Creating Magic in the Minors – Cameron Coughlan, Salt Lake Bees
Description
In episode 430 of Sports Geek, Cameron Coughlan brings a unique perspective from professional baseball to Disney's world-class customer service to NBA operations.
In this conversation, you'll discover:
- How Disney's “it costs us nothing” philosophy transforms customer relationships and lifetime value thinking
- Why the best salespeople are service people and how to bridge sales and service teams effectively
- Practical strategies for creating “majors in the minors” experiences that elevate fan expectations
- Key insights from SEAT on smart venue management and simple innovations that drive results
- How to empower front-line staff to solve problems immediately without approval chains
- Cross-industry lessons from NBA operations applied to Triple-A baseball venue management
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Interview Transcript
This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)
Sean Callanan (00:01 .324)
Very happy to welcome Cameron Coughlin. He is the Senior Vice President of Ticketing and Guest Experience at the Salt Lake Bees. Cameron, welcome to the podcast.
Cameron Coughlan (00:11 .308)
Yeah, thanks, Sean. I appreciate you having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Sean Callanan (00:13 .838)
Not a problem at all. were lucky enough to meet at CD Nashville. so thank you very much for taking the time to book this. I always start my podcast asking people how they started their sports business journey. What about yourself? How did you get into sports in the first place?
Cameron Coughlan (00:31 .458)
Yeah, I mean like everybody growing up in sports and just loving the experience of sports. You know, I was lucky enough to continue to play sports after high school and play college baseball at Brigham Young University here in Utah. From California originally, so left California to come to Utah and played baseball and then I got drafted to play baseball professionally with the Texas Rangers. So I played six years with the Rangers in Oakland A's in the minor league system and.
got to play with a bunch of guys that made it to the majors. Unfortunately, I didn't have the secret sauce to make it to the bigs, but had some really great experiences and got to play at the highest levels, which was awesome. So sports has always been part of my life and part of something I'm passionate about. But it's actually interesting that.
Sean Callanan (01:22 .862)
And so while you were playing, obviously, the grind to the majors and trying to make the big show is the goal. Were you also looking at what might be next, what might be happening after, or was it sort of while you're in that phase, it was a single focus?
Cameron Coughlan (01:41 .666)
Yeah, it was a single focus for sure until it wasn't because of basically the game telling me in different ways that, this probably isn't going to work out like you thought it would. And so, you know, once I,
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