Springfield Nor Easters Case Study

After reading the case study on The Springfield Nor’easters, there are some key issues that really stuck out. The main issue was that Larry Buckingham, who was the marketing director for the Nor’easters, had to figure out how to sell season tickets, regular tickets, and merchandise at their games. The Nor’easters were set to take their home field in Springfield Massachusetts, which is about 90 miles west of Boston. This in itself makes it difficult to sell tickets to minor league baseball games as the Red Sox play a little over an hour away. The next hurdle to overcome was the demographics of Springfield. Nearly 25% of families lived below the poverty line, which is not an ideal situation when trying to sell tickets. In my personal opinion, the next issue at hand was the secondary research. Buckingham used 3-year-old survey data and some anecdotal evidence from a journalist. This is not thorough use of secondary research. After completing the survey, the next issue at hand was determining how to price the tickets to get maximum attendance and revenue.
I would first start by completing more thorough secondary research followed by some hands-on primary research. It would not have been hard for Buckingham to spend a weekend or two going to some minor league games and getting a real feel and understanding on what it’s like to be in attendance of these games. Put yourself in the fan’s shoes: “Are the tickets priced right?” “Is the beer priced right? - Is it cold enough?” “How is the food priced?” “Do I like the atmosphere?” “Would I come back?” are all examples of questions he could ask himself while attending a minor league game. This is one of the first steps I would take if I were managing this company. I think it’s very important to start from the ground up to grasp a true feel of what the baseball experience needs to