For our July event, we mixed things up by heading to Nationwide Arena to be hosted the Columbus Blue Jackets digital marketing team. Jeff Eldersveld, the Director of Digital Marketing an Analytics for the Blue Jackets, walked through the role of digital in a professional sports league — the dual calculations of immediate return (a ticket sale) versus lifetime value, the importance of being ready to respond to team news that fans will care about, and the challenges of marketing when a major driver of results is the team’s performance.

Click on the image below to view Jeff’s presentation:

Following Jeff’s presentation, we took a tour behind the scenes at Nationwide Arena, including walking out on center ice (well, center concrete — the season has been over for a bit at this point!):

We even had a few of the players stop by, and, wow, did their body proportions surprise us!