Today on Recur Now, an NBA team is hopping on the subscription bandwagon. We break down the Cleveland Cavalier's new subscription model with one of our own pricing experts and sports fanatic. Plus, Zuora's Subscription Economy Index is out and the findings are astronomical. 

Your top subscription news

Subscription Cavaliers

The Cleveland Cavaliers introduce a subscription model for fans: A Cavs Monthly Pass.

With the Cavaliers facing another rebuilding season, it looks like the team’s considering new ways to entice sports-goers, now offering a ticket subscription plan with unlimited games for a monthly price.

“The idea behind it was to get creative and provide fans another multi-game option to get in the doors for each Cavs home game this season and to see the new Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and everything it has to offer," says Eric Clouse, Cleveland Cavaliers Senior Vice President of Sales and Service.

And I sat down with John Mangini—ProfitWell subscription, pricing, and sports fanatic.

"I think they should go not just subscription, they should go pure freemium. Let people in to the upper noise bleeds for free... Ultimately get them in the seats and start getting that engagement."

Zuora's SEI drop

Zuora, the friends we know and love as the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider, released the latest edition of its biannual Subscription Economy Index, also known as the SEI. 

And the findings were astronomical. 

For the first time since its inception in 2012, the SEI analyzed the impact of subscription businesses by sector, comparing subscription businesses in SaaS, IoT, manufacturing, publishing, media, telecommunications and business services to their respective S&P 500 Industry benchmarks.

Over the past 7.5 years, the Subscription Economy (a term coined by Zuora) has absolutely boomed. Growing more than 350%, as consumers increasingly demand access to convenient, digital services over the ownership of physical products.

It’s not to say we’re surprised here in any regard, but seeing the numbers gets our subscription nerd selves pretty amped. 

Some noteworthy findings from the report: 

• Business services and manufacturing industries experienced the lowest churn rates across all sectors, with 16.2% and 20.4% churn rates, respectively.
• However, media, and publishing industries saw the highest amount of churn. Dr. Gold, Chief Data Scientist at Zuora, adds: “Lower churn could be attributed to the ‘sticky’ nature of B2B subscriptions, which serve mission-critical functions and tend to be deeply embedded within a business' operations.”

• Launching and monetizing new services drive greater individual account growth.
• From Dr. Gold, “Add-on and up-sell opportunities inherent in digital services and connected hardware support high ARPA growth rates.” 

• Incorporating usage-based pricing facilitates lower churn and higher overall subscription growth.
• “Companies in industries like publishing that do not adopt usage billing generally have higher churn than companies like those in SaaS or business services that do. This suggests that the balance and flexibility of usage-based pricing plays a useful role in customer engagement and retention,” Gold highlights.

Nerd rant over. But you have to admit, pretty telling stats. The data doesn’t lie, subscription is here to stay. 

Name Your Price

On today's episode of Name Your Price, our team answers, "How much would I have to pay you to give up all social media?" The prompt stimulated interesting conversation about the value of social media. While some team members say they would forfeit for almost nothing, others argue the information found on social media is priceless.  

And that’s a wrap for your October 24 subscription news. Recruit your friends into the subscription know by sending them to profitwell.com/recur/recurnow to sign up for episodes on the daily.

If you have news to share, hit me up at abby@recurnow.com and we'll collaborate.