Major League Baseball is bringing season ticketing to the next-generation fan with a new feature in its mobile application enabling the purchase of blocks of games or season tickets and promising a more flexible experience.

The MLB is altering fundamentals of a long unchanged sector of sporting events, season ticketing and adjusting its operation of bulk ticketing to better appeal to millennials. The league is introducing its Experience’s Pass into its MLB.com Ballpark app, and allowing for a more flexible baseball season for fans.

“This is a great example of mobile engagement and how MLB is leveraging mobile experiences and technology to reach new customers by offering highly flexible options and ease of use for the always connected customer,” said Brian Brunk, principal at Boston Retail Partners. “Mobile offers greater flexibility for the customer to finalize options anywhere, anytime and provides participating MLB teams with the information they need to respond with real-time offers that look to optimize revenue and margins.”

Millennial attraction
Major baseball fans now have the option of purchasing bulk tickets and blocks of games through the mobile app, as well as entire season tickets. Mobile users of the MLB.com Ballpark app can now immediately and flexibly confirm attendance, switch and choose games or dates to attend and vary seating locations.

Allowing this manner of flexibility to fans is essential today. These digital first fans have grown up in a world in which information, services and products are easily available, along with how they want it.

Consumers given the choice to change days, seating arrangements, access account information, confirm attendance and purchase through an application are more likely to be loyal to a brand. Offering these services to millennials is important to continue engaging them and entice new customers, and offering them on mobile ensures this even more.

The flexibility of being able to access this information and make decisions related to a sporting event experience on the go, wherever and whenever, is ideal for these consumers.

As the older generation of season ticket holders begins to age, millennials are poisted to take their place. It is imperative that MLB continue evolving its services to meet the needs of the vastly different digital-generation to ensure they take the place of the past generations.

Mobile grand slams
MLB.com At Bat also added Apple Watch users to its target audience on Major League Baseball’s official mobile application for the 2015 season, providing fans with vital scores, statistics and content to enhance engagement with the sport (see more).

Also, the official mobile application, MLB At Bat, reached 5 million downloads before the season’s first pitch was thrown, a record for the eight-year-old platform and pointing to mobile’s ability to enhance the consumption of sports events (see more).

“Through this mobile offering, participating MLB teams will be able to develop a more intimate relationship with their fan base and tailor future offerings and packages to retain more customers and convert them to season ticket holders,” Mr. Brunk said. “As this develops, other sport franchises should watch closely and plan their own similar offerings.

“There is a lot of upside and once customers get a taste they will quickly expect the same experience across all sporting events and venues,” he said.

Final take
Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Commerce Daily