Don't Forget Your Tickets

Why Smarter Segmentation Sells More Seats - with Lukas Mikkel Hansen, Co-founder of Playmakers

• Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg • Season 8 • Episode 3

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How many sports industry professionals do you know who have subscribed to 800 different club newsletters to learn how clubs around the world communicate with their fans? Probably none, but Lukas Mikkel Hansen, a young talent making waves in the sports industry, has done exactly that.

In this episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets, we sit down with the young co-founder of Playmakers to get a unique vantage point on the digital divide between European and American sports. Lukas, who recently moved from Copenhagen to New York to launch Playmakers in the US, shares insights from his deep dive into club communications, revealing why so many organisations struggle to connect with their fans effectively despite having the right tools. We explore the critical differences in ticketing, fan journeys, and commercial strategies on both sides of the Atlantic.

Highlights from the conversation:

  • The 800-Club Experiment: What thousands of club emails reveal about the state of fan engagement and personalisation worldwide.
  • Europe vs. USA: A look at the pros and cons of different ticketing models, from single-source systems to the complex resale culture in the US.
  • Data is Key: Why mastering fan data is the ultimate competitive edge for turning loyalty into revenue.
  • Segmentation in Action: Practical advice on how to stop sending generic messages and start communicating with fans in a way that feels relevant and personal.
  • A Club to Watch: Lukas highlights why soccer club Portland Hearts of Pine is a prime example of a team doing things differently, and getting it right.

Tune in to learn how to bridge the gap between having data and actually using it, and discover the key lessons Lukas has learned from operating in two of the world's biggest sports markets.

Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg. The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com

SPEAKER_01:

With the FIFA World Cup heading to North America next summer, we're diving into a transatlantic comparison in this episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets. Today, we'll discuss ticketing strategies and engagement and a digital divide between the two continents with Luke Mick and Hansen of Playmakers. What can European fans expect from the US market? And what lessons can each side learn from each other? Let's hear what we got as today. Welcome to another episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets, the podcast that shines a light on the people shaping the ticketing, commercial, and storytelling landscape in sports. In our industry, we often celebrate seasoned veterans and established leaders, but it's just as important to recognize the next generation of innovators, the ambitious young minds who are challenging the status quo. Today we are shining a light on one of those bright talents. Our guest is Lukas Mikkelhansen, co-founder of Playmakers, a company helping sports clubs on both sides of the Atlantic to get the most out of their fan data. While his career is still in its early stages, his ambitions and impact are already making waves. Now based in the US, Lucas has a unique vantage point on the differences between European and American sports culture. And this is exactly what we will be discussing today. So welcome, Lucas. Great to have you on the podcast. Thank you, Carl. Thanks a lot. What an intro. A huge pleasure to be on the podcast. I'm a big fan of the concept and I've listened to many of the episodes myself. Isn't that normally how you should be introduced to Lucas? I'm just saying that should be your elevator pitch. Yeah, it's great. Very good. So tell us a little bit about your background, Lucas. I mean, how did you um end up in the sports industry and how did you end up in Playmakers and yeah, the story, basically?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Yeah, as you said, my my name is Lucas Hansen. Most uh Danish name out there, I guess. I just turned 27. I'm born and raised in Copenhagen, where I did my bachelor's and my master's as well at Copenhagen Business School. I did my bachelor's thesis back then about the upcoming World Cup in Qatar and wrote about uh bad publicity that the tournament faced and whether that transferred onto the sponsors of the tournament. So it was quite an interesting area and my academic introduction to the sports industry. Then I did my master's thesis a couple of years later about fan data and the sort of adoption of the fan-facing digital tools in the commercial departments of football clubs. And there I got to interview a long list of very interesting people in the sports scene. And uh yeah, then I moved from a self-consulting, quite corporate job into sports for the first time. I started by joining a Copenhagen-based sports tech startup. It was called GovSports, and they had developed a platform for sponsorship tracking that we sold to clubs and sponsors, and I got to be involved with many areas of the commercial side of that business and ended up leading most of the sales of the sponsor side in the Nordic countries. Yeah, and then by the end of 2024, I scaled down my hours and took on a freelancing uh consulting role. Then I worked a couple different clients. Uh, one of them was Playmakers, that was just been founded by then. And then soon after that, I realized that this company had huge potential. And then this September I scaled it to North America and moved to New York with Playmakers. And then to try and put it, I guess, somewhat simple, what we do is that we help sports organizations utilize all the fan data that they have and then also communicate better to the fans. So we realize that most sports clubs, apart from maybe the leading clubs of the biggest leagues, they all have the same challenges. They have plenty of cool uh tech and tools, but they just don't have enough manpower to use them to the fullest. The same goes with all the data that is stuck across multiple systems, and they don't have the time to do the integrations, actually put the data to use. But that just means that they don't really segment the communications. That means a lot of clubs send out maybe one or two emails saying, hey, we have a game on Friday or Saturday. Please swing by. That's regardless if you've been a season ticket holder for years, if it's your first game, if you're a student, family, you just get that one or two generic messages. And that's just all down to a lack of resources and a marketing department that just has too much stuff going on all the time. Very good. No, I agree.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, time is precious for these clubs, right? Exactly. But what sports are you working towards? I'm gonna ask you a little bit about the move to New York afterwards, and obviously the American market versus the but before we go into that, can you explain a little bit more on the core of what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think that that where we come in is that we integrate all the data sources that clubs have. We make sure that the data that you as a club can get from your fan shop, your ticketing system, your fan app, CRM, and so on can be actually used. And oftentimes, actually, we don't bring in new tools for the clubs, we just make sure that they use most of what they already have. And that's what really makes a difference to the clubs is that we do it on a continuous basis, that we do all the emails that they send out to those newly defined segments, meaning that fans will get relevant messages and offers from the club. That means that families will be communicated oftentimes to a bit earlier than students would, because students often decide on buying tickets closer to game day later in the process. And recent ticket buyers are getting pushed tickets in the emails, which season ticket holders want because they already have a ticket. So many clubs they send out to season ticket holders, hey, remember to buy a ticket for the next game, even though all data shows that they already have a ticket.

SPEAKER_01:

But I just give us the low-hanging fruits here, Lucas, right, for our listeners, right? The listeners of this podcast are really great ticketing managers, very often, right? So let's make them a little bit better. So one thing I heard is that between the games, I guess it's depending on if you win or lose. So, how many emails should a fan really get before they buy a ticket? Do you have any data on that? Or how many should a ticketing manager send out to nudge to get a ticket for the next game?

SPEAKER_00:

I think it's tough to put one number to it, but the general idea is that if you send out relevant communication, then you can get away with sending so much more. If you get a couple of emails as a fans throughout a season that is just strictly straight up not for you, nothing that you've asked for, then you can get away with sending less communication. So I think a lot of teams could get away with sending more as long as it's somewhat relevant for the fan. The amount of emails that I've gotten that pushes some sort of children closing or something that is just straight up not at all relevant for me because I don't have children, is crazy.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I guess uh we know in data that sometimes they have so much data that they know you're having kids before you even know yourself, right? But I guess that's not the case with the football clubs, I suppose. But maybe we'll get there one day. All right. So you're talking about clubs. Are we talking football? Are we talking handball, hockey? What are we talking about, Livas?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, the concept that we've developed is useful in all sports that has fans and a place to play, basically. Old spectator sports. But I think we have our niche in the football space. That's where we started a year ago back in Denmark, and then we work with a couple handball teams, because that's a huge sport in Denmark. We help the handball league as well. So for now it's mainly football handball, but we're very keen on trying it out in different sports, as the concept wouldn't change much.

SPEAKER_01:

Where do you see most innovation? What sports? Because I hear that the hockey clubs, for example, are super innovative.

SPEAKER_00:

But what do you hear? What's your uh experience with that? Yeah, that's a good question. I think in Denmark, at least hockey clubs are quite far behind, and I'm not that into hockey, so I wouldn't be able to tell. I think that generally a lot of newer born clubs, so younger clubs, are very good. They don't have all the ways that things usually are done as a IS2 arts, not innovating. So I think they have a huge advantage.

SPEAKER_01:

And what about markets then? I guess uh you moved to the US, Lucas. Can you tell us a little bit of why you did? I mean, the market in Europe, it should be big enough, right? But you decided to go for definitely a bigger market. So why did you do that? And and what's the core differences between the two markets?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a good question. I guess the move was motivated by the goal for us to explore whether the problems were found to be the same across so many European teams also were present in the US, which should say it's just everything is bigger and they just do sports on another level. It's just not always in a better way, it's just a different way. And I guess we wanted to get a better understanding of the commercial engine running in clubs of different leagues in different parts of the world, which includes the US. I did a quite fun experiment and I did some data gathering, and I've signed up to receive communications for more than 800 clubs, I think, from all over the world, or just signed up to receive communications and newsletters. And we have a database now of thousands and thousands of emails. And I tell you, the amount of emails that just been set up in a way that I really doubt if they convert anything at all. I think it's just a case of small tweaks. Like in your communications, include a link for fans to buy tickets, uh, shorten the email a bit. No one wants to read through ten pages of everything at once. And that's very true in the US as well. That's what we set out to help clubs do, and they want to scale to the US as well.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you see anyone uh doing it particularly well? Anyone that we should follow that provides a good example.

SPEAKER_00:

There's one club over here in a league that is similar to the MLS, but not the MLS. That's called the USL, United Soccer League. And they play out of Portland a bit more from uh where I am in New York. And what they're doing is is really great. I think that people should have a look at that. Also from just a purely branding perspective, they are doing some some quite cool stuff. They're called the Portland Hats Pine. The American clubs tend to have funny names. But yeah, they're they're doing some very cool stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

So, Lucas, you mentioned that clubs on both of the continents they have plenty of tech, but very often lack of time and also people to use it in an efficient way. Can you tell us a little bit about that and also what was the aha moment that led to playmakers?

SPEAKER_00:

Great question. And I I think I can actually can almost answer that in was the aha moment. And we're talking rather big top-of-the-league clubs in Europe and the US were a marketing team of maybe one to five people. They are basically wearing enough hats to do the jobs of ten people, and then on game day, they are being pulled into the stadium. And I guess that includes sometimes ticketing people as well. They're getting pulled into the stadium to help hang up signage. They need to take photos, they need to sit in the box office. And then suddenly management wants them to build a new strategy for revenue generation. They want them to implement the latest AI or fan engagement tool and so on. Because all while they're working across maybe 20 different platforms with no clear and easy distribution of who's responsible or what. And in many cases, we look through the setup and then we find with a lot of clubs a few easy integrations so that they don't need to buy a huge CDP or big Salesforce setup that the management otherwise would want them to. No, I think it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

Obviously, there's huge potential. When a club buys a new tech platform, they have huge ambitions, right? But very often they buy it, and once that celebration of buying it is over uh and they're gonna start using it, things stop, right? Exactly. One thing I wanted to discuss as well, Lucas, is obviously the fan journey. If you look at the fan journey in Europe versus the fan journey in the US, very often it starts with buying a ticket. And in Europe, you go into the club's web page, you buy a ticket there. But in the US, it's a much different market with multiple suppliers and there's a huge resale culture. What do you see the pros and cons of these two models?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's very true. And I think for me personally, it's been very confusing to buy tickets to games over here. Because, yes, as you'll say, in many European countries, we are used to just buying tickets directly from a club. And yeah, that's how it is in Scandinavia as well. And in the US, the tickets for one game, it seems like they're often spread out across more official ticketing sellers. That would be having the tickets in SeatGeek, Ticketmaster, maybe StopHub, and their own website and in the app. So that's plenty of opportunities. And I hadn't really wrapped my head around how to best go about it. So I honestly can't say if it might be a very simple task to American fans, but I just found it a bit overwhelming. And on the good side, I have got my hands on some quite cheap resale tickets though. And that part I really like. In many European countries, we have a lot of legislation on this whole resale thing. So that's a bigger discussion, and there's of course goods and bads to it. But I I think from a club's perspective, if a club is somewhat at max capacity for a game, then resale options are just great when there's no more tickets to be sold. New revenue is suddenly possible via a resale. But from a fan perspective, I think it's mainly beneficial if you can't attend a game so you can recover some of the cost, or if you're lucky to get cheaper tickets due to low demand. But I think from a personal and maybe professional perspective, I do appreciate a smooth customer journey for everything, really. I think in Europe, and at least in Denmark, I always know how to search for tickets because it I just stay away from every provider that is outside of the club's one official provider. And the rest of the smoothness of that fan journey, I think it depends on many areas outside of just the ticketing system. Purely is if the club offers an easy way of doing single sign-up or easy access to logging into the ticket side. If you as a fan have to download an app before being able to even get the tickets, if you can use them directly from your Apple wallet and so on, then there's the whole cold calling box office setup. But I think I'm sure that we'll get back to that because that's quite fun.

SPEAKER_01:

That is interesting. We'll touch on that afterwards. But one thing is, of course, the fan journey when you're heading to the stadium and buying, etc. But there are so many commercial opportunities inside the stadium as well during the game. Do you have some examples from the US on what you've seen when it comes to creating revenue opportunities based on the experience?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a lot. I might be biased as I've worked in marketing and sponsorships, and I tend to see and analyze commercials everywhere. My girlfriend even makes fun of me for turning the volume of the TV when there are commercial breaks on. She just says that she doesn't realize them anymore. And uh well, I do. But yeah, I think that in American sports, it's a matter of everything is sponsored by someone. I'd love to see a big breakdown of how much sponsorship inventory, the big teams that they have is completely crazy. And a lot of them are generally good and somewhat relevant, but some of them are just too much and not fit for the context. I went to a New York Knicks game a couple of weeks ago, and that was quite a funny example. Because every time there was a dunk in the game, that led to a big dunking donut graphic popping up on the screens all over the arena. And I'm not even sure you can get donuts in Madison Square Garden, but I think that the American consumer or fan is just more used to seeing all this sponsored by a type of commercials. And in many European countries at least, I don't think that you'd see a donut shop sponsor a sports team or a sports event. But then again, that might be changing. I see that we have the French League that is called League One McDonald's. So uh yeah, who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

SPEAKER_01:

But yeah, dunk and donuts and dunks makes sense. It does, at least by the name. Yeah, exactly. An easy sell, I would say. An easy sell. So we discussed toll calling, Lucas. Uh I've always said toll calling would never die, but that's maybe in a different role. But when it comes to ticket sales, maybe it will. Can you explain a little bit around that and what you've seen?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's a very fun thing to have seen from the two sides of the world, basically. Definitely there are things to learn from both ways of doing it. And I think that the optimal solution for clubs is at least in America, is somewhere in between the two outliers. And that that's at least what we aim for at playmakers with the American clubs that we work with. And the thing is that when I moved here, I was really surprised how much emphasis by the American teams are put on the box office in the clubs. And that means that the ticketing department can be quite large, and they focus a lot of the ticket sales on this co-calling and just straight up calling fans to get them to buy tickets. And I've never seen that in Europe, and and here it's just a stable part of the process. The club, they hire people to do it, they they do it, and the fans are used to it. I think it would be a quite fun experiment to implement that in a European club. It would take some time getting used to for fans to be co-called by the club, maybe their club, maybe another club. And also it would need, I think, quite tough workaround in terms of all the uh European consent rules.

SPEAKER_01:

So basically what you're saying is that if they haven't bought a ticket for the next game, they will get a call and from someone in the club asking, you're not coming, why aren't you coming? Do you need help to buy a ticket? Yeah, right. We've seen it in season ticket renewals. Yeah, especially in the UK, where it's renewal season and all hands on duck, you know, all hands on the phones in some clubs. But that's also changing, right? So it's moving in the other way. Do you think it'll change in the US as well?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a good question. It is changing, and a lot of teams and clubs, they are wanting to implement more of what we think as the European standard. That's also some of the things that we really want to aim for in helping American clubs that we work with to land on a hybrid solution between the two. We don't want them to do either or if they need to do both. And what we want to help them do is if we can help them generate some warmer leads, when we speak purely marketing, some warmer leads for the ticking department to call while we improve the whole box of the setup that they're doing. That will just make them more efficient and make them able to communicate better to fans in different ways and in a segmented way. And that's when we can scale the ticket sales altogether. And then if we do the whole digital segmenting email campaigning around that, that's not on a separate track. And we can sell tickets and merge while doing the other thing. Then we can just altogether improve the relevance and gather more data and better understand defense. Great.

SPEAKER_01:

So jumping a little bit ahead here, looking at the divide between the tech and the data. So in the US, leagues often dictate which ticketing or tech systems clubs must use. And we've seen the same in some countries in Europe as well, where the league is going out on tender, etc. But how does that impact clubs' ability to innovate? Will they still go out and look for new tools, or are they more forced to use the tools that the league orders them to use?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, another very interesting question. And it was actually one of the main topics of my master's thesis that I did, how leagues can help, but sometimes, as you mentioned, also limit the clubs. And we work with a club, a new football club over here in the US, who needed to build or at least find the entire tech stack from scratch. And we joined so many calls with the leagues, the league that they're playing in, to understand the possibilities. And for ticketing systems specifically, we really wanted them to go with a more innovative solution that there may be two or three that the league had agreements with. And in order to do that, we actually had to first pay a fee to the league to not join in on the common league-wide system. But then we also had to say goodbye to the heavily discounted systems and buy another one outside of the league for full price. And so we weighed the pros and cons and then we ended up choosing something outside of the league standard, which is now that we're working in it, it's exactly what we wanted. And we can do a lot of cool integrations and it's just working. But in my opinion, most leagues around the world is very helpful to clubs by acting as more of an advisor and have the experience as to what worked with other clubs in that specific league. But also, one of the main things that they do is that they allow clubs to sit together and have a common platform to talk about. They allow for sharing ways of working. In the US, I find it to be more mandating than purely advising which tools the clubs need to use. And I think that it just all comes down to this whole franchise idea and the franchise setup. The league, they can buy systems for the entire league and then almost force the clubs into it, which it will lower the cost for the clubs, but it also limits ways of standing out or doing things differently. And yeah, I guess that's why there are both pros and cons about each way of doing it.

SPEAKER_01:

So before we wrap up, Lukas, with the key takeaways, I just have one question that you have to take from the hip pair. And that is what are the three key mistakes you see from a club when it comes to using tech for understanding fan data and creating more revenue, selling more tickets?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a good question. I'll need to think about better.

SPEAKER_01:

Can you promise us that you uh we'll follow you on LinkedIn, right? And you post a link saying these are the three mistakes that's most common. All right, okay, that's a deal. Yeah. That is a deal. I do post a lot already. I will post the top three. Yeah, that's a deal. Very, very good. But then, which is a tradition, is this is the closing thoughts, right? So to wrap up this conversation today, Lucas, what are the key lessons? Again, three, you've learned from operating both in the European and American sports market, right? Different markets, different setup, etc., which we discussed, that you would share with any commercial or marketing professional in the industry or ticketing manager for that sake. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

That I can definitely do straight away as well. I think, first of all, as with so many other industries, data is key and people need to try and master the data. Otherwise, they won't have a competitive edge. Secondly, as cliche as it sounds, I think a good network is just such a valuable asset in the sports industry, regardless of your position. And focusing on it in a more honest and real way can get you very far by showing proper and sincere interest in other people's work while also sharing out of what you do yourself. That's key. It doesn't have to be purely speaking to your ICP customer, but it can be talked to anyone in the industry. You'll never know what you'll get out of that. And then the last one is just that sport and working in sport, that's awesome. It's awesome no matter where you work with it and how you work with it. Just there's so many opportunities and possibilities.

SPEAKER_01:

That's great. And everyone should be in this industry, that's what I'm saying. It's a fantastic industry to be in, at least once in their lives. Highly recommend it. You have been listening to Don't Forget Your Tickets, where today's guest was Lukas Mikelhansen, country manager for North America at the startup Playmakers. Follow me on LinkedIn and you'll get those low-hanging fruits as well. We hope this conversation brought insight and inspiration to those navigating in the commercial side of football, especially in Ireland, the UK, and other international markets. As always, thank you to Ticket Co for powering this podcast. My name is Cal Eric Mauberg, and until next time, have a wonderful day.

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Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg

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