CASE STUDY
Frisco RoughRiders Use DIGIDECK To Pitch Like The Pros In A Competitive Market
DIGIDECK is helping the Double-A Frisco RoughRiders keep pace in a competitive market, while enabling them to sell and collaborate in a virtual environment
The Challenge
The Frisco RoughRiders aren’t exactly a typical minor-league operation.
Director of Partner Services David Kosydar says that while the RoughRiders have a good relationship with the other teams in the marketplace, they’re ultimately competing for the same sponsorship dollars in many situations.
“We’re a minor-league team in a major-league market,” he said.
Among the most popular franchises in Minor League Baseball, the RoughRiders play at Dr Pepper Ballpark, an award-winning venue famous for the 3,000-square-foot lazy river spanning the right-field wall.
The Double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers, the RoughRiders compete in a massive sports and entertainment market: Dallas-Fort Worth, also home to NFL, NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLS franchises, as well as everything from horse racing and rodeo to Texas Motor Speedway.
Like many organizations, Kosydar and his team were creating presentations using professional design software, while storing essential images and videos in an online filing system. Meanwhile, each department seemingly had its own way of doing things.
“For stuff that’s really elaborate, there was professional design software like (Adobe) InDesign and Photoshop, but they’re also very labor intensive,” Kosydar said. “Other departments in some cases didn’t have much more than a Word document that got converted to a PDF.”
President and General Manager Andy Milovich, brought on in May, 2018 after spending more than five years with the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, had the answer: DIGIDECK.
“When he came in he was just a huge advocate, a big fan, just said it was very user-friendly, but at the same time very effective,” Kosydar said. “It definitely lived up to the billing.”
“DIGIDECK has opened up a whole new world for us and many other departments. Everything from year-end reports to pre-season planning guides can now be housed in DIGIDECK. It has increased our organizational efficiency dramatically."
—David Kosydar, Director of Partner Services, Frisco RoughRiders
The Solution
Milovich and the RoughRiders decided to bring DIGIDECK on board a few months before the 2019 season began.
While such a platform would typically be implemented in the offseason, the RoughRiders found that Sportsdigita’s onboarding process made an in-season transition not only possible, but seamless… By summer, they were off and running.
“By midseason, not only did we have our Master Deck built out, but we were already putting presentations together and sending them out for the second half of our 2019 season,” Kosydar said.
With their presentations now fully online and their images and video assets housed in DIGIDECK’s content library, the RoughRiders’ various departments were able to bring the full ballpark experience to partners and prospects. “As we’ve been building presentations, the imagery that we need has been much more readily available to help us tell those stories even quicker,” Kosydar said.
The Results
The RoughRiders are cranking out presentations faster than ever. Kosydar, who once spent hours manually superimposing a prospect’s branding onto the RoughRiders’ existing signage, is a big fan of DIGIDECK’s predefined hot spots.
“I have done hours of Photoshop mockups. It’s a lot of intensive work,” he said. “They’re worth it when it helps close a deal, but the time-saving nature of the hotspots, I can’t put a value on it.”
Incorporating video elements that showcase Dr Pepper Ballpark’s unique amenities, once a struggle involving flash drives or Dropbox links, has become a simple affair.
“I think it really helps set the tone for the fun of Minor League Baseball and the fun of what we do in Frisco,” he said.
With DIGIDECK now a staple within the organization, Kosydar says the RoughRiders are finding new ways to leverage the platform.
“DIGIDECK has opened up a whole new world for us and many other departments,” he said. “Everything from year-end reports to pre-season planning guides can now be housed in DIGIDECK. It has increased our organizational efficiency dramatically.”
The RoughRiders are finding DIGIDECK’s cloud-based nature essential with the sports world in a state of lockdown due to the impact of COVID-19. But for Kosydar, who has a young child at home, DIGIDECK was a game-changer long before the current crisis began.
“Sometimes 8-5 just doesn’t cut it, so I would try to bring work home so that I could spend time with my child, but also be able to knock out some work without having to stay in the office,” he said. “I’ve become quite accustomed to logging into DIGIDECK in my living room or in my bedroom. I can log in, knock out the work I need to without too much of a sweat, and get back to being at home.”
In DIGIDECK, the RoughRiders are selling more, collaborating more effectively and keeping pace in a jam-packed market.
“It adds that touch of professionalism that can help us fight in a higher weight class,” Kosydar said.
Get Started
You’re ready to get in touch. Let’s see what we can build together.
