JerrySr
Page 34 and 35: invested into The Star development,
Page 36 and 37: environment, still allows a company
Page 38 and 39: 5 ThingsTO CONSIDER BEFORE TAKING A
Page 40 and 41: HOW BUSINESSES EXPERIENCE TEXASATTE
Page 42 and 43: The Characteristics of a Well-Desig
Page 44 and 45: Who gave you the heads-up on the un
Page 46 and 47: • Use reflection questions.o Refl
Page 48 and 49: Three Actionable Strategiesfor Buil
Page 50 and 51: SAVE THE DATE!October 3, 2020 • 1
Page 52 and 53: toward a target audience’s IP add
Page 54 and 55: Austin FC — In 2021, Major League
Page 56 and 57: LEGISLATIVEFOOTBALL,TEXAS-STYLECrai
Page 58 and 59: The Legislature also authorized a r
Page 60: BUILDINGA BRIGHTER FUTUREFOR CENTRA
Page 63 and 64: million for a six-year randomized s
Page 65 and 66: WHAT HASANDY RODDICK LEARNEDSINCE S
Page 67 and 68: ON SALENOW!Available wherever books
Page 69 and 70: THE ESPORTSINDUSTRY IS VALUEDAT ABO
Page 71 and 72: The thing I find with older folks w
Page 73 and 74: won’t maximize the storage space.
Page 75: He pulls out his badge and goes,
Page 79 and 80: the thousand other things we could
Page 82 and 83: 2. It’s not just about fitness.Pr
Page 84 and 85: [PERFORMANCE]MARKETING RESEARCHUNIT
Page 86 and 87: ListenIn his recent book, Shut Up a
Page 88 and 89: You’ve realized your dream of own
Page 90 and 91: [LEADERSHIP]MISSION, PRIDE, PEOPLE3
Page 92 and 93: cannot profess a mission and expect
Page 94 and 95: BRINGING ARENEGADE SPIRITTO XFL 2.0
Page 96 and 97: THE BUSINESS OFCOLLEGE ATHLETICSA C
Page 98: At UTSA, their AD is in hersecond y
show all

Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?