Tampa Bay Lightning Scores Fan Experience and
Revenue with Spotfire
Time savings, insights, better decision-making
and results
CHALLENGE
“We now spend more
time developing insights
and strategies rather than
collecting numbers. It’s
allowing us to move from
being reactive to more
proactive in our business
decisions, and therefore
address future challenges.”
—Chris Kamke,
senior director of business
strategy and analytics
DETAIL
SEVERAL
HOURS
weekly time savings for managers
using Spotfire reporting
“One challenge in the sports industry is that, on the business side, you have little
to no control over your team’s on-ice performance,” says Senior Director of
Business Strategy and Analysis Chris Kamke. “Team performance often drastically
impacts fan interest and demand, so if the team goes on a winning streak or a
losing streak, you have to be ready to make changes on the fly, to either sell more
tickets or maximize revenue in other ways.
“With our goal to provide world-class guest service and game experience, it’s
important to really know customers—the demographics, behavior, buying trends.
You need to understand the fan, and once you have the data, the challenge is
facilitating its use to drive business decisions on game experience, ticket and
sponsorship sales, and customer service.
“We needed an analytics tool powerful enough to de-silo all our data and get it
into one place so we could get a 360-degree view of our customer. We’re striving
for a sold out building every night; controlling inventory and maximizing revenue
is key. We needed customizable reports, so the executive team could always know
where we stood on those key performance indicators, and our sales reps could
access the information they needed to give fans the best experience possible.
“If we weren’t able to resolve these challenges, we’d be stuck with a lot of
manual reporting and wasted time—bad habits that were getting in the way of
strategies to address these issues.”
SUCCESS STORY | 2
TAMPA BAY SPORTS
AND ENTERTAINMENT
The Tampa Bay Lightning is
a National Hockey League
(NHL) team that plays its home
games in Tampa, Florida. Its
parent, Tampa Bay Sports and
Entertainment, aims to provide
world-class customer service
and game presentation to all
fans and attendees.
SYNTELLI
SOLUTIONS INC.
Syntelli Solutions, a TIBCO
Spotfire® partner and enterprise
performance management
solutions provider, helps
organizations harness the
power of data to influence
audience behavior and improve
overall performance, culture,
and well-being.
FAST FACTS
Established: 1992
Member: NHL, Atlantic Division,
Eastern Conference
Awards: 2004 Stanley
Cup Champions
Nickname: Bolts
SOLUTION
“It’s important that you have the right people to guide you to the best decisions,
says Mr. Kamke. “Syntelli Solutions is a great partner that helped us through BI
selection, implementation, and the beginning of data discovery. The trust we
put in TIBCO Spotfire® and Syntelli was critical. We try to be data-driven in our
decision-making every single day and without having the tools to do that, we
wouldn’t be able to accomplish our goal.”
BENEFITS
TIME SAVINGS, INSIGHTS, BETTER DECISION-MAKING
“Before, we often struggled to stay ahead with reporting and analysis on a gameto-game basis,” continues Kamke. “Since adopting Spotfire, we’ve facilitated data
collection and improved our ability to analyze data and communicate it out to
business units. We’ve drastically cut the time for generating and distributing reports.
We’re saving some managers several hours a week by taking on the reporting they
used to do manually. We now spend more time developing insights and strategies
rather than collecting numbers. It’s allowing us to move from being reactive to more
proactive in our business decisions, and therefore address future challenges.”
TRUST, GROWING USE OF ANALYTICS
“Spotfire is not only saving time by taking a lot of reporting off directors’ hands,
it’s getting people involved who otherwise wouldn’t look at data,” says Kamke.
“Maybe they were afraid of looking at Excel—but now they can investigate the
data because Spotfire is more of a tool than a cumbersome data upload.
“Partnering with Syntelli and Spotfire gave us the confidence to move forward with
data-driven decisions throughout the company. It’s given the sales team the ability
to trust the information and be able to ask questions of it themselves because it’s
presented in a format that isn’t intimidating. Having that perfect environment where
people trust the data and work with it has been really beneficial.
“As we rolled out more Spotfire BI, our team members gained further trust of
daily analyses. People in other areas of the business are asking us to manage their
reporting. We’re bringing more and more users into the Spotfire platform.”
BETTER INFORMATION, BETTER RESULTS
“We now have a real-time inventory management system so we know what products
we have left to sell and how to address soft or strong sales situations. It’s giving us
better insight for forecasting revenue,” says Kamke. “The impact of giving sales staff
real-time data at their fingertips is that they have confidence in driving the business
forward from a fan experience standpoint and also a revenue standpoint.
“Sales reps can drill down on each of their accounts to the information they
need, whether they’re on a renewal call, visiting somebody in the seats, or just
trying to improve the fan experience. They know on game day who they want to
reach out to. By having a tool they trust, like Spotfire, they’re able to sell better,
service accounts better, and improve the overall fan experience.”
FUTURE
“With the successes we’ve achieved, we now plan to expand into sponsorship,
marketing, and arena operations to drive the overall Tampa Bay Sports and
Entertainment business forward,” concludes Mr. Kamke.
Global Headquarters
3307 Hillview Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
+1 650-846-1000 TEL
+1 800-420-8450
+1 650-846-1005 FAX
www.tibco.com
TIBCO Software empowers executives, developers, and business users with Fast Data solutions that make the
right data available in real time for faster answers, better decisions, and smarter action. Over the past 15 years,
thousands of businesses across the globe have relied on TIBCO technology to integrate their applications and
ecosystems, analyze their data, and create real-time solutions. Learn how TIBCO turns data—big or small—into
differentiation at www.tibco.com.
©2016, TIBCO Software Inc. All rights reserved. TIBCO, the TIBCO logo, and Spotfire are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. or its
subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective
owners and mentioned for identification purposes only.
03/23/16