Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken simplify event management and ticket sales with Smartsheet and Brandfolder

Climate Pledge Arena, located in Seattle Center in downtown Seattle, Washington, has been at the center of the city’s sports and entertainment scene for more than 50 years. First opened as the Seattle Center Coliseum during the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, the building was renovated and christened KeyArena in 1995 before being reimagined again and opened as the state-of-the-art Climate Pledge Arena in 2021.

Today, the arena is the home to the National Hockey League’s Seattle Kraken, the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, and hosts hundreds of concerts and other events every year. The venue is also focused on sustainability and is the world’s first net zero-carbon certified arena, powered exclusively by renewable energy. The Sports Business Journal named Climate Pledge Arena Facility of the Year in 2022. 

Climate Pledge Arena’s busy marketing team is focused on driving ticket sales and ensuring all events take place without problems. “Our goal is to be a top-five arena in the country in terms of ticket sales,” says Rosie Selle, vice president of marketing for Climate Pledge Arena. “We want to sell as many tickets as possible while giving our fans and guests an amazing experience while they’re here.” Similarly, the Seattle Kraken’s Sales and Service team strives to increase season-ticket and single-game ticket sales for the team, as well as sales of premium suites for games and other events at the arena. “We’re constantly thinking of new and different strategies on how to grow game and event sales,” says Dan Souder, vice president, sales & service for the Seattle Kraken. Both the arena’s marketing team and the Kraken’s Sales & Service team use Smartsheet to organize all event information in real time, manage event schedules, and collaborate with other teammates to ensure projects are on track.

“Smartsheet helps us drive efficiencies for everything from concert announcements to ticket sales,” says Selle. Adds Kim Jurgensen, director, premium service and hospitality for the Seattle Kraken, “Smartsheet keeps us organized and gives us a central place for everyone to access the latest project information.”

Prior to adopting Smartsheet, the arena marketing team relied on traditional spreadsheet software and email to manage events and communicate with each other. However, pandemic-related scheduling difficulties made project management challenging. “We have four important dates to track for every concert: the show announcement, the ticket presale, the actual sale, and then the event itself. We often need to manage these dates for up to seven artists each week,” says Janice Jimenez, director of marketing at Climate Pledge Arena. “We had one artist change the date seven times, and situations like that required a lot of communication via email, which wasn’t ideal.” The marketing team also used email and online drop box applications to store and share creative assets such as graphics and other digital assets used to promote each event. Emailing large digital files back and forth was time-consuming and inefficient. “It was always a link-based system to a repository, and sending and receiving files was often slow,” Jimenez says. 

The Seattle Kraken Sales and Service team also depended on email and spreadsheet software, which made communication challenging. “We work with separate ticketing, sales, marketing, operations, and arena teams every day, and it was hard to communicate with everyone,” says Jurgensen. 

Tracking Events, Digital Assets, and Suite Inventory with Smartsheet

The Climate Pledge Arena marketing team integrated Smartsheet into its creative workflow and event management processes to overcome its challenges. The team now uses a comprehensive organizational sheet that contains all updated event information, including the four key dates for each event. When a marketing team member adds or updates and event, the information populates an event marketing sheet that triggers a checklist of 18 different assets that need to be built prior to announcing a new event. “The event sheet is a jumping-off point for any project,” says Beth Baker, art, design, and creative manager for the Climate Pledge Arena marketing team. Baker and her team also use automated workflows in Smartsheet to notify them when any new project gets entered into a sheet.

Arena marketing employees also use Brandfolder, Smartsheet’s award-winning digital asset management system, to store all arena and event branding assets, such as the arena’s digital media kit.

“Once we’ve done all our show announcement preparation, we share the digital assets with the team or artist in Brandfolder,” Baker says. “This makes it easy for our partners to quickly find the brand assets they need.”

The Seattle Kraken sales and ticketing team takes advantage of Smartsheet to manage its premium suite ticket inventory, including schedules, availability, food ordering, suite donation, and primary contacts. “Using Smartsheet, we can quickly see how many available suites we have for each event, what the cost is, and what services are included in the rental,” says Jurgensen. Jurgensen and her team use color codes in Smartsheet for added visibility for the Kraken ticket and hospitality teams. In addition, the team uses the Smartsheet mobile app to get real-time access to suite inventory data from their mobile phones. 

More Efficient Event Scheduling and Ticket and Suite Sales 

Using Smartsheet, Climate Pledge Arena marketing has streamlined and automated its event management and ticket sales processes. “Visibility into what’s happening and what’s coming up is so important to this team. Smartsheet gives us the insight we need to easily track every concert and sporting event to make sure it’s all on schedule,” says Selle. “It’s a simple tool that gives us all of the event information, such as key dates and ticket sales, in one place for multiple departments to access at any time. Smartsheet helps us create new efficiencies in all our processes. We recently announced five shows and put them all on sale, with 18 assets for each show. That process was very smooth because of Smartsheet.”

With Brandfolder, the marketing team has simplified digital asset management and sharing. “Brandfolder, along with Smartsheet, enable a more streamlined process so we’re no longer having to email a bunch of people every time a new event is announced,” says Baker. “When we announce a show, it’s one less thing we have to do. Our partners know where to go to download the assets they need. I rely completely on Smartsheet to get my daily tasks done and make sure my team gets their tasks done as well.”

The Seattle Kraken Sales and Service team is also seeing efficiency from using Smartsheet to track suite sales. “We can find everything we need about our suites in one place in Smartsheet, instead of having to navigate through a bunch of folders and emails to find updated information,” says Jurgensen. The team is also using custom reports in Smartsheet to save 4-5 hours per week previously spent manually building ticketing reports.

“We’re saving time using Smartsheet, and that gives us more time to think about other challenges and maybe find new ways to drive sales,” says Souder.

Better Communication, Internally and Externally 

Climate Pledge Arena marketing has improved its ability to communicate with each other and with outside vendors through Smartsheet. For example, having a central location for updated ticket and sales data ensures everyone on the team is on the same page at all times. “Event dates move around all the time, and when that happens, the master sheet in Smartsheet populates all other sheets with the correct dates immediately,” Baker says. “It’s always 100 percent accurate, which is critical in our business.”

The Seattle Kraken Sales and Service team has also improved communication through the Smartsheet mobile app. “We use the Smartsheet mobile app on our phones as we walk around the arena during events, and it gives us an easy way to communicate to guest services and the hospitality staff about what our suite customers’ needs are, without having to go back to the office to see that information,” says Jurgensen. With the ability to communicate faster, the team can provide a better guest experience overall.

“As an organization, we want to do things differently from other sports arenas,” says Souder. “With Smartsheet, we can use the mobile app and get in front of people and say hello more often, which helps us focus more on building those relationships with our customers.” 

Climate Pledge Arena is now exploring rolling out Smartsheet to additional departments, to drive new efficiencies for the organization as a whole. “In this industry, we work at a fast pace where it can be hard to keep up sometimes,” says Selle. “A tool like Smartsheet gives us a little bit of breathing room by making our jobs easier.”

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