Case Study: Palace Sports & Entertainment deepens fan engagement and boosts ticket sales with Marketo

Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports & Entertainment build customers for life

Palace Sports & Entertainment (PS&E) — owner of the Detroit Pistons, The Palace of Auburn Hills, DTE Energy Music Theatre and other venues — needed a tech upgrade to compete for entertainment dollars across an 82-game basketball season and 100+ concert events. The organization was hampered by paper forms, an archaic e‑marketing platform and poor CRM integration, leaving them without granular fan insights, personalized communications or a way to nurture long purchase cycles.

PS&E deployed Marketo’s consumer engagement platform to enable personalization at scale across roughly 3.5 million tickets: tracking fan behavior, segmenting by interests, and automating nurture, renewal, RSVP and promotional campaigns that feed into the CRM. The result was stronger fan engagement and measurable business impact — year-over-year eMarketing revenue rose 132%, ticket sales increased 30% YoY, and renewal rates now exceed 90%.

Palace Sports and Entertainment

Mike Donnay

Vice President, Brand Networks