19ClaireM – CA Work Experience Program

Durham Bulls – Game Operations – Day 9

Today I worked with the game operations department of the Durham Bulls, which also includes the grounds crew.

Since today was a game day, most of my day was spent helping to prepare the stadium for the game. I helped prepare each entrance with programs, unlocked bathrooms, turned on all necessary lights, and opened gates. I also checked over the staffing and took notes about the game to point out during the employee meeting later in the day.

After preparing the stadium, I worked with the grounds crew to prepare the field for batting practice as well as then preparing the field for the game at the end of batting practice. I helped put up the net that goes over the large video board to protect it for balls, and I helped to push the batting practice net onto the field. After batting practice, I helped fix up the bullpen, mound, and batters box. I scored all of those areas before the rest of the crew added new clay, and I also broomed the dirt to level it out.

Once gates opened, I helped on the streets with traffic going into the stadium. Right before the game started I adjusted the sound system throughout the concourse and outside the ballpark from pregame to in-game sounds. During the game, the operations team reacts to anything that they are needed for, which tonight included asking a fan to move to her actual seats.

Durham Bulls – Sponsorship – Day 8

Today I worked with the sponsorship department, seeing both the sales and activation sides as well as experiencing a game-day for the sponsorship department.

We started the day by having a department lunch, which was lots of fun because it immediately showed me how tight knit and open the group was, which made me feel very welcomed. After lunch, I saw the sales side of the operation by getting the rundown of the entire process. I saw the initial sponsorship proposal document that is sent out to potential clients and then how a contract is made after the client responds with what they would like to sponsor. During the season, the sales side isn’t too busy because they do most of the sales during the off-season to prepare the stadium by opening day.

After working with the sales side, I worked with Ashley who is on the activation side, meaning that she takes the contracts and puts what the client wants into action. A lot of her job consists of communicating with the client as well as any other department that needs to be involved depending on the request of the client. Like the sales department, most of her work is done during the months leading up to opening day, but during the season she still has some signage coming in as well as working with clients who sponsor specific games or have PA reads during specific games.

The director of sponsorship made me some trivia about the partnership proposal, so I answered all of those questions. After doing so, I quizzed Ashley on a few of the questions, and she got most of them right. After quizzing Ashley, I quizzed Chip, who is the Assistant General Manager of Sales, and he didn’t do too well. I will admit that most of the answers were numbers, and he was usually pretty close.

Before the game, Ashley and I prepared all of the prize packs that would be awarded during promotions throughout the night, and we also put coupons in the cup holders of a few sections. Then we walked around the stadium to make sure that everything looked presentable and fixed any signs that needed extra attention. Once gates opened, we found a few lucky fans to win prize packs and then sent all of the necessary information about the fans off to the promotions team and tracked that information to send to the sponsor at the end of the season.

This was the proposal and the trivia that they made for me

Durham Bulls – Special Events – Day 7

Today I worked with the special events department, which was great because there was an event this morning. Most of the special events are held in the PNC Club area, and there aren’t many events during the season due to availability.

The event this morning was the Rotary Club of Durham, which is held most Monday’s at the ballpark. I helped set-up and take down the event, which was similar to the set-up for most of the events held at the ballpark. The catering is done on-site, which makes it a great place to hold events. During the meeting, we got to eat the food and stay out of the way of the guests. After the meeting was over, we had to return the room to normal game-day set-up because there was a game tonight as well.

After finishing up with Rotary, most of the day was spent responding to emails and phone calls about potential events or getting the final details for upcoming events. The season is the down time for special events, but there is lots of planning happening because most events are planned months in advance. I got to respond to a few emails and even book an event in their event software myself.

This is the PNC Club where most of the special events are held

Durham Bulls – Food/Beverage – Day 6

Today I worked with the food and beverage department, which was especially interesting today because it was State Fair Night.

I started the day by getting an overview of the food and beverage department including the concessions and catering departments. The Durham Bulls have a wide variety of food during games, which requires lots of preparation. The department uses lots of data from past years and games earlier in the season to determine how much food to buy, how much staff to have, and how much food to make. The department uses lots of statistics to prepare throughout the season.

After getting an overview of the department, I saw everything get put into action. As I mentioned earlier, tonight was State Fair Night, so we prepared the special food for the night including seasoned corn on the cob, edible cookie dough, and root beer floats. I actually got to make a root beer float myself which was really cool. Most of the work on game days is making sure that all of the concession workers are prepared and fixing any last minute issues.

During the game, the chef gave me a full tour of the two kitchens on-site. The main kitchen is full of lots of supplies that are brought in each day. The chef makes food for all of the players (visiting team and Bulls), the front office, the grounds crew, and all the food necessary for games.

Durham Bulls – Promotions – Day 5

Today the Durham Bulls had a double-header, meaning there was lots of action throughout the day. I was supposed to work with the retail department today, but the promotions team was short-staffed, so I jumped in.

During the first game, I worked with the on-field promotions team, meaning that I helped with the promotions in between innings. The best part about this was I got to be on the field in between innings helping with fun games such as sumo wrestling, racing Wool E. Bull, and launching beanbags into a large pair of pants.

During the second game, I worked in the game operations room, mainly watching all of the work that is done during the game to control the video boards and all of the speakers. Yesterday I spent a lot of my day watching the pregame preparation of the video boards, so it was very cool to see all of that work put into action during the game. Most of the time I watched everyone working, but I got to control the video boards myself for a few innings, which was very cool.

This was my view right before going on the field for a promotion

This was where I was able to control the video boards

Durham Bulls – Promotions/Marketing – Day 4

Today I worked with the promotions/marketing department and spent most of my day with Faith Inman, the promotions director, and Emily Almond, the promotions coordinator.

The morning began with Faith showing me the game operations room, which consists of lots of very cool monitors that control the sound system and all eight of the video boards. Most of her work during game days consists of programming the agenda for pregame, in between innings, and post game into the video boards. The Durham Bulls got a new video board system this past off-season, so they are still learning new operations of the system each week. While Faith was working on programming the video boards for tonight’s game, the board in center-field went out, so we had to reboot the screen manually.

After spending lots of time with Faith, Emily showed me her main tasks, which consists of creating agendas for in between innings, writing the script for the PA announcer, and creating graphics for the video boards. Lots of work goes into each graphic seen on the board as well as the words that the PA announcer is saying.

During pregame set-up, the promotions department helped the sponsorship department set up tables throughout the ballpark as this was a big sponsored night. Unfortunately, there was lots and lots of rain, so a lot of the tables and tents that we set up, we had to take down during the hail storm. Though this may not sound like much fun, it showed me how much the entire Durham Bulls staff care about their clients as well as helping each other because people from every department were running out in the hail to help the sponsorship team keep each sponsor’s station dry.

Overall, I thought today was great despite not seeing much of the promotions team in action during game day due to the rain delay. I thought that the promotions department was super interesting and it showed today how great of an atmosphere all of the Durham Bulls employees have created. The Durham Bulls have an amazing organization with truly amazing people, and that really shined through today.

Durham Bulls – Ticket Operations – Day 3

Today I worked with the Ticket Operations department and mainly worked with Peter Wallace who is the Director of Ticketing. He is in charge of the ticketing staff including the box office workers and the ticket takers during games as well as working with the ticketing software and predicting future ticket trends.

We started the morning by going over the different software that the ticketing department uses including the website that the tickets are sold on as well as other software programs that use the ticket data to explain various ticketing trends. The goal of the overview was to show me that the ticket operations department is based on data analytics, so they want all of the data that they can get in order to better the ticketing process and increase the number of tickets sold. After the overview, I put the data analytics to work by doing some data entry.

Throughout the morning, Peter got lots of phone calls and emails asking for tickets for various people for various reasons, but there were two that were notable. The first was a call about getting a suite for a family with a 11 month old boy that isn’t expected to live past mid-June, so the Bulls donated a suite for this weekend to that family. The next call was helping an old Bulls worker with proposing to his girlfriend using the field. After both of these calls, Peter told me that this was a completely normal day.

For the game, I scanned tickets at the main entrance of the ballpark. Since this was a Thursday night game, I probably scanned over 500 tickets myself. After I was relieved, Peter showed me the current data for the amount of people that had entered the ballpark, putting my work of scanning into concrete data.

Overall, I thought that the ticket operations was very interesting and definitely very data driven, which I thought was really cool. All of the different software programs give the Bulls so much information about each ticket buyer as well as show the weaknesses of their current marketing.

Durham Bulls – Accounting – Day 2

Today I worked with the accounting department, and I learned specifically about the various subsections of the department. I had an overview of the entire department including reviewing game-day revenue, the legal aspect of the team, and the payroll.

First, I met with the Business Manager, and she went over all of her day-to-day tasks as well as showing me the various software programs used by the Bulls that help to determine the revenue and costs for each game. She also introduced me to the legal side of the company as the Bulls must have waivers for each person that participates in any on field activity as well as having to deal with injuries on-site.

Next I met with the Account Supervisor, and she explained that all of the departments run through her because she manages the costs for each department. Afterwards I met two of the department’s trainees who are college students, and they advised me on how to use my education to get me into the sports industry as well as talking about the basic accounting functions that they are in charge of.

After having a department lunch, we went on a tour of the ballpark to see the stadium signage that we would be reviewing the invoices of. Then, I helped with the accounts payable for the week: organizing invoices and printing checks.

Overall I thought that the accounting department was very interesting as this is one way to be in the sports industry, but also get general accounting experience. Though the department is unrelated to game-day operations, it is still involved in the overall operations of the Durham Bulls throughout the year.

These are some of the signs that we then looked over the invoices for

Durham Bulls – Ticket Sales – Day 1

Each day with the Durham Bulls I will be shadowing a different department manager, and today I shadowed in the ticket sales department. Today was a game day, so there were lots of different things happening throughout the day that were specific to game days.

The day started with a full tour of the Durham Bulls Athletic Park: visiting each department, seeing the suites, going on the field, and going inside the scoreboard. I was able to see all of the behind the scenes areas of the ballpark. After the full tour, we began the day by transporting and organizing giveaway items, and then moved onto more day-to-day tasks of replying to emails, answering phones, and preparing for the game. We set up everything for the club level suites: prepared wristbands, opened all of the suites, and added stat packs and programs. I helped with an event before the game for season ticket holders with the Vice President of the Durham Bulls, and then also helped with the pregame festivities on the field including the delivery of the game ball and rosin bag. During the game, we talked to various season ticket holders and helped wherever necessary.

Overall, the day opened my eyes to all of the behind the scenes work that must be done in order for sporting events to occur. I met so many wonderful people that really love what they do, which I find very attractive for a potential career path. Ticket sales handles much more than just actually selling the tickets, but also manages the fan experience before, during, and after the games.

Tag: 19ClaireM