This paper examines current implementation of social media strategies by ticket salespeople. A sample of 126 ticket sales professionals across professional, collegiate, and minor league sport responded to a survey measuring social media usage rates across a variety of platforms, social media use throughout the sales process, and sales performance. Results indicate that overall ticket salespeople are not incorporating social media into their regular sales initiatives. However, topperforming sales professionals do tend to use social media more regularly than baseline ticket sales representatives when approaching and discovering the needs of their customers. Given the rise of social media as a business-to-business communication medium, ticket sales managers should consider incorporating more training and empowering their salesforces to leverage social media to facilitate greater sales success.

Sales pedagogy and student perceptions of sales have long been studied in business programs across college campuses. While sales pedagogy is a growing content area for sport management programs, it continues to be an area in the field in need of further understanding. The purpose of this study was to explore student perceptions of sales throughout a 16-week course. A qualitative case study methodology was used to develop a rich description of how sport management students perceive sales as a content area, and as a potential profession in the sport industry. Analysis of the themes indicates that throughout the course of the semester, students developed more holistic perceptions of sales, viewed sales as a necessary skill for many jobs in the sport industry, and were more open to a sales job as an entryway into the sport industry.

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This paper is the first to extend industrial (or business-to-business) marketing principles to the market for traditional season tickets. In doing so, a three-dimensional characterization of the season ticket holder (STH) is developed and provides a new foundation upon which market segmentation and ticket sales initiatives can be built. This study then uses this new framework to segment and examine the key renewal factor differences across STH account types. Specifically, group differences on perceived venue related and non-venue related barriers to renewal, overall product quality, and account representative relationship quality are analyzed. This study finds business-toconsumer (B2C) accounts are more concerned with product quality and typical barriers to purchase as they consider renewing their account for the following season than business-to-business (B2B) accounts. Additionally, this study finds B2C accounts report higher levels of intention to renew than B2B accounts.