INDIANAPOLIS – Julie Graue has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer and John Weiss has been elevated to Digital Marketing Director with the Indiana Fever.
Graue has been with the Fever through 15 seasons, hired originally as a ticket sales manager in 2001. She has contributed significantly to the growth of the franchise including responsibility as director of Fever sales (2004), director of business operations (2005) and VP of business operations (since 2007). She has led sales and marketing efforts on a daily basis, leading to consistent revenue growth over the past five seasons. Indiana ranked fifth in the WNBA in attendance in 2016. The Fever’s single-game revenue was the largest since the club’s first season in 2000; single-game attendance was the largest since 2001.
Vital in driving revenue growth has been the company’s transition to sales over an array of digital assets.
Weiss has spearheaded the club’s digital marketing efforts since 2013 and guided recent sales growth via email marketing, database acquisition, social media and the development, design and content management of Fever-related websites. As of late summer, the Fever ranked near the top of the WNBA in social engagement metrics and online single-game sales. The Fever’s digital database, comprised of email subscribers and social media followers, grew by 20 percent in 2016. Though final statistics are unavailable, Indiana has been well above the league average for monthly video views on desktop and mobile, a key metric for sustaining fan engagement.