Whether transporting professional or college athletic teams or their fans, motorcoach operators have found the work can be demanding, due to dealing with contracts that prohibit use of GPS units, extensive driver coordination, financial negotiation and long workdays. But, it can be rewarding as well, for the constant work it brings and free media, television in particular. Having well-trained, personality-plus drivers and the ability to coordinate events around the big game make the jobs easier to maintain and more fulfilling.

Being on your game

Having a corner on the sports team market for several years, John Hartley, president/CEO, Gold Coast Tours, knows the benefits and challenges of the business well. The operator, based in Brea, Calif., provides service for all 30 major league baseball teams, including the Los Angeles Dodgers, 30 National Basketball Association teams and 27 National Hockey League teams. With 95 percent of the market, athletic team transportation comprises a total of 20 percent of the operator's business, or at least $3 million annually.

Gold Coast transports players from the airport to their hotel; to the practice field and the games, back to the hotel and to their charter planes.

Serving professional sports teams requires new, top-of-the-line equipment; and professional drivers who are well-trained in handling sports teams, extremely knowledgeable of the routes, entrances and exits of all the venues and charter terminals, and which route has the least amount of traffic.

Drivers ideal for the job are also patient. Since 9/11, all buses and drivers are subjected to a precautionary search and must be screened. The buses are checked before the players board at the airports and venues.

"They use mirrors and get underneath and inside the buses, to make sure there aren't suspicious packages or tracking devices," Hartley says.

For sports team jobs, Gold Coast puts its drivers through a rigorous 30-day training process. Drivers start by learning the routes for different teams, and then go on ride-alongs.

"We really can't take the chance of sending a new driver out and having them get lost, or going to the wrong gate," Hartley says. "There are so many different private charter terminals. At Los Angeles International Airport [alone] there are three or four."

The buses pick up players right at plane side. The pro and big college teams are met by the airport police buses. The coaches are inspected before being allowed on the tarmac and drive right out to the wing of the plane. The players step off the air stairs right onto the bus, always with an escort.

"Going to the hotel, you have to know which entrance they want the [players] to use," Hartley says. "If it's a really big deal, they'll bring them to a private entrance so that the public can't get to them for autographs."

A driver must be very familiar with the cities that they're traveling to. In Gold Coast's case, the coverage area ranges from San Diego to Santa Barbara, a distance of more than 200 miles. Local sports arenas include the Staples Center, Nokia Theatre, Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Honda Center and San Diego's PETCO Park, to name a few.

"You can't get lost. You can't use a GPS because the team doesn't want to hear [the noise]," Hartley says. "If you get lost with a pro sports team, first off, you're going to lose the business right away. Second, you're going to be on ESPN, [as] the wayward bus...In my 37 years, obviously, one of my drivers has made a wrong turn."

Hartley notes that anything out of the ordinary that happens gets sensationalized by sports talk channels.

"If you do anything wrong, it's very high profile," he adds. "We never hear the end of it, if a driver takes a freeway and gets stuck in traffic, even if it was the right way yesterday."

Additionally, most teams have a one-page rider with stipulations, including guarantees that drivers will know the routes, won't ask for autographs and will refrain from using cell phones.

"It's very regimented," Hartley says. "Most of the teams request certain drivers. They know them. We've been doing it so long, they have [our drivers'] cell phone numbers."

Financial challenges

Potential monetary obstacles for operators new to this type of work include leveraging and competing against substantially low bids.

Some small market teams have started leveraging carriers to take sponsorships. For example, the L.A. Galaxy soccer team, according to Hartley, doesn't have the budget for advertising that a team like the Dodgers has.

"They're trying to survive in a tough economic world, so they're saying, 'You want to be our bus company, we want you to buy a suite program for four season tickets,'" Hartley explains. "They may be doing $20,000 in transportation in the course of a season and they want you to spend $7,000 on a marketing ad, season box or seats."

Does that type of arrangement cancel out the monetary benefit of the business? According to Hartley, it can.

"Their thinking is that you get the benefit of the advertising promotion with that sponsorship for the business, but it usually doesn't work that way," he explains. "My advertising with the L.A. Galaxy would net me nothing; it would just be an expense against the cost."                                       

However, depending on the operator, that might work in their favor. "Sometimes buying a sponsorship can get you in the door, and then get you connected to where you might be able to take the next step," he adds.

Leveraging also can be a challenge, when dealing with big corporations, such as sports and entertainment company AEG (Anshutz Co.) Entertainment Group — owner of the Nokia Theatre and the Staples Center — that own teams.

"It's changing a little, but AEG leverages every way they can for everything," Hartley says. Specifically, with sports jobs, Gold Coast typically avoids wrapping buses, because the teams don't use them enough to warrant the investment.

"You can't send a [wrapped] Dodger bus to the Anaheim Angels," Hartley says. "If somebody wraps a bus to make it their own, then they've got to pay for it every day. That's not very cost effective."

In addition, college teams, due to recent budget crunches at both state schools and private universities, such as University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and California State Polytechnic University are turning to larger operators. "They can't just choose who they want. They take the best bids. It's very competitive," Hartley says. "They're going to underbid and make sure that they're getting the best deal."

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Gold Coast Tours often benefits from the free publicity that sports contracts provide, especially when it sends buses to the Rose Bowl.

Gold Coast Tours often benefits from the free publicity that sports contracts provide, especially when it sends buses to the Rose Bowl.

Free publicity

One key benefit to athletic team business, Hartley says, is that sports team contracts lead to other business. "We do the Rose Bowl [teams] every year," he explains. "The Tournament of Roses will refer us. We get a lot a lot of calls from that."

Gold Coast also benefits from major league baseball teams visiting from out-of-state. They often get asked who they use for buses in Southern California, and refer them to Gold Coast.

"When the hotels see us bringing the Chicago Cubs, they think that's great, so when they need a bus, they call us," Hartley says.

Additionally, because the games are high-profile, the carrier gets a lot of free media, primarily TV coverage. "[UCLA] football, and [University of California Santa Cruz] baseball are big-time programs, with a lot of media and hype, so you have to have your best suit on, put your best foot forward."

Are these jobs popular with drivers? Yes and no, Hartley says. "They're not big tippers, but it's steady work and you get to hang out with A-Rod or the [New York Yankees]. They like being a part of the hubbub."

Creating an experience

El Camino Trailways, based in South San Francisco, provides charter services to private and corporate groups attending sports games. The operator also has transported a number of professional sports teams, such as the San Jose Sharks, the San Jose Giants and the San Francisco Giants, but its "49ers Experience" is the largest program the carrier has done to date, Kumar Shah, CEO, says.

The carrier had a very successful venture into the sports fans market two years ago, after putting together a structured program to market directly to the fans. El Camino planned a service to bring fans to public events, in particular to sports arenas for football, baseball games and golf events.

As one of the event sponsors of the 2009 Presidents Cup, a major international golf event held in San Francisco once every four years, the operator provided service from 10 different San Francisco Bay Area cities to Harding Park, where the event was held. Providing service to this event led to a partnership with the San Francisco 49ers, another event sponsor.

"They saw the service we provided, wanted to do something similar for the 49ers fans and approached us," Shah explains.

The operator set up a consumer website portal through Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet portal and marketing company Accelar, for fans to book  packages. El Camino offered, in addition to tickets and transportation, a complete experience, Shah says.

"For the golf event, we had created a [group] for fans who were heading out from their local community, traveling together and making that whole experience a lot more fun, as opposed to getting in [their] cars and spending an hour and a half each way stuck in traffic," he adds. "We felt that creating more of a community benefit experience [was] more fun."

For the 2009 season El Camino offered fans a package including the 49ers game day tickets, round trip transportation from multiple cities all across the Bay Area; the 49ers Tailgate Party, a special event organized by the 49ers; and a 49ers players and Gold Rush Cheerleaders meet and greet for the fans.

El Camino launched its pilot project in 2009, offering that package to five Bay Area cities. It was very successful, Shah recalls, so at the end of the season, the 49ers asked El Camino to formalize and expand the program.

The carrier then provided the package out of 10 cities and entered into a four-year agreement with the 49ers for the 2010 season. Soon after, it further expanded the coverage to 20 Bay Area cities and added a "Game Day Express" for fans who wanted to get to the game one hour before it started.

El Camino ran the service for nine home games for the 49ers last year and operated more than 140 coaches.

Three elements of the program made it successful, Shah says: its Internet site, 49ersexperience.com, where fans can choose from four different game-day packages; — "Ultimate," "Supreme," "Premium" and "Value" - managing the program and transportation logistics; and driver training.

The 49ers Ultimate, Supreme and Express Experience packages include round-trip transportation, a goodie bag with a game-day magazine and other accessories from event sponsors.

On some of the routes the carrier provided two different services - Game Day Express and the "Tailgate Express," so there were days when it had as many as 30 coaches from across the Bay Area converging on Candlestick Park.

"The logistics of managing all that was challenging," Shah recalls. To handle the influx, El Camino reached out to other coach companies across the Bay Area that had a presence in the cities it was serving. The operator recruited more than a dozen coach operators to work with them on the program, including Coach USA and All West Coachlines, a division of Coach America.

Since the 49ers Experience is about giving the fans a complete experience, not just about providing transportation from point A to point B, El Camino has set up an elaborate training program for its drivers and for partnering companies. The carrier calls drivers "motorcoach operators" to make a distinction between what a motorcoach operator and a transit or school bus driver does, Shah says.

"There's a huge difference [in] the level of service we provide to our customers. We put together quite a bit of material to provide to our partners, so they had a better understanding of how we wanted to run the program and our expectations [for] delivering that experience to the fans."

For example, every driver is expected to engage the fans in the experience by greeting them as they arrive at El Camino's kiosk at the pick-up location and give them a goodie bag, which includes a game day magazine and promotional materials from event sponsors, including Golfsmith, a food and beverage coupon from the 49ers, and a special DVD provided by the team to get fans into the game day mindset.

Once they got to Candlestick, El Camino had its own Will Call tent set up for fans who bought a package to meet up and to assist them during the game or for their return trip.

Assisting El Camino was sister company Accelar. Accelar was responsible for the consumer interfacing activities, managing the website, marketing to the 49ers fans, developing the online advertising program for Golfsmith and other partners, and taking care of all the incoming calls from the fans.

"They have the contract with the 49ers to provide the portal site 49ersexperience.com," he says. "We provide the direct link to the 49ers website so the fans can go seamlessly from the 49ers website to 49ersexperience.com and buy the packages."

The carrier had its operations staff managing the game day logistics, which entailed coordinating motorcoaches from the 20 Bay Area cities and managing the Game Day Express on a dedicated basis for every game day. "It would end up being a long day," Shah recalls. "We would start the service three to four hours before the game, and then at the end of the game, it would take a couple hours to bring all the fans back to their locations."

In addition, El Camino set up customer service staff to manage fan interactions.

The logistics and the management of the operation was handled by a team that had to be in touch with all the operators to let them know ahead of time how many coaches and what type and capacity would be needed. "It was a complex logistics operation, but we had it down to where we could have the online booking be open up to about six hours before the game," Shah recalls. "We were able to let our partners know exactly what the passenger count was and how many coaches we were going to need at that location."

The carrier made a commitment to the fans that each coach would make no more than one stop along the way. "We wanted to make sure we were not operating this like a transit bus, where you're making 10 stops before you even get to the game," Shah says. In some cases if a coach was full, El Camino ran an express service directly to Candlestick.

Sharing opportunity

Transporting sports teams and fans comprises four to 14 percent of the carrier's business, and the company expects that percentage in that segment to grow by about 30 to 50 percent per year.

Shah believes there are bigger opportunities to create similar packaging where transportation is part of the experience.

"This is an opportunity presented to the industry as a result of the Charter Rule," he says. "[We can] step in where other transit agencies used to [be] and provide a superior level of service."

"When I looked at how many people showed up at these football games — more than 60,000 — even with the success we had and some of the other companies providing charter service to other people heading to the games, our market share was less than five percent," he adds. The industry's focus, Shah believes, should be figuring out how to grow the market share from less than five percent to as much as 30 percent. "If we do a good job of providing a fun experience, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to up our market share," he says. "What I'm seeing is motorcoach operators competing with each other, instead of saying, 'How do we grow the market for all of us?' If we can take that approach, we can capture a much larger piece of the pie."

 

About the author
Nicole Schlosser

Nicole Schlosser

Former Executive Editor

Nicole was an editor and writer for School Bus Fleet. She previously worked as an editor and writer for Metro Magazine, School Bus Fleet's sister publication.

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