The following individuals and teams have been nominated by their Regional Directors/Managers for their respective accomplishments during 2020. Please join us live on Teams on Thursday, January 28th where winners will be announced!
Play of the Year
Virtual Homecoming, Colorado
- Colorado’s Virtual Homecoming event was one of the most impactful Plays in our industry this year as CU ideated and launched the first Virtual Sellout campaign in the nation, and paved the way from schools across the country to implement with their season ticket holders and fans.
- CU rolled out this campaign in September and secured a sponsorship with Safeway, a corporate sponsor. Fans had a chance at exclusive Buffs items when purchasing a ticket to the virtual event, depending on the type of ticket they chose. Among these prizes were a Virtual Homecoming t-shirt and commemorative 2020 Homecoming ticket.
Virtual Sell-Out Presented by Coca Cola, Virginia Tech
- Given the circumstances of the pandemic with no fans warranted at Lane Stadium, the Virginia Tech Ticket Solutions team collaborated with MMR and administration to create a unique promotion for their fans. Our team worked with MMR to partner with a title sponsor, Coca Cola for the virtual sell-out initiative.
- Resulted in nearly 7,000 tickets sold for over $80K in revenue – blowing away expectations from administration.
COVID19 Save Campaign, Georgia
- COVID19 Saves is not something any of us anticipated at the start of 2020. However, the staff at Georgia has embodied what it means to truly be a great partner.
- The Georgia team led the south region in total COVID19 Football saves with over $700,000 in saves. What makes the accomplishment even more impressive is we are not tasked with selling Football at Georgia.
Hustle Award
Andrew Dardaris, Colorado
- Andrew Dardaris has branded himself year in and year out at a hustler and brought home 5 Hustler of the Week awards during 2020 for the West Region, finishing #2 in the region in call volume.
- He has greatly increased his brand with CU Athletics staff and always makes himself available to help the department in any way he can, and currently represents Ticket Solutions on CU External Team marketing calls
- Andrew is a member of the Training & Development team and with his tenure he serves as our main trainer for onboarding & deskside coaching new CU reps this year
- He has developed into a key player in our relationship and sales planning with the Buff Club & MMR teams this year and finished the year with nearly 100K in Covid-19 Saves
David Wrobel, Iowa
- David was the top seller in revenue generated at Iowa among all AE’s.
- He was the top seller consistently in the region and company exceeding at least 300 every week. Since June 1 he has made 9,765 calls, second most in the company.
- David finished tied for second in the Triple Crown Contest earlier this year with 8. Currently is tied for second in the North.
Lynn Miller, WKU
- Lynn is consistently toward to top of the list for outbound calls made and contacts made. Usually surpassing over 300 calls on a weekly basis. Over a long stretch of 2020 Lynn was top 3 in Calls. She is the only person at her property after we reduced staff do to COVID19.
- This has meant that Lynn has had to take on extra responsibilities, manage more season ticket holder accounts and work with the WKU internal team to make sure they are aware of ticketing initiatives at WKU.
- Nothing has hindered Lynn from her ability to sell and deliver top quality service to our season ticket holders and donors at Western Kentucky.
Sales Trainer of the Year
Andy Hegeman, Oklahoma
- Andy Hegeman had his 7-year anniversary this year and was promoted to Associate GM at OU as part of our property growth and enhancement. With some turnover of our more tenured reps in late 2019, we built a 15-person staff from the ground up with Andy playing a lead role in the onboarding and training of our New Business and Retention teams.
- Andy’s staff have been regulars on the Weekly Region awards and key players in national sales contests this year and have been a key part of OU’s strategic plan this year as they worked through capacity changes, mobile ticket adoption and STH communications.
- He has been an integral part of the Training & Development team and helped develop and implement onboarding plans and training reps from around the country.
Zach Hanood, Kansas St
- Zach launched a new partnership at Kansas State University and hired and trained a brand new staff remotely during the Summer prior to getting on campus in August.
- His sales staff has been consistently atop the 1Huddle MVP Leaderboard every month since the Summer.
- Leads by example by taking part in new and renewal football and basketball call campaigns with his team. Since arriving on campus in August he made nearly 3,000 calls
Col Erlandson, Duke
- Col is not only a rookie GM but his staff is one of the newer staff’s in the entire region. Col has done a phenomenal job of training Kristina, Keller, and Dorian who all started within the last 18 months.
- Over the course of the last few months Col has also spent a lot of time training and developing his team on business to business sales.
- He has embodied what it takes to sharpen your skills when there has not been a wide array of options to sell at Duke.
Salesperson of the Year
Zach Mahon, Tennessee
- Zach was the top revenue producer in the South region. He brought in $195k in NEW revenue at Tennessee and generated $750k in total revenue including renewals.
- Zach also won numerous Employee of the Week awards for the region and in the current Fiscal Year, he has won eight South Triple Crown awards doubling up the second-place winners who have four.
Evan Bedard, Oregon
- Evan Bedard has been on a mission this year and led the West Region in FB ST sales with over 1,000 ST sold, including nearly 100 2021 FB ST, led the region in call volume (13,601) and referrals (192), and was #3 in appointments
- Evan is a key culture and 3 C’s person for us and has taken over West Region Golden Headset captain duties and is involved in the Training & Development team.
David Wrobel, Iowa
- David led the North Region in new Football season tickets in 2020 (not including deposits sold for 2021 season)
- He also led the North Region in new 20-21 Men’s Basketball season tickets during 2020.
Top Selling General Manager
Courtney Perzan, St. John’s
- Courtney had an incredible year and was responsible for selling over $100K in true group sales from January – March, nearly 2,300 group tickets.
- Led plans to sell cutouts and hype videos that are still ongoing – to date she has nearly sold 400 cutouts for over $10K in revenue.
- Has assisted in consolidating our Secondary Marketing partners and forged new relationships resulting in more than $40K in new revenue.
Calleagh Darby, SMU
- Calleagh Darby had an epic year and led SMU to a six-figure EBITDA year in FY20 and outperformed SMU’s original property goal by 60K in the middle of a global pandemic.
- SMU also led the Group of 5 in COVID19 Save revenue with over 335K saved and generated an additional 491K in seat-related donations.
- SMU continues to be a leader in advancing ST timelines and FEVO group sales, and launched 2021 ST this month with their “Deck the Halls with Season Tickets” campaign. Important to note, Calleagh also added the responsibility this year of chairing the company’s DEI committee & efforts.
Caleb Weith, Memphis
- Caleb has led by example all year by continuing to produce new and renewal revenue while taking on additional duties within the athletic department
- Produced 1.5mil in revenue last year
- Caleb has created new campaigns such as Keep Memphis Roaring to create additional revenue streams for him and his team
Rookie of the Year General Manager
Courtney Perzan, St. John’s
- Courtney had a quick and seamless transition from seller to GM who hit the ground running last November launching a NEW property and surpassing her FY20 EBITDA goal.
- She has built tremendous relationships with not only senior administration and coaches but various campus departments.
- Embraced a selling GM role leading her team in revenue and tickets sold, including personally selling over $100K in MBB Groups.
- Developed and executed robust sales plan prior to the pandemic that had new season tickets and renewals launched months in advance of when they typically had gone on sale.
- Continues to generate revenue though multiple virtual on sales while fans are not allowed in the stands.
Alex Butier, TCU
- Alex Butier is a prime example of making the most of opportunities in our company and building a career with Ticket Solutions.
- Alex is in her seventh year with us and has worked her way up from the AE level into her first GM role with TCU this year, beginning in February.
- On her way out as AGM at Oregon, Alex served as interim GM at UO while we completed our GM search in Eugene, and has been an immediate positive impact at TCU.
- Over the last 10 months we’ve notably improved our admin relationships and staff development, and Alex was integral in helping us secure an amendment with TCU that allowed us to outperform our EBITDA projections when she arrived by almost 100K in FY20.
- She continues to look to expand our footprint at TCU as we are now in the final stages of securing an official development relationship with the Frog Club to formally work on donations.
Will Herring, ACC/CSF
- Will joined us in August of 2019 to help launch the ACC and Charlotte Sports Foundation property. To say that Will has endured a lot during his first year and a half on the job would be an understatement.
- However, through Will’s leadership and ability to communicate effectively with the ACC and CSF administration, the property continues to reach some of its highest revenue milestones ever.
- Will has been instrumental in introducing multigame packages to the property which has equated in the property being one of the higher EBITDA properties of FY21.
- However Will’s leadership has extended even further with the launch of the brand new ACC/CSP membership program.
- Will’s endless research and interaction with administration led to this launch and will be highly beneficial to our overall EBITDA for years to come.
Rookie of the Year Partner
St. John’s
- Was able to hit FY20 EBITDA goal, which for a first year partnership is not an easy task given plenty of unknowns surrounding historical data and projections.
- Surpassed $400K in group sales in first year (includes true groups and secondary market partners).
- Successfully increased sales timelines and had new seasons and renewals on sale for 2020-21 season months earlier.
- Integrated BI solutions plan of Salesforce, DialSource and Fevo in the first four months of launch.
- Tremendous relationship with Senior Administration and GM Courtney Perzan.
Stephen F. Austin
- Stephen F. Austin had a great full first year as a Ticket Solutions partner as they surpassed their FY20 goal and led the West Region in MBB New ST sales for CY20.
- GM Drew Maulsby has become a key player for SFA Athletics and helped develop and launch the “Raise the Axe” fund and assisted the Lumberjacks in raising over 60K in donations.
- He also led SFA to its first ever volleyball match sellout earlier this fall and helped SFA hit their Athletics Department 2020 FB Season revenue goal.
- We have also helped SFA integrate FEVO with Paciolan and have ideated and implemented new data capture and lead generation digital campaigns.
ACC/CSF
- Will was able to overcome many challenges early in the partnership including access to sales lead list, a limit in game-day experiences for group sales , and ability to properly run FEVO.
- Launched new ticket revenue ideas in 2020 that led to a significant increase in EBITDA. This included getting the ACC to allow us to move up sales timetables from October to March 2020.
- Developed the first ever ACC Three Game plan. Incorporated all 2020 games at the property. This led to record revenue at the property in the summer of 2020.
- One of the top EBITDA producers in the summer of 2020 even with the pandemic.
- Strong relationship with both the ACC/CSF administration. Great collaboration with administration. Setting up for new initiatives in 2021 including the first ever ACC Membership package.
General Manager of the Year
Kyle McGuire, Iowa
- Surpassed FY20 EBITDA Goal which helped our company hit our overall company goal for the year.
- Successfully navigated furloughs of staff and hourly reductions for entire staff over the course of 3 months.
- Worked with administration to get on sale for the 2021 football season during the month of November, much earlier than they have. Also set to go out with FB renewals in December and MBB new sales/deposits in December as well.
- Negotiated a very favorable rate with administration on Marketing Emails where emails our Marketing Coordinator puts together result in online sales. Not initially part of our contract but a new revenue source in 2020 and beyond.
- Has us positioned well for partnership extension.
Marcus Madlock, Oklahoma
- Marcus helped secure a massive contract amendment and extension with Oklahoma and led OU through a huge year, completely transforming OU from a traditional 7-person property to a 15-person property that includes a Premium/Development Team, Retention & Service Team, New Business Team and Data Analyst.
- After hiring & onboarding a new staff he led OU to be the #1 EBITDA Property in 2020 and also led the company in Donation/Save revenue.
- Additionally, OU has gone on sale with FB New ST for 2021 in-season, almost 6 months prior to our traditional on sale date at OU for FB ST and has led OU to the 2021 FB ST lead with over 500 new seasons already sold.
- He continues to be one of the active best practice sharers and relationship builders nationally within Ticket Solutions and gained a spot on the LIMG corporate DEI Taskforce.
- Marcus also helped secure an important contract amendment at the University of Houston as EGM and started EGM oversight of our SFA partnership in July.
Evan Weber, UNC
- Evan has all the characteristics you look for in a successful General Manager. Evan led a sales team at UNC that hit their FY20 goal even with challenges from Covid. Evan also is very instrumental in impacting decisions of both the Rams Club and UNC Athletics.
- Evan worked with UNC’s administration to move up the launch of 2021 Football Season tickets, as well as worked with the Rams club to assist with some more development initiatives.
- Evan is always the first to not only share best practices but take ideas from other properties and try to implement them at North Carolina.
- Evan helped launch a one-of-a-kind internship program at North Carolina in partnership with UNC’s Sports Management program.
- During the latter part of the year Evan was adaptive in his leadership style to become more of a selling General Manager and a leader that led by example.
Partner of the Year
University of Georgia
- The team at Georgia out-performed their yearly EBITDA projection
- On top of their great Fiscal Year UGA had over $700,000 in COVID19 related Football saves.
- Great development of staff at the property including the promotion of Brandon Sims to Sr. Account Executive.
- UGA also set all kinds of attendance records for the 2019/2020 Men’s Basketball year. Including most overall attendance in a single season, most season ticket holders in a single season, and highest amount of group tickets sold in a single season
- Matt McCourtie and team continue to extend the footprint of donations through their fundraising initiatives. Cultivated many leads that led to Major Gifts to UGA’s Bulldog Club
University of Oklahoma
- Oklahoma ratcheted things up a notch this year and launched our first ever dedicated Premium/Development Team, added a Retention team and a Data Analyst, on the heels of a new partnership agreement.
- Over the last 12 months we’ve recruited, hired and onboarded 13 new staff members and have done so with great success, led by OU’s #1 EBITDA finish for 2020
- OU led the company in COVID19 saves with almost 1.5M in revenue saved by our staff and ideated the Sooner Relief Fund, a concept that has been mimicked across the country.
- Marcus Madlock and Andy Hegeman received promotions this year and have increased our footprint and relationship with the Sooner Club and the overall OU Athletics team.
- OU is off to a hot start again for the 2021 FB sales campaign with an advanced timeline pushed up to late-Nov from early-June.
University of Iowa
- The team at Iowa has made significant strides with our working relationship with the ticket office compared to how we began the partnership.
- Much more collaboration and willingness to adjust timelines and strategy.
- Renegotiated our terms this year during the pandemic so that we were not held to our secondary and first 425K commitments.
- Hit FY20 goal – but was pacing well ahead prior to the pandemic.
- Sales results and working relationship has us positioned for a multi-year extension.
The C’s Award (Character, Capacity, Commitment)
Raymond White, EKU
- Raymond’s commitment to the Eastern Kentucky community and athletics department as well as his commitment to LIMG is evident on every interaction I have with him. He’s always willing to try new ideas to bring as much revenue to both our company as well as the Eastern Kentucky athletics department.
- Raymond has shown that he has all the tools to not only be a great seller at EKU but also a great leader of the property as he has been more involved in nationwide initiatives and is our representative of the Golden Headset Committee for the South Region. He’s very vocal on all GM calls as well as all Regional calls. He asks questions and shows an ability and appetite to learn as much as he can.
- To say Raymond is a high character guy would be an understatement. He genuinely cares about others around him both at EKU and LIMG. He’s the first to always ask how family is doing or how I am doing. As mentioned before he is very open to learning and he has an amazing work ethic.
- He also has a genuine positive attitude and outlook toward the company and on every call. You can tell that he is passionate about EKU but more importantly he’s passionate about the craft of ticket sales.
Alexandra Stein, SMU
- Alexandra Stein has been an exemplary model of the 3 C’s this year and taken on extra responsibility with staff reductions this year
- She has been an active member of the Training & Development team and helped execute onboarding plans for new AEs
- She finished #3 in the region in FB ST sales and #1 in the West amongst Group of 5 schools
- Allie earned 6 West Region Staff Member of the Week awards and led the West Region Group of 5 schools in Triple crowns
Brent Kepner, Penn State
- Has had a consistent positive approach to the challenges that have come with the Pandemic. How he has responded to capacity restrictions, lack of commission or what was being asked to do outside his normal duties set an example for his colleagues.
- Has been proactive about taking on more responsibility specific to Penn State and the company.
- Brent joined the Training and Development team which required multiple weekly meetings. Feedback from Matt Sanchez shows Brent has been a very valuable member of that team.
- Brent showed his commitment to our partnership by volunteering to usher football games even though he moved an hour away to stay with family.
- Had an opportunity outside the company come up this Summer which would have paid more but passed on it because he is committed to growing in our company and has aspirations of becoming a GM as his next step.
- Brent never let his effort slip. He continued to make his calls, handle the inbound line and help sell/save as many tickets as possible. From March 13th on (when we were sent home) Brent sold 140 season tickets (2nd on the team), 77 Seats for soldiers, 16 group deposits and saved 240 season tickets.