CALABASAS, Calif. (January 24, 2012) – Realizing a 65 percent improvement in efficiency managing tickets and suites during the first year of using SpotlightTMS, a software as a service (SaaS) application for managing corporate suite and ticket assets, Tickets.com has signed a multi-year contract extension with SpotlightTMS (www.SpotlightTMS.com).

SpotlightTMS is the first enterprise SaaS application to centralize and automate all aspects of sports and entertainment ticket management.  With a clear and concise understanding of how they’re using their sports and entertainment assets, Tickets.com and other SpotlightTMS users can maximize revenues and ROI from their ticket and suite investments.“Given our policy of validating and recommending only best-of-breed providers to our clients, Spotlight Ticket Management has been a preferred partner for some time,” said John Rizzi, senior vice president of product management and strategy at Tickets.com.

“Through the validation process, we realized we could use SpotlightTMS to manage our internal tickets as well.  With tens of thousands of tickets to manage internally — spanning multiple sports leagues and overlapping seasons, plus myriad concerts and other live events — we needed an automated, transparent and efficient ticket management solution for our internal use.  SpotlightTMS has revolutionized our internal ticket management and has measurably saved us time and effort.”

Tickets.com is a leading provider of event ticketing solutions that enable professional sports teams, multi-purpose arenas and performing arts organizations to control their ticketing operations, and as part of these relationships, receives suites and tickets for its own business use.  Tickets.com uses these suite and ticket assets to support business development initiatives, entertain clients and reward employees located nationwide and internationally.  SpotlightTMS automates the uploading of Tickets.com’s vast ticket inventory, as well as requests and distribution, thereby eliminating manual processes and improving efficiency.

“The dramatic increase in ticket management efficiency that Tickets.com has realized is a major benefit of SpotlightTMS, beyond the product’s ultimate goal of driving revenue through the use of sports and entertainment assets,” said Knopp.  “We’re extremely pleased to announce this contract extension.  It strengthens our relationship with Tickets.com both as a customer and a partner as it demonstrates the company’s endorsement of our ticket management solution.”

SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud, with no software to install and secure access available worldwide through the Internet.  SpotlightTMS includes the ability to:

• Manage ticket inventories, saving time and reducing waste
• Measure top users and most invited companies
• Analyze the results of ticket usage, increasing sales effectiveness and measuring ROI
• Distribute tickets, reducing fraud through role-based permission approval for ticket requests
• Meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements, reducing the risk of penalties
• Buy additional tickets from multiple sources, saving time and money

SpotlightTMS pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS. Its growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize ROI and revenues from their tickets includes Google, Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Penske Truck Leasing and Stanley Black & Decker.  In addition, professional sports teams from football, hockey and basketball — including the Cincinnati Bengals, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bears, New Jersey Devils, Sacramento Kings, Miami Heat, Philadelphia Eagles, Memphis Grizzlies, Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans and Detroit Red Wings — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About SpotlightTMS

SpotlightTMS (www.spotlighttms.com) is an enterprise SaaS provider that enables companies to maximize the business impact of sports and entertainment ticket investments while maintaining compliance standards.  Its SpotlightTMS™ application is currently in use managing millions of dollars in entertainment investments by companies that want to manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way.  SpotlightTMS includes a business impact engine that allows companies to drive and measure direct business outcome, such as ensuring utilization, assessing sponsorship effectiveness and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue.  The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

CALABASAS, Calif., Jan 17, 2012 — SpotlightTMS (www.SpotlightTMS.com) today announced it has launched SpotlightTMS for Salesforce on salesforce.com’s AppExchange, helping to accelerate the market shift to the next cloud computing paradigm which is inherently social, mobile and open. Salesforce CRM users will now be able to maximize their return on sports and entertainment asset investments and measure their impact as a driver of revenue, all without leaving their familiar Salesforce environment.

Built on Force.com, salesforce.com’s enterprise cloud computing platform for building employee-facing social apps, the beta release of SpotlightTMS for Salesforce is immediately available for deployment, at no cost to SpotlightTMS users, on the AppExchange at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/. A 60-day free trial of the complete SpotlightTMS platform, including SpotlightTMS for Salesforce, is available at http://www.spotlighttms.com/spotlight-for-salesforce/.

SpotlightTMS for Salesforce (S4S) integrates seamlessly with Salesforce CRM, putting ticket management functionality in the hands of sales, marketing and other users through the CRM system they already use. Working with leads or contacts, users can search company ticket inventory, as well as tickets from multiple external sources, submit ticket requests and obtain approvals, purchase additional tickets, and have tickets delivered, all within activity records maintained within Salesforce CRM. S4S provides customers with real-time access to the SpotlightTMS platform for ticket administration, distribution and compliance reporting capability.

“The integration of SpotlightTMS with Salesforce CRM enables corporations to take full advantage of the revenue-increasing and deal-closing value of sports and entertainment events without leaving their familiar Salesforce CRM environment,” said Tony Knopp, SpotlightTMS CEO and co-founder. “Companies make significant investments in sports and entertainment ticket assets and S4S enables their Salesforce CRM users to more easily utilize those assets, maximizing ROI, tracking their usage and measuring their business impact.”

“S4S delivers a seamless extension to Salesforce CRM functionality, providing our customers with better visibility into the performance of their sports and entertainment assets,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president, ISV alliances, salesforce.com. “The ecosystem of apps on the AppExchange helps us deliver more options to our customers to help make them successful.”

SpotlightTMS pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS. Its growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues from and ROI on their tickets includes Google, Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group. In addition, professional sports teams from football, hockey and basketball — including the San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bears, New Jersey Devils, Miami Heat, Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Memphis Grizzlies, Baltimore Ravens and Detroit Red Wings — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About SpotlightTMS

SpotlightTMS ( www.spotlighttms.com ) is an enterprise SaaS provider that enables companies to maximize the business impact of sports and entertainment ticket investments while maintaining compliance standards. Its SpotlightTMS(TM) application is currently in use managing millions of dollars in entertainment investments by companies that want to manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way. SpotlightTMS includes a business impact engine that allows companies to drive and measure direct business outcome, such as ensuring utilization, assessing sponsorship effectiveness and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue. The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange

Force.com is the trusted social enterprise platform for building and running any employee app in the cloud. Force.com powers the Salesforce CRM apps, the more than 200,000 custom apps used by salesforce.com customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and Sprint Nextel and the more than 1,300 ISV apps built by partners such as BMC, FinancialForce.com and Fujitsu.

Enterprise apps built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed and marketed through the salesforce.com AppExchange http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

The salesforce.com social enterprise platform delivers the most trusted and comprehensive cloud technologies for social, mobile and open apps. It includes Force.com, the cloud platform for employee apps, Heroku, the cloud platform for customer apps and Database.com, the cloud database to integrate the social enterprise.

Salesforce, Dreamforce, Force.com, Heroku, AppExchange, Database.com and others are trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

CALABASAS, Calif. (December 15, 2011) – With the NBA back in business, companies are now prioritizing their use of luxury suites and season tickets for corporate entertaining.   As a value-added feature of its season ticket and hospitality suite packages, the Memphis Grizzlies will provide its corporate clients with SpotlightTMS™, a Software as a Service (SaaS) application that enables companies to measure the business impact of their ticket and suite assets, Spotlight Ticket Management (http://www.SpotlightTMS.com) announced today.

With SpotlightTMS, organizations can manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way, thereby ensuring utilization while assessing the effectiveness of those investments and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue.  By providing SpotlightTMS as part of its suite and season ticket packages, the Memphis franchise adds value to suite ownership at FedExForum and enables its best customers to increase revenue and ROI on use of their tickets and suites.

“The Memphis Grizzlies and FedExForum are dedicated to delivering a world-class championship experience to our fans, community and partners,” said Gregg Crone, Memphis Grizzlies’ Director, Ticket and Premium Services.  “SpotlightTMS allows us to extend that experience beyond the arena doors and provide a service to our premium clientele and hospitality suite holders in order to ensure the return on their investment exceeds expectations.”

SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud with no software to install.  It offers companies secure access through the Internet to manage ticket inventories, distribute tickets, analyze the results of ticket usage, acquire additional tickets from multiple sources and meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements.  By using SpotlightTMS,  corporate customers have experienced a reduction in ticket fraud through role-based permission approval for ticket requests, reduction in administrative time and money, and increased sales effectiveness.

“The hospitality suites at FedExForum present an excellent environment for corporate deal making,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight CEO and co-founder.  “By providing SpotlightTMS to its premium clientele, the Memphis Grizzlies are helping these companies measure the impact of their investment in tickets and suites for corporate entertaining, and then use that information to drive revenue.”

Spotlight pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS.  Spotlight’s growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues and ROI on their tickets includes Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, Penske Truck Leasing and Principal Financial Group.   In addition, more than 30 professional sports teams — including the Cincinnati Bengals, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About Spotlight

Spotlight Ticket Management (www.spotlighttms.com) is the first enterprise SaaS provider to enable companies to manage their corporate ticket and sponsorship investments while measuring their business impact.  Its SpotlightTMS application is currently in use managing millions of dollars in entertainment investments by companies that want to manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way. SpotlightTMS includes a business impact engine that allows companies to drive and measure business impact, including ensuring utilization, assessing sponsorship effectiveness and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue.  The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

SpotlightTMS is a best-in-class Software as a Service (SaaS) application that allows organizations to manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way, thereby ensuring utilization while assessing the effectiveness of those investments and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue. By providing SpotlightTMS as part of its suite package, The Home Depot Center adds value to suite ownership and enables the venue’s Premium Seating clients to increase revenue and ROI on use of their tickets and suites.

SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud, with no software to install and secure access available worldwide through the Internet. SpotlightTMS includes the ability to:
• Manage ticket inventories, saving time and reducing waste
• Distribute tickets, reducing fraud through role-based permission approval for ticket requests
• Analyze the results of ticket usage, increasing sales effectiveness and measuring ROI
• Meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements, reducing the risk of penalties
• Buy additional tickets from multiple sources, saving time and money

“The Home Depot Center’s suite holders, who are using entertainment strategically to maximize revenue, now have the ability to match the right prospects to the right event at the right time in the sales cycle,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight president and chairman.

“SpotlightTMS is being used by a few of our Premium clients, and because of their feedback, we felt very confident that this new ticket management tool would be an added benefit for our entire Premium Seating program,” said Alicia Fox, director of Premium Seating for The Home Depot Center.

Spotlight pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS. Spotlight’s growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues and ROI on their tickets includes Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group. In addition, more than 30 professional sports teams — including the Cincinnati Bengals, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

CALABASAS, Calif. (November 1, 2011) — Spotlight Ticket Management (www.SpotlightTMS.com) announced today that Penske Truck Leasing (www.GoPenske.com) has selected SpotlightTMS™, a best-in-class SaaS application for managing suite and ticket assets, to administer its corporate ticket and sponsorship investments, while measuring and optimizing their business impact.

The truck and fleet leasing company uses approximately 4,000 ticket assets annually to build relationships with customers and prospects at major and minor league sports events in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Penske wanted an automated, transparent and efficient ticket management process that would yield accurate reporting data, and selected SpotlightTMS because of its ability to quantify the benefits associated with sports and entertainment marketing. Penske also lauded the software’s easy set up, simplicity, and visibility of use.

“Because sports entertainment is an important element of our marketing mix, we needed the ability to measure those efforts,” said Jim Feenstra, senior vice president of marketing at Penske. “SpotlightTMS enables us to see the impact of our sports entertainment investments on our bottom line with absolute clarity.”

SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud, so Penske didn’t have to invest in additional hardware, or handle software installation, set up or maintenance. The Spotlight solution offers secure access through the Internet to provide real-time access to business impact reports that measure ticket inventory, top users, most invited companies, and ticket utilization. SpotlightTMS users can also distribute tickets, acquire additional tickets from multiple sources and meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements.

“Penske Truck Leasing recognizes the significant impact that sports entertainment can have on its revenues,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight president and chairman. “We’re thrilled that the company has chosen SpotlightTMS to manage its ticket and suite assets in order to increase their ROI while measuring the business impact that these investments have on their bottom line.”

Spotlight pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS. Spotlight’s growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues and ROI on their tickets includes Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group. In addition, more than 30 professional sports teams — including the Cincinnati Bengals, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About Spotlight
Spotlight Ticket Management (www.spotlighttms.com) is the first enterprise SaaS provider to enable companies to manage their corporate ticket and sponsorship investments while measuring their business impact. Its SpotlightTMS application allows companies to manage their entertainment asset investments in a simple, transparent way – ensuring utilization, assessing sponsorship effectiveness, and measuring ticket use as a driver of revenue. The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

CALABASAS, Calif. (October 17, 2011) – Spotlight Ticket Management announced today that the Sacramento Kings have selected SpotlightTMS™, a best-in-class SaaS application for managing suite and ticket assets, and will provide the software as a value-added feature for its corporate suite holders.

SpotlightTMS is the first enterprise SaaS application to centralize and automate all aspects of sports and entertainment ticket management.  These capabilities enable Spotlight’s enterprise customers and Kings’ suite holders to maximize revenues and ROI from the use of ticket assets while saving time and resources managing them.

After an exhaustive search of alternative ticket management systems, the Kings selected SpotlightTMS because of its reputation among other professional sports organizations.  “We looked into other ticket management systems, but based on feedback from teams across the league and in other professional sports, we made the decision to move forward with Spotlight,” said Lyndsi Weichert, director, suite sales & service for the Sacramento Kings.

“Suite holders have requested access to a better mechanism to measure ROI and provide a clear and concise understanding of their ticket usage,” Weichert said.  “By partnering with Spotlight, we are able to show our corporate customers that we’re listening to them.”

SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud with no software to install.  It offers companies secure access through the Internet to manage ticket inventories, distribute tickets, analyze the results of ticket usage, acquire additional tickets from multiple sources and meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements.  By using SpotlightTMS, existing corporate customers have experienced a reduction in ticket fraud through role-based permission approval for ticket requests, reduction in administrative time and money, and increased sales effectiveness.

”Sports entertaining requires due diligence and accurate data to measure return on investment,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight president and chairman. “Through this agreement, the Kings are providing their most important customers a best practices solution for tracking ticket usage and increasing revenues through the effective use of their sports entertainment dollar. We’re especially pleased to know that the Kings chose SpotlightTMS based on its endorsement by other professional sports teams.”

Spotlight pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS.  Spotlight’s growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues and ROI on their tickets includes Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group.   In addition, more than 30 professional sports teams — including the Cincinnati Bengals, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About Spotlight

Spotlight (www.spotlighttms.com) is the first enterprise SaaS provider to automate and centralize all aspects of ticket management, to help corporations increase revenue by efficiently managing their sports and entertainment tickets, suites and hospitality assets.  Its Spotlight Ticket Management Solution enables companies to generate data to determine ROI from these assets and optimize their usage for business development and other income-producing purposes.  The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

CALABASAS, Calif. (October 3, 2011) – Spotlight Ticket Management (www.SpotlightTMS.com) today announced that the Cincinnati Bengals have selected the company to provide its SpotlightTMS™ ticket management system to the team’s suite customers.

By providing SpotlightTMS, the Bengals are adding value to suite ownership and enabling the team’s most important customers to increase revenue and ROI on use of their tickets.  A Software as a Service (SaaS) application, SpotlightTMS is delivered through the cloud and available whenever and wherever needed.

“We’re doing everything we can to ensure that companies get the most value from their private suites and season tickets,” said Jeff Berding, director of sales and public affairs for the Cincinnati Bengals.  “Choosing Spotlight’s SaaS ticket management solution and providing it to our most important customers is the latest example of how the Bengals are adding value to companies’ season ticket and suite investments.  By using SpotlightTMS, our corporate customers can access data that shows exactly how their suites and season tickets are used.  It’s a great tool because the metrics show their return on investment.”

SpotlightTMS is the first enterprise SaaS application to centralize and automate all aspects of sports and entertainment ticket management.  These capabilities enable Spotlight’s enterprise customers to maximize revenues and ROI from the use of ticket assets while saving time and resources managing them.   An integrated solution, SpotlightTMS includes the ability to:

• Manage ticket inventories, saving time and reducing waste
• Distribute tickets, reducing fraud through role-based permission approval for ticket requests
• Analyze the results of ticket usage, increasing sales effectiveness and measuring ROI
• Meet IRS and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance reporting requirements, reducing the risk of penalties
• Buy additional tickets from multiple sources, saving time and money

”Luxury suites present an optimal environment for building business relationships and closing deals,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight president and chairman.  “Providing SpotlightTMS to their enterprise customers is a win-win for suite holders who can use it to increase revenues from their investment in Bengals’ tickets and for the team itself, which is delivering a compelling business rationale for season tickets and private suites at renewal time.”

The Bengals expect to benefit from the anticipated increase in overall NFL attendance this year, which represents a significant opportunity for both the Bengals and the team’s corporate customers.

“This season should be a healthy one for corporate entertainment at NFL games,” said David Carter, principal of The Sports Business Group and an advisor to Spotlight.  ”With the labor dispute resolved and all teams now playing a full schedule, the league is projecting attendance to be up slightly this season from last year.  That bodes well for suite usage throughout the NFL.”

Spotlight pioneered the enterprise sports and entertainment ticket management space with SpotlightTMS.  Spotlight’s growing list of enterprise customers seeking to maximize revenues and ROI on their tickets include Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, Time Warner Cable Media Sales, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group.   In addition, more than 30 professional sports teams — including the Cincinnati Bengals, San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia Eagles, Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears — are providing SpotlightTMS to their most important customers.

About Spotlight

Spotlight (www.spotlighttms.com) is the first enterprise SaaS provider to automate and centralize all aspects of ticket management, to help corporations increase revenue by efficiently managing their sports and entertainment tickets, suites and hospitality assets.  Its Spotlight Ticket Management Solution enables companies to generate data to determine ROI from these assets and optimize their usage for business development and other income-producing purposes.  The company is based in Calabasas, Calif.

In the newly created role, Dym will be responsible for all strategic and tactical marketing activities at the company. Spotlight is the first enterprise SaaS provider to automate and centralize all aspects of ticket management to help corporations efficiently manage their sports and entertainment tickets, suites and hospitality assets.

Dym spent the past 15 years marketing SaaS, cloud and hosting products and services to SMB and enterprise companies worldwide. As CMO of OpSource, a Data Dimension/NTT company, he created the OpSource brand and established OpSource as the leading provider of web operations for SaaS and web companies. Prior to OpSource, he held CMO positions at public and private companies including AXIS-One, SiteSmith, Tribal Voice and ParcPlace Systems.

“Richard’s deep knowledge and expertise in marketing SaaS to enterprise companies is perfectly aligned with Spotlight’s direction and strategy,” said Tony Knopp, Spotlight president and chairman. “We’re positioned to expand our leadership role in enterprise ticket management, and Richard will play a critical role in ensuring that we achieve that mission.”

Founded in 2007, Spotlight pioneered the corporate ticket management space with SpotlightTMS™. The web-based ticket management solution provides enterprises with a platform to manage sports and event ticket acquisition, administration, distribution and compliance. By using SpotlightTMS, enterprises can optimize ticket usage to increase revenue, reduce waste and eliminate ticket fraud; analyze return on investment, and ensure compliance with ticket usage tax and Sarbanes-Oxley reporting.

“Spotlight’s timing is perfect for today’s business environment of born-again fiscal conservatism,” Dym said. “With corporate expenditures under a microscope as enterprises focus on achieving the highest possible ROI, SpotlightTMS ensures the maximum return on enterprise investments in sports and event ticket assets. And with the move to cloud computing, our SaaS solution is well positioned to extend our leadership in this multi-billion dollar market.”

Dym joins Spotlight’s executive management team, led by Knopp and co-founders Joe Greiner and Aric Haut. With extensive experience in the ticket management space, the founders – all StubHub veterans – saw the need for an enterprise-level ticket management solution and developed SpotlightTMS to meet it.

Spotlight’s blue-chip customer roster includes Comcast, MetLife, Nike, Oracle, Time Warner Cable Media Sales, NBCUniversal, Stanley Black & Decker, and Principal Financial Group. Team partners include the San Antonio Spurs, Cleveland Cavaliers, Indianapolis Colts, Miami Heat, Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Bears.

About Spotlight

Spotlight (www.spotlighttms.com) is the first enterprise SaaS provider to automate and centralize all aspects of ticket management, to help corporations increase revenue by efficiently managing their sports and entertainment tickets, suites and hospitality assets. Its Spotlight Ticket Management Solution enables companies to generate data to determine ROI from these assets and optimize their usage for business development and other income-producing purposes.

Instead, the football team’s partnership with Spotlight Ticket Management will provide corporations with an automated way to track how their suite is being used, and whether they are getting the desired return on their investment.

Tony Knopp, Spotlight’s founder and CEO, said his 4-year-old company’s software helps companies track how tickets are being used, the potential revenue opportunities tied in with guests invited to attend games, and the actual revenue that is generated. Clients access the software through a secure website.

Knopp said a company representative will sit down with a client before a season starts and determine what goals that client has related to the use of its suite or private box in a stadium or arena. Then they will determine which of the 100 ticket-management reports the software can produce in real time best to help achieve those goals.

“A majority of the companies out there are trying to do this with an Excel spreadsheet,” Knopp said, “but the time they spend doing it and the benefit they get from trying to do it themselves isn’t really worthwhile. … We show them what their tickets are doing for them, which allows companies to better utilize and distribute their tickets. Our goal is to help companies get the most out of these assets.”

The idea, Knopp said, is for companies to have data to quantify their best options for distributing its tickets when they have “14 different people asking for the same ticket.”

Tracy Foster, director of client services for the Eagles, said the organization first started evaluating Spotlight’s ticket-management software last season.

“We are always looking for unique opportunities to provide to our suite holders that will help them engage with the Eagles and get a better return on their investment,” Foster said. “We spend a lot of time researching them to see if they’d be a benefit for our clients.”

The Philadelphia Eagles have 172 luxury suites at Lincoln Financial Field, which have been fully leased since the stadium opened in 2003. The annual rent for stadium suites, which accommodate on average 20 to 24 ticket holders, is between $115,000 and $250,000. Foster said most companies lease suites to entertain clients and prospective clients.

Spotlight’s software, she said, will provide two key benefits for Eagles suite holders: administering how tickets are being allocated — which can be a challenge for corporations with multiple locations and tickets for stadiums and arenas in multiple markets, and providing an automated way to track ticket usage and how much revenue is being generated from those interaction in the suites.

The data can show, for example, which company salesman has used suite tickets most effectively to generate new business. It can help a company stop giving tickets to client prospects who have not turned into customers after repeated invitations to their suite.

Under the terms of the partnership, Spotlight is providing its software package to Eagles suite holders for use in managing football tickets at no fee. Spotlight will make its money on the deal by offering those suite holders premium services, such as using the software to manage other tickets a company owns in different sports and entertainment venues.

(Originally published on the Philadelphia Business Journal, Sept 9, 2011)

A Colorado company took inspiration from that industry to create something similar at sports stadiums in few cities, including now in the Dallas area. Sports Shares has expanded from Denver and Atlanta to include suites at the American Airlines Center, Rangers Ballpark and Cowboys Stadium – at a time when industry observers said demand for suites is down.

“The luxury suite is becoming more and more difficult to sell,” said Todd Lindenbaum, president of Sports Shares. Baseball teams with 81 games per year, sometimes nine nights in a row, it becomes very difficult for even the largest company to utilize that.”

The same is sometimes true for basketball and hockey arenas that host more than 100 games and concerts each year. Lindenbaum pointed to industry research that found that 43 percent of corporate tickets are unused.

Sports Shares, though, is operating in a market with competition from traditional ticket brokers, the sales staffs at the stadiums and arenas, and with the sports teams. The company is also following in the wake of another firm that started creating a national network of suites but is now mostly inactive.

At Sports Shares, the company charges $1,000 to $150,000 annually and gives buyers suite access for all major sports in all their markets. The plans also feature parking, all-inclusive food and drinks and concierge service. Lindenbaum said the firm is targeting the dozen large U.S. cities or regions that have all four major sports.

Josh Korman, a partner in Korman O’Brien, a Fort Worth real estate consulting and appraisal firm, was one of the first local Sports Shares customers. He said the membership allowed him to secure an entire suite at a Dallas Stars game for his son’s birthday party and also got him into Dallas Mavericks NBA Final games.

“It would have been pretty far-fetched for me – without having to pay a mint – to go out and acquire tickets to the Finals games,” Korman said.

Others tried a version of this suite network, even in the Dallas area, but were unable to thrive long term.

A California company, Owner’s Pass, started a timeshare system in 2004 that went nationwide – including in the Dallas area – before beginning a downhill slide because of the economy.

Anthony Jones-DeBerry, CEO of Owner’s Pass, which still has few customers, said much of his clientele was in the hard-hit financial services field.

“Our biggest industry disappeared or slashed their budgets,” he said.

Jones-DeBerry said he’s still confident the timeshare model is a great deal for business and helps teams with an oversupply of suites.

Tough Times

The economic crisis has also slowed Sports Shares.

Lindenbaum said investors temporarily cut off access to cash at the start of the recession, after the company had already signed up for a $200,000-per-year suite at the Cowboys Stadium. The team sues Sports Shares and a number of others for nonpayment of their suites. Lindenbaum said he was upfront with the Cowboys about the company’s finances and eventually caught up on payments.

He said the Denver and Atlanta operations are already profitable and expects the Dallas area suites to turn a profit by next year.

Tony Knopp, president and co-founder of Spotlight Ticket Management, which automates ticket and suite sales services for stadiums, said this is a sound business concept. In fact, he said it makes so much sense that venues and teams have also started selling fractions of suites or pairing potential customers who don’t individually need a full suite.

Knopp said businesses aren’t sure they can justify something that’s often seen as frivolous, an assessment he considers unfair and an overreaction.

“Five or 10 years ago, you couldn’t pick up a phone and call a team and buy a suite for a good game,” he said, “Most of the time, now you can.”

The drop in demand also comes after a boom in suite construction. According to a San Francisco Chronicle story about Owner’s Pass, a University of Oregon study found that the number of suites at major stadiums and arenas increased by more than 20 percent between 1997 and 2001.

When Owner’s Pass started about seven years ago, it was filling a mostly untapped niche. Today, some teams consider Sports Shares competition.

Dennis Moore, the Denver Bronco’s vice president of sales and marketing, said Sports Shares has a “successful business model,” but he said he doesn’t want to create a secondary market for any of the team’s 131 suites.

The Broncos already took one of the team’s less desirable suites and started selling small blocks of seats in it. Those were paired with perks that included all-inclusive food and drinks and field passes.

“Not just us, but every sports team out there has been forced to be more creative,” Moore said.

Sports Shares also hit a barrier with the Texas Rangers when the team refused to give the company a long-term lease at the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Paige Farragut, the Rangers’ vice president of ticket sales and service, said the long-term contracts prohibit the owners from reselling the suites. Instead, Sports Shares has bought suite spaces for its members for individual games when needed.

“We think it’s a good idea, and we contemplated it,” Farragut said. “It certainly does help move distressed inventory.”

Ultimately, she said the Rangers decided against it making an exception for just one company.

Less need now

With the Rangers’ regular-season success and World Series appearance, there is now less need for a company like Sports Shares. Farragut said the team has sold 25 new long-term suite contracts this year.

Knopp said he understands the hesitation of some teams or venues to work with Sports Shares or similar companies.

“When you have open suites, do you want somebody to compete with you that has a better suite option that you’re not deriving revenue from?” he asked.

Jamie Norman, North Texas market director of Sports Shares and previously an employee of the Dallas Stars, said she sees the company’s work as potentially bringing new customers to the teams.

“It could be a stepping stone into wanting a long-term suite if they feel that starting small works for them,” she said.

(Originally published on the Dallas Morning News Aug 28, 2011)