Sezin Aksoy, AXS | Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day 2019
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 21/08/2019

Sezin Aksoy, SVP Global Data Strategy & Analytics, AXS talks with Jeff Frick at Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day 2019 from Oracle Park in San Francisco, CA.

#theCUBE #AXS #WomenInTech #SiliconANGLE @siliconangle 

https://siliconangle.com/2019/09/09/dynamic-pricing-virtuoso-sezin-aksoy-takes-sports-real-time-data-influences-sttwdd19-womenintech/

Dynamic pricing virtuoso Sezin Aksoy takes on sports with real-time data

Buy a ticket. Attend the event. Have fun. It seems a simple process. But today’s ticket agents are doing more than selling admissions to sports games or concerts. Thanks to new data technologies, customers are tracked from the minute they first visit a sales site through to when they leave the venue after the event.

This may seem scary. No one wants to think Big Brother ticket touts are watching over us. But the truth is, everyone can benefit from the data-power of big-ticket agents. And cheaper pricing is only one of the perks.

“Data is the power of the world,” said Sezin Aksoy (pictured), senior vice president of global data strategy and analytics at AXS Group LLC. “It’s going to empower people making better decisions. That’s my role.”

Aksoy spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day in San Francisco. They discussed how data is changing event sales and marketing (see the full interview with transcript here).

This week, theCUBE spotlights Sezin Aksoy in its Women in Tech feature.

A brief history of dynamic pricing
Altering pricing levels to match consumer demand is a practice that pre-dates the information era.

“My father-in-law talks about when he was doing dynamic pricing as a young kid [in the hotel industry],” Frick said, referring to desk clerks making on-the-fly pricing decisions for late-night walk-ins. But while observations and instinct have influenced fluctuating prices since humanity started trading, computing advancements have introduced data science into the equation.

“Dynamic pricing [and] revenue management started at, specifically, American Airlines [Group Inc.],” Aksoy said.

In the early 1980s, access to data from computerized reservations systems coupled with airline deregulation and increased competition from discount airlines to lead AA’s then Chief Executive Officer Robert Crandell to introduce dynamically adjusted pricing for the airline’s tickets.

Aksoy’s passion for pricing analytics also started with American Airlines. She attended Duke University, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, economics, and Italian, and was immediately hired by AA as an internet pricing analyst.

Five years later, Aksoy left the airline business to pioneer dynamic pricing in professional sports. As first director of analytics for the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA basketball team, Aksoy faced the challenge of building a business analytics team from scratch in an industry where static pricing was still the norm.

“If you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between airlines and live entertainment,” she stated. Both have fixed costs and schedules: “The flight has to go, or the game has to be played no matter how many people are there,” Aksoy explained.

Another similarity is fluctuating demand levels based on day, date or time of the flight or event. “You have to study the sort of the behavior from the consumers when they buy their tickets. What are the factors they put into play to make that decision?” Aksoy asked.

During this time, Aksoy also studied for, and was awarded, an MBA in business from Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management.

The challenge of the untrained consumer
Aksoy is currently the senior vice president of global data strategy and analytics for Los Angeles-based ticket sales platform AXS (pronounced access). Leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the bright lights of L.A. wasn’t an intentional career choice for Aksoy, who moved when her husband, a cardiologist, accepted a position with the UCLA Medical Center. But 15 years of data analysis and revenue management experience made her a prime candidate to oversee AXS’ dynamic sales game plan.

While most people understand that the travel industry operates on a fluctuating pricing model, many aren’t aware that ticket sales for events can change based on similar parameters. Aksoy encountered this problem with both the Cavaliers and AXS. Her solution? To introduce dynamic pricing gradually while educating customers on the benefits.

“The right way to think about it is, you want incentivize people to buy early,” she stated. “And you want to make sure they are the ones getting the best price, and not necessarily the people that are buying last minute.”

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