How the Red Sox nailed fan acquisition with BigQuery and GrowthLoop

In 2020, sports teams were hit hard by two major challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and shifts in advertising and engagement channels. With empty stadiums, ticket sales plummeting, and traditional revenue streams drying up, organizations had to rethink their fan acquisition and engagement approach. At the same time, shifts in consumer behavior and the rise of digital engagement created challenges and new opportunities. Teams had to adopt innovative, data-driven strategies to stay connected with their fan base in a rapidly changing landscape.

The Red Sox were determined to turn the tide and kickstart a new fan acquisition strategy using the power of data analytics, taking a "Moneyball for the front office" approach.

Already invested in BigQuery as their cloud data warehouse, the Red Sox team knew that building a secondary silo to host customer data would be a massive sink of time and resources. They also recognized that setting up a traditional CDP would take too long to implement. Faced with mounting pressure to deliver results fast, they searched for a solution that would enable their marketing and sales teams to quickly act on their fan data without the usual delays of submitting requests to data analysts.

The Red Sox decided to elevate their data stack by partnering with GrowthLoop, integrating it with their existing BigQuery data warehouse. GrowthLoop’s composable CDP empowered the marketing team to leverage the full capabilities of their data independently, without the need for complex technical support.

With GrowthLoop, the Red Sox marketing team could easily segment audiences and launch targeted campaigns in hours, not weeks. This agility allowed them to adapt quickly to shifting fan engagement trends and advertising costs. By combining GrowthLoop and BigQuery, the Red Sox eliminated data silos and could activate data from a single source of truth, using predictive models to target high-value audiences. The seamless integration between BigQuery and GrowthLoop also enabled real-time performance measurement, allowing the team to refine their strategies based on centralized insights and data-driven results.

By leveraging a composable customer data platform (CDP) on top of their existing data cloud, they eliminated data silos and empowered marketing and sales teams to independently create and execute campaigns within hours. This data-driven approach led to more personalized fan engagement, better resource allocation, and measurable performance improvements, driving revenue and deeper fan loyalty.