Ticket-sales VP has made seamless transition from baseball to basketball

Long before he became the senior vice-president of ticket sales & services for the Dallas Mavericks, Scott Trible was the general manger of the Montgomery Biscuits Double A baseball team from 2014-18.

In that time, Trible was responsible for the group, premium and season ticket sales departments for the Biscuits, who are the Double A affiliate for the Tampa Bay Rays. But now, Trible’s allegiance is obviously to the Mavs.

“I worked in baseball for 15 years and the majority of my time was in Montgomery (from 2008-18), so it was great kind of moving up the ladder there,” Trible told Mavs.com. “I started as a sales rep and became the general manager of the team.

“As the general manager I got to really get involved with a lot of stuff in the community and work with our fans to create fun memorable experiences at the ballpark. Then I came to Texas and I’m now doing that with the Mavs.”

For Trible, the transition from baseball to basketball was rather seamless.

“It was actually really great,” he said. “I went from outside (with baseball) to indoors (with basketball). I went from 70-plus (home) games to 40, which is nice. I went from five games in a row during (baseball) homestands to two or three games a week (with basketball).

“When you get away from baseball it’s hard to kind of look back and stay involved with it as much. I’m fully focused on the Mavs now. I had my time in baseball, but I’m fully engulfed in basketball now.”

And that means, with the start of the NBA season some six short weeks away, Trible and his staff have been grinding away and selling more than their fair share of tickets.

“We’re selling out of season tickets,” he said. “Prior to the 2022-23 season, it was a big accomplishment. It was the first time we’d sold out of season tickets since the championship year in 2011.

“The entire ticket sales and service teams worked hard to get to that point, and it was great to see the fruits of our labor pay off. So, now we’re just kind of maintaining that.”

Trible joined the Mavs in 2018 – the same year they acquired superstar point guard Luka Doncic in a draft-day trade with the Atlanta Hawks. The fortunes of the Mavs have changed ever since.

“I’m from a small town called Mount Vernon, Indiana,” Trible said. “We have 7,000 people in our town. We had a GE plant, which is why we got over 7,000. It’s really a small rural community.

“I grew up having fun in the corn fields and hanging out with friends during high school. Southern Indiana is home, and I went to school at Ball State in Northern Indiana, and I’ve traveled around in my career since then.”

Since the Mavs advanced to last season’s NBA Finals, tickets have been in high demand. Especially since general manager Nico Harrison upgraded the roster this summer with the likes of guard Klay Thompson to join forces with future Hall of Fame guards Kyrie Irving and Doncic.

“Each year when we have season ticket members decide not to re-new with us, we then go to our wait list and bring people off the wait list to purchase season tickets, and then we re-sellout prior to opening night, which last year we did and we’re on track to do it again this year,” Trible said. “So as fans are continuing to ask and get more involved with the team as we make Finals runs and continue to acquire superstars like Klay Thompson, the best way to get season tickets is to get on the wait list and make sure that they’re going through the process, which admittedly is not immediate.

“But with the demand that we’ve seen in Dallas, that’s the best way we can service all of our fans.”

Trible said the wait list is fluctuating right now, because they’re actively taking people off the wait list. “But,’’ he added, “we expect to have over 2,000 people on it by the time we get to the end of the season.”

When asked if securing players of Thompson’s ilk gave the Mavs a bit of a bump in season ticket sales, Trible said: “I think the main bump comes just from the fact that we did make the NBA Finals, and in our eyes our sellout streak continues, and we are sold out of season tickets. Demand has never been higher. We always try to find that balance of making sure that tickets are accessible to our fans and making sure that we’re not becoming so outrageously priced that the casual fan can’t come to the game. But at the same time we have to understand that demand is high, so we always try to price things accordingly to balance those two things.

“But with Luka, Kyrie and Klay, if you’re building a team on 2K, you’re going to start with those three guys and have some fun with it. It’s going to be a really exciting season for our fans, and our members have a lot of great benefits and experiences coming ahead of them off the court and on. So, for us it’s really just about making sure that – we can’t control what’s on the court, but we can control the experience they have when they enter our building, and that’s the biggest challenge for us.”

The Mavs offer full season ticket plans – it includes the preseason games – and also offer two different 21-game plans, and four separate 10-game mini-plans. And this past weekend the Mavs launched their single-game ticket sales.

“Part of that 10-game plan, we have a plan that’s specifically designed just for weekend games,” Trible said, “because we know we have fans that are an hour-and-a-half or two hours away that still want to get the benefits of being a Club Maverick member.

“Obviously we’re limited by the seats in the building, but we also try to make sure that we still do have tickets available for single-game purchase or groups that come out or things like that. But typically, we have between 13,000 or 15,000 seats filled every night with season ticket holders.”

American Airlines Center holds 19,200, and the Mavs have been known to seat over 20,000 in their home arena. Meanwhile, Trible is just delighted he made the switch from baseball to basketball in time for what has the makings to be one of the greatest periods in Mavericks’ history.

“I grew up in Indiana, so basketball was always my first love,” Trible said. “I still love the game of baseball. But when you watch Luka every day it’s hard not to get spoiled and fall in love with the game.”

X: @DwainPrice