Dear Tiger Nation,

Since we had our off week for football this last week, I took a few minutes to look back and reflect on our external operations and how they have changed since I arrived in this, the second of our three State of the Department letters. Don't forget you can submit questions to me for our fourth letter on Sept. 24. You can send me questions via Twitter (@TowsonTigerAD) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/TowsonTigers).

External Operations
The external operations of our department are critical as they encompass marketing, communications, corporate sales and ticketing. Without these areas, we would not be able to communicate and inform our fans about our teams and upcoming events nor would we be able to generate the dollars needed to run this department and move it ahead as we continue to grow.

Athletics Media Relations/Communications
As one of the fastest-changing areas in sports over the last 10 years, media relations has seen the media guide grow and expand and then disappear, and the website go from a once-a-day update to being updated non-stop throughout the day, even in the off-season.
As newspapers and local sports coverage in the evening news continue to shrink, it is vital for any athletics department to "tell its own story."

When I arrived at Towson, we had a media relations department of four full-time SIDs and a marketing coordinator position who also provided video updates for TowsonTigers.com.
To acknowledge this area's importance, we augmented the group with an intern position in media relations and created an area called New Media in which we hired a director and student staff of four.

Our media relations staff has almost completely changed its focus over the last two years from helping the local media and trying to place stories to becoming the source of Towson Athletics information through feature stories on student-athletes and coaches, game recaps and Q&As. Now when you log on to TowsonTigers.com whether it is 7 a.m., 11 a.m. or 4 p.m. there is always a bevy of new content for you to consume.

Add in our increased activity in social media on Twitter and Facebook, including team and coach accounts and our team of bloggers which we added last year, you can get a true behind-the-scene look at the Tigers.

How important has the website become to Towson Athletics?

Since 2009-10, TowsonTigers.com has seen traffic increases in page views to 7.1 million (up over 500 percent) and unique visitors to 1.6 million (up over 200 percent). These substantial improvements will only continue as the department looks to expand into Web-TV through its video portal TowsonSportsNetwork.tv.

The expansion in the realm of TV has already begun. As I mentioned above, we added a position as the Director of New Media in 2011, led by Damon Lewis, a former television reporter and college sports blogger. Since creating the new area, we have increased our video coverage by almost 10-fold with daily interviews, live game broadcasts (audio and video), game highlights, and features with student-athletes.

This jump in new media is allowing us to tell our story while also providing a number of Towson students from the Electronic Media and Film department on campus invaluable hands-on experience.

Besides the work on the web, you have seen our coverage also grow with the 2 two-part TV shows on Comcast that have given you inside looks at both the men's basketball team's first season under Pat Skerry and this year's football camp, leading up to the season opener. This is the type of unbridled access you can expect from our creative team.
After having two different radio stations (WVIE and WNST) in the last two years, this season we have decided to take our radio broadcasts in a new direction ... digital. The move was made to allow us more control over coverage and added exposure for all of our sports through expanded pregame and postgame coverage. In total, over 200 Towson sporting events will be broadcast over TowsonTigers.com and our iPhone, iPad and Android mobile apps this year, meaning it is easier than ever to take the Tigers with you anywhere in the world.

As the world of tablets, smartphones and smart TVs continues to expand, we plan on staying on top of the technology. In the near future, we are planning the launch of our own web-based TV network that will allow you to have NBC Sports Channel-like coverage of our teams around the clock through our portal TowsonSportsNetwork.tv. Imagine sitting at home in front of your smart TV, typing in TowsonSportsNetwork.tv and having the ability to watch an HD broadcast from Johnny Unitas® Stadium or the new Tiger Arena.

Fan Development/Marketing
What is fan development you say? Well, it is marketing and ticketing combined, but my beliefs make it more than just advertising and making a sale. My core belief is that we are building a relationship with every Towson fan that is built on communications, customer service and trust. In today's world of business and in this economic situation, you, our customers, really have to believe in the product, and we need to provide you with a first-class meaningful experience.

To do this, we refocused this area to become a first-class sales force that puts the needs of its customers first and reached outside the normal game promotions, ads in the papers, spots on radio and TV commercials. Instead, we need to talk to you through more community outreach. Last year the sales team spent the year reaching more youth groups and community groups than ever before and getting them out to our games. This summer we made more than 30 stops in area communities at festivals, carnivals and fairs. It will be this kind of involvement in the Greater Baltimore area that will help us continue to grow Tiger Nation.

The first step we made after some reorganization in my first few months in the department was to hire Mike Hollis, a Towson graduate, as our Assistant AD for Fan Development. Mike came to us from Madison Square Garden where he was one of the arena's top salesmen, covering the Knicks, Rangers and Liberty. He has brought with him a world of experience as he has put together a top-notch staff. Instead of sitting back and taking orders, this group is now actively making calls into the community and reaching out to groups like youth leagues, churches and Boy & Girl Scouts to offer up one-of-a-kind experiences at our games.

After getting the staff in place, we got down to one of my favorite parts of the job ... creating a memorable game experience. New pregame and in-game music, incredible scene-setting videos (including one by our friends at the WWE), our incredible marching band, a new PA voice and YOU, all combined to create a new atmosphere that made Johnny Unitas® Stadium into one of the most raucous venues in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) and all of FCS football.

Add in the success on the field and you can see how it all translates into ticket sales for the Tigers. In 2011 we set school records for season football attendance (51,449), single-game attendance (11,193 - first sellout in program history vs. Lehigh in NCAA Playoffs), season student attendance (17,597) and single-game student attendance (4,036). Even after setting a school record for season ticket holders in 2011, season tickets for Towson football have increased by more than 133 percent for the 2012 season to over 1,000 season ticket holders.

Just imagine the show we will be able to put on when we move into Tiger Arena with a new center-hung scoreboard, a 360-degree ad ribbon board, state-of-the-art sound and digital scorer's table.

Regardless of who you speak to in our fan development office, know it is our first priority to give you first-class attention and a first-class experience at our game.

Corporate Sales
In an athletics department, there are three ways you can directly increase your department's resources. No. 1 is through ticket sales. No. 2 is through fund-raising (which I will discuss next week). And No. 3 is corporate sales.

When I took the job, Towson was handling its corporate sales in-house with a two-person staff. Due to all of the overhead including production and salaries, the area was not set up to succeed in a way that would allow the department to grow as quickly as we needed it. To change the outlook, we decided to move corporate sales outside the department, giving up the overhead costs and reallocating the resources to the development side for additional fund-raising positions. After a review of several companies in the athletic corporate sales field, we decided to form a partnership with CBS Collegiate Sports Properties, which also handles universities like Maryland, LSU, Virginia and Utah.

After hiring a staff in spring 2011 and naming the group Towson Sports Properties, the sales team has been scouring the Mid-Atlantic looking for new partners.

In just their first year on the job, the sales team has four TEAM TOWSON partners who have invested deeply into what we are creating. They are MedStar Union Memorial Hospital, Aaron's, PNC Bank and Under Armour.

These partners plus the many others that have come on board led to a net profit in corporate sales for the first time in three years. As more and more local, regional and national companies become partners, we will be able use these resources to improve Towson Athletics overall.

I hope you are enjoying getting to know more and more about Towson Athletics and how our department has changed over the last couple years. Next week we will look at development/fund raising, facilities and the future of Towson ... Tiger Arena.

With Black and Gold Pride,

Mike Waddell
Director of Athletics