The Birmingham Legion FC launched their inaugural season in the beginning of 2019. Top of mind for the Legion front office was delivering an exceptional experience to the nearly 6,000 fans expected at the opening game, starting from the moment fans began arriving at BBVA Compass Field. Because limited parking was available in both a parking lot adjacent to the stadium and in a nearby parking deck, the Legion needed to understand their fans’ pregame behaviors, including which season parking passes were used, how often, where those without passes were parking and what time they arrived.
That’s where Clutch! came in. With the help of Nice Guy Valet, we became the official parking partner of the Legion FC. That meant distributing digital season parking passes and single-game parking reservations through the Clutch! app and accepting credit card and cash transactions via an integrated point-of-sale and inventory management system. As Birmingham was introduced to a new football club, we wanted to introduce a new way of looking at parking management.
After a successful first season, Legion completed over 1,100 single-game reservations, almost 700 fan parking pass transfers and had lots rated over 4 stars by 97% of fans. To tell us more about the club’s first year partnership with Clutch!, we spoke with Morgan T. Copes, Legion’s Director of Business Operations.
Q: How did you first hear about Clutch!?
A: I first heard about Clutch! through our friends over at Knight Eady. Once we learned more about their platform and capabilities it was almost a no-brainer.
Q: What encouraged you to develop a partnership with Clutch!?
A: A big part of it was Clutch! is headquartered in Birmingham AL. When we are able to, we love to work with companies in our backyard. Another major deciding factor was the ease of transferring passes electronically.
Q: How would you describe the first year using Clutch!?
A: There was a short learning curve for our fans but I think that was mostly because Clutch! was new to them as it was to us. Our fans learned very quickly that it was a simple process to use the Clutch! app for all their Legion FC parking needs.
Q: What element of Clutch! provided the most value to the Legion FC?
A: The ability to collect data on the transferred parking passes and the ease of use for our fans to transfer said passes was very helpful for our parking operations.
Q: How do you foresee the partnership evolving in the future?
A: We are excited to see how the data collection evolves as our partnership grows. We strive to get to know our fanbase better, which can be achieved through demographical data and data collection on customers who use cash.
Q: Are there any additional insights or opportunities you think you could capture through the use of Clutch!?
A: 100%. Clutch! is a great way to manage your parking around your venue. It is fan-friendly and the data collection opportunities are clutch!
Thank you to Morgan and the entire Birmingham Legion FC team for a great first season! We look forward to many exciting seasons to come. If you are interested in learning more about using Clutch! for your organization’s parking, visit our teams page!