Selling the ultimate baseball fan experience
By Steve Seepersaud
The Legends Suite at Yankee Stadium offers fans one of the premier experiences in the world of sports. You can see the Yanks up close from the comfort of a cushioned chair, while sampling food made by celebrity chefs. You might even see someone famous - such as Jay-Z - sitting nearby. A Binghamton University graduate works for the team, filling these high-end stadium seats.
Rose Barre '06, MA '08 is premium sales and service consultant for the New York Yankees, a role she has held since last fall. She works with corporate clients, connecting them with Yankees season ticket packages. Selling cool seats for a winning team might not seem, on the surface, to be a tough job. However, Barre says it can be difficult to persuade clients to commit to an 81-game home schedule, spanning six months. In addition, tickets in the Legends Suite range from $550 to $1,600 per game.
"The challenge in premium seating, across the industry, is price points, and success is all about finding the right clients," Barre says. "My goal is to bring in new business, and it's always a small victory when that happens. It's fun putting people into the seats where they can enjoy themselves with friends, family and clients. It's definitely a challenge, but it's a fun challenge."
Barre came to the Yankees from the New York Islanders where she was director of group and inside sales, overseeing a team that generated more than $3 million in revenue and 80,000 group ticket sales. For a three-month period, Barre's group was the top-selling sales team in the National Hockey League. She joined the team in June 2008 as a customer service representative, was promoted three months later to group and inside sales representative, then again into the director role.
Barre, who has "a passion for sports," says her time at Binghamton University was great preparation for her career path. She was a softball player for four years, and served the Bearcats athletic department as an intern and graduate assistant. She managed the sales and marketing internship program, and helped generate sponsorship revenue for athletics. Barre recently hosted about 20 athletic department interns at the stadium for a career development session.
"At Binghamton, I was able to hone my skills and I had some great mentors there," Barre says. "I knew what my skills were, so after graduation, it was just about finding the right position within an organization."
Barre says she found out about the Yankees position through a sports industry job board, then leveraged her connections to land the job.
"My biggest career accomplishment has been the opportunity to grow my career within the brand and front office team of the New York Yankees."
