FanThreeSixty teams with national champs, turning data into actionable plays to boost revenue, KU fan experience

Another national championship title isn’t the only banner win the University of Kansas Athletics is adding to its rafters this year. 

Weeks after scoring the NCAA men’s basketball title, the university has partnered with Kansas City-dunked FanThreeSixty to better connect with its fanbase in seasons to come. 

“By partnering with FanThreeSixty, not only will Kansas Athletics be able to create the most advanced understanding of their fans by aggregating all of their fragmented data into one, central, unified view — they will be able to easily and efficiently use that information to fuel personalized experiences for students, donors, alumni, ticket buyers and fans,” FanThreeSixty said in a release Tuesday announcing the partnership. 

Click here to learn more about FanThreeSixty, founded by Cliff Illig, co-founder of Cerner and a principal owner of Sporting Kansas City. 

The arrangement looks to maximize KU’s ability to connect with its fans across mediums and follows the athletic department’s onboarding of a complimentary technology, Fanbase, offered by Plano, Texas-based Learfield. 

“In addition to our Learfield Fanbase launch, we wanted to take a more direct role in creating an actionable data strategy to grow our business,” said Jason Booker, Kansas Athletics deputy athletics director of external affairs and revenue generation. “We believe this will be the first integration of both the Fanbase and FanThreeSixty platforms and we are excited to see how this collaboration will enhance our marketing efforts,” he continued.  

“We recognize the importance in controlling how we use our data to advance our fan experience and revenue objectives. Working with FanThreeSixty, we are excited to be in a position to not only generate insights — but to use our data in innovative new ways that help grow revenue,” Booker continued.

FanThreeSixty team, 2022

FanThreeSixty’s insight-driven fan engagement platform and its predictive analytics models will combine ticketing, donor, sales, merchandise, and email data in a way that is expected to help the Jayhawks further develop their fanbase, database marketing, and revenue generation goals — offering the athletic department “a more holistic view” of its fanbase and how it best engages with its teams. 

“The data platform will help KU measure business performance to understand what actions have the largest impact — giving KU the ability to track campaign results and attribute revenue to different marketing and sales activities,” FanThreeSixty said, noting the platform could predict such things as which fans are most likely to purchase tickets to games and which fans are most likely to spend the most money on tickets. 

Sasha Victorine, FanThreeSixty

“We are excited to bring our progressive approach to athletic departments by focusing on accelerating business value through greater utilization of data,” said Sasha Victorine, chief growth officer at FanThreeSixty. “We continue to see the market shift away from static data aggregation towards more actionable data and automation. KU’s dedication to increase their fan database and grow their knowledge about each fan is an integral first part of the plan,” he continued. 

“With KU, we will deliver immediate value with our core solutions, while identifying new, innovative approaches to expand ticket, development and retail revenues. We are currently in the implementation phase and plan to deliver the solution to KU before the end of April.”