By Lucas Moss; VP, Data & Analytics
Overview
With the largest dataset of college sports fans in the world—powered by 6 billion+ fan data points—Fanbase provides powerful tools for college athletic programs to boost engagement through fan insights, enhance MMR sales and sponsorship, reach a high-value, unique digital audience, drive ticket sales, and support athletics fundraising.
How Fanbase Delivers Revenue Opportunities for College Athletic Programs
Boost Engagement Through Fan Insights:
Fanbase strengthens schools’ connection with fans by providing actionable insights into their preferences, behaviors, and engagement patterns. Athletic programs can leverage this data to segment different groups by their behaviors, tailor communications to various audiences, build loyalty, and grow support.
Fan profiles, benchmarking, event recaps, and targeting and segmentation data provide a granular view of audience behavior, helping schools to make smarter decisions that enhance the fan experience and increase engagement.
- Fan Profiles: Learfield’s proprietary fan profiles categorize college sports fans into 10 unique groups, providing insights into demographics, geography, and behaviors. These fan profiles allow schools to identify key audiences and develop targeted engagement strategies.
- Benchmarking: Fanbase helps schools understand what makes their fans unique compared to peer institutions, enabling them to adjust marketing efforts based on insights from past experiences.
- Event Recaps: Fanbase provides in-depth reporting on fan engagement by game type, whether it’s a midweek vs. weekend game, conference vs. non-conference matchup, or ranked vs. unranked opponent. Schools can identify key actionable insights by analyzing viewership, site traffic, social media trends, and attendance.
- Targeting & Segmentation: Fanbase lets schools personalize outreach by segmenting fans based on zip code, demographics, and targeted fan profiles, allowing for smarter campaigns and higher conversion rates.
Generate MMR Sales and Sponsorship:
Fanbase equips Learfield with advanced audience insights to help schools enhance brand alignment and increase the value of collegiate intellectual property.
- Fan Insights for Sponsorship Strategy – Fanbase helps Learfield sports properties craft a data-backed narrative about each school’s fan base, illustrating who they are, how they engage, and what makes them valuable to sponsors.
- Aligning Brands with the Right Fans – By analyzing fan engagement, demographic trends, and spending behaviors, Fanbase allows Learfield to connect brands with the audience segments that matter most.
- Understanding Brand Affinity – Fanbase uncovers which brands resonate most with fans, helping tailor sponsorship strategies that maximize impact and authenticity.
- Identifying Spending Trends – Schools and sponsors gain visibility into how fans spend across different categories, enabling more targeted activations and smarter marketing decisions.
For example, Learfield and Syracuse leveraged Fanbase data to establish a new partnership with Delta Sonic by identifying a high concentration of Syracuse fans near Delta Sonic locations and analyzing spending data highlighting their affinity for car-related purchases. These insights demonstrated how Delta Sonic could effectively reach and engage with Syracuse fans.
Reach a High-Value, Unique Digital Audience:
Fanbase provides Learfield and its partners with access to a highly engaged, data-driven digital audience, allowing brands to connect with key fan segments across multiple platforms. Learfield leverages these audience insights to optimize digital advertising strategies, refine messaging, and drive measurable engagement for schools and sponsors.
Through Fan365, Learfield Studios, EDGE, and SIDEARM Sports, Learfield delivers data-backed MMR digital campaigns that enhance sponsorship activations and fan engagement
conversions.
- Digital Campaign Optimization: Fanbase’s data-driven approach helps Learfield and its partners refine messaging, target the right fans, and boost engagement through email, social media, and display advertising.
- Segmentation & Personalization: Advanced audience segmentation creates highly targeted campaigns based on fan interests, past purchases, and engagement trends, ensuring sponsors reach the most relevant audience.
- Cross-Platform Activation: Fanbase powers seamless sponsorship integration across digital, social, and mobile platforms, delivering consistent, high-impact brand experiences.
Athletic programs that utilize Fanbase’s digital insights see measurable improvements in campaign performance, including a 44% higher CTR on digital ads and 10% higher video completion rate. These programs that leverage Fanbase’s digital insights can maximize their reach and effectiveness in connecting with high-value audiences.
Drive Ticket Sales:
Fanbase provides valuable data-driven solutions that help schools drive ticket sales and increase fan attendance. Through propensity modeling for ticketing & donations, Learfield and its partners can identify fans most likely to purchase tickets, renew season tickets, or contribute to fundraising efforts.
These insights, powered by data from ticket purchases, game attendance, the secondary ticket market, and fan records, are activated through Paciolan’s digital marketing, marketing automation solutions, Paciolan iQ, and Amplify’s ticket sales strategies to optimize outreach and maximize conversions.
Support Athletics Fundraising:
Fanbase is crucial in helping athletic programs maximize fundraising efforts by identifying and engaging donors with the highest giving potential. Amplify’s fundraising services, Paciolan’s marketing automation, Paciolan’s digital marketing services, and Paciolan iQ all leverage these fundraising insights to engage donors and generate revenue efficiently.
- Donor Propensity & Capacity Modeling – Pinpoint high-potential donors to tailor fundraising campaigns with targeted messaging that maximizes giving.
- Estimating Untapped Fundraising Potential – Analyze audience segments to identify prospective donors or upsell current donors through outbound campaigns.
- Identifying Concentrations of Donors & Prospects for Development Events – Target and connect with alumni, donors, and prospective supporters to engage in donor events.
The Fanbase Impact for Schools
Fanbase is revolutionizing how college athletic programs engage their audiences and maximize revenue opportunities. By turning data into actionable insights, schools boost engagement through fan insights, enhance MMR sales and sponsorship, reach a high-value, unique digital audience, drive ticket sales, and support athletics fundraising.
Fanbase ensures that schools remain at the forefront of innovation in fan engagement and sponsorship activation as the landscape continues to evolve. Fanbase isn’t just a tool—it’s a transformative solution that empowers college athletic programs to build stronger connections with their fans and partners.