By: Michael Laba
Georgia Southern Athletics is implementing data analytics, fan feedback, and digital marketing tools to shape how it promotes games and improves the fan experience, according to Dan Adams, Associate Athletic Director. Adams and his team uses postgame surveys, ticketing data, and targeted messaging systems to adjust operations and improve attendance across multiple sports.
Much of this strategy begins with football, the university’s highest attended sport, where fan data is collected after games and analyzed to identify issues in real time.
“It starts with football being our biggest sporting event here at Georgia Southern,” Adams said. “We started doing postgame surveys to solicit fan feedback, and that’s probably where things really started to hone in on how to improve the fan experience.”
The surveys have become a crucial factor in decision making. Instead of relying on assumptions, staff now use direct fan feedback to identify problems and adjust game day operations.
One example happened during the first home football game of the 2024 against Boise State, when the athletic department hosted a top 25 team in the country and the gameday staff quickly found out how unprepared they were. The heat paired with the unexpected demand causes staff to quickly become overwhelmed.
“We were overwhelmed with the amount of fans in our premium areas,” Adams said. “It was also an early afternoon game in August, so it was super hot. The execution did not go according to plan.”
The situation escalated as staff struggled to keep up with demand. Some employees reportedly left due to the intensity of the workload, forcing athletic department personnel to step in and help manage service areas.
After the game, post-event survey data confirmed what staff had experienced in real time, long wait times, shortages of food and beverages, and an overall decline in service quality. The department used that information to quickly hit a reset on their gameplan.
“We took that and made sure that would be a one time slip up.” Adams said. “We added more staff and made sure we had more inventory so we could satisfy fan needs.”
The adjustments worked. According to Adams, service issues improved significantly for the remainder of the season after operational changes were made based on survey feedback.
Fans say those improvements are noticeable and influence whether they return to games.
“If the lines are too long or things are disorganized, it definitely makes me think twice about coming back,” said Sully Offer, a Georgia Southern student. “But when everything runs smoothly, it makes the whole experience a lot better and more worth it.”
Beyond gameday operations, Georgia Southern Athletics also uses digital marketing systems to target fans more precisely. These tools allow staff to segment audiences based on demographics, purchasing behavior, and engagement history.
“We have a marketing automation platform that allows us to segment fans and reach different types of fans based on age, gender, or whether they’ve visited our website recently,” Adams said.
The system is used to guide decisions such as season ticket promotions, upgrade campaigns, and single game tickets. The system is so advanced it can see which fans have attend multiple games and they will receive different messaging than those who only attend once or browse ticket pages online.
This data driven approach is also used to boost student attendance, which can vary by sport. Football games tend to draw consistent student turnout, while other sports often rely more heavily on promotions and giveaways.
“We’re actively promoting to students through campus outreach, flyers, social media, and text messaging,” Adams said. “Football stays strong as long as we stay active with marketing.”
For baseball players, those attendance changes can directly impact performance and atmosphere.
“It’s a completely different energy when there’s a bigger crowd,” said Max Prozny, a Georgia Southern baseball player. “We as a team are able to play better when we are able to feed off the crowd.”
For basketball and other sports, freebies play a massive role in driving attendance. Limited edition giveaways, themed merchandise, and promotional events have been shown to create spikes in student turnout.
“We had students out the door wanting to get beanie hats and retro items,”Adams said. “Giveaways definitely work for some of our sports when we’re trying to boost attendance.”
Artificial intelligence is also beginning to influence how marketing strategies are developed, though not through fully automated systems. Instead, staff use AI tools to assist with brainstorming strategies.
“We can use tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to help us think through strategies,” Adams said. “For example, how to target single-game buyers and turn them into season ticket holders.”
Staff then apply those ideas in their systems, seeing trends in specific fan groups based on purchase history and engagement levels.
“We can break it down even further,” Adams said. “We can look at people who only came to one game versus those who came to five or more and tailor messaging differently for each group.”
As college athletics continues to evolve, data and technology are becoming central to how programs operate. At Georgia Southern, that shift is already reshaping how games are promoted, how fans are targeted, and how in-game experiences are improved.
Dan Adams said the goal is ultimately to use data not just to increase attendance, but to ensure fans have a better overall experience once they arrive.