Newly Developed Sports Ticket Strategy Company Has An All-Star Cast

Attendance at college football games is on a steady decline. Over the past four years, the top division of NCAA football has seen a reduction in attendance by roughly 8%. It is a problem that a new brand called Elevate On Campus seeks to tackle.

The new entity is owned by Elevate Sports Ventures, which is a partnership launched in early 2018 among owners of the San Francisco 49ers, Creative Artists Agency and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (the group that owns the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils). Its mission is to support ticket sales and services for intercollegiate athletics.

Elevate On Campus launches after already being retained by a major client. The University of Kentucky has selected Elevate On Campus to support its athletic program’s ticketing strategy for its more than 100 ticketed sporting events hosted annually, including those hosted by the football and basketball teams.

“We are in a changing marketplace when it comes to the way fans buy tickets to sporting events,” says University of Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart. “For that reason, it’s important that we are both innovative and personal in the way we connect our fans to our teams and convey to them how important their support is to our success. We are proud to have a proven partner in Elevate Sports Ventures as they bring their expertise to the college level.”

Not only will Kentucky benefit from the original partners of Elevate Sports Ventures, which is comprised of many professional sports team owners with a wealth of experience in selling tickets, but also more recent investors in the operation such as Oak View Group, Ticketmaster and Live Nation. It will also be able to tap into the knowledge of Taymar Ventures CEO Mark Dyer, who is a part of Elevate On Campus and is one of the founders of IMG College Ticket Solutions and IMG Learfield Ticket Solutions, working with other Southeastern Conference competitors like the University of Tennessee.

“A lot of the reasons we love Mark [Dyer] is not just his resume and what he’s built, but his reputation across college sports speaks for itself,” says Al Guido Elevate Sports Ventures CEO and President of the San Francisco 49ers.

Elevate Sports Ventures’ goal is to ultimately build Elevate On Campus to be an industry leader in sales professional recruitment and training. Signing up a major Southeastern Conference athletic program like the University of Kentucky is a great start for the newly developed brand. It is currently in talks with more than 10 university athletic programs to serve in a consulting related role, per Guido. He says that the company will not restrict services to top five power conferences and is looking to scale far and wide.