Customer Success Story

How the Great Lakes Loons Hit Ticket Sale Targets for Their Pontooners Weekend

Emerging League • MILB

Challenge

The Great Lakes Loons hosted a first-of-its-kind “Pontooners Weekend,” blending baseball and outdoor adventure to foster community engagement and enhance fan experiences. The Loons’ main goals ahead of the special weekend (July 11-13) included:

Driving single game and group ticket sales
Launching a campaign without detracting from July 4 games
Adopting the Pontooners identity for three games

Solution

Creative themes:

The Pontooners Weekend combined the best of Michigan summers: pontoon and party barge seating areas, ‘80s yacht rock dueling pianos, koozie and beach towel giveaways — and baseball, of course. Each day of the homestand had a different theme: Thirsty Thursday, Feast Friday, and Pontooners Saturday.

Fan segmentation:

The Great Lakes Loons used StellarAlgo to power a segmentation strategy targeting fans who had made purchases on the same day-of-the-week in the past (e.g., marketing Thursday’s events to Thursday ticket holders from the year prior). Fans were activated through a multi-channel campaign, starting with a paid ad on Facebook followed by a text message.

Unique merch:

The Loons also offered a Pontooners line of merchandise to complement the upcoming homestand. Utilizing the Shopify integration within StellarAlgo, the Loons captured the online purchases made by fans during the Pontooners Weekend.

Results

+9%

individual ticket buyers YoY

+13%

individual ticket revenue YoY

1 in 4

attendees are first-time fans

The Pontooners Weekend made a splash. The event led to 9% more individual ticket buyers and 13% higher individual ticket revenue vs. the same homestand weekend the year prior.

StellarAlgo insights also revealed that 25% of fans were first-time attendees, which proves that fun themes are a great way to attract new fans.