The Ottawa Senators and IBM announced a long-term partnership to apply behaviour-based, predictive analytics technologies to help the Senators better understand their fans.

Starting in the 2015-2016 NHL season, IBM and the Senators will use data to help the Senators organization, including the marketing and ticketing teams, personalize communications. The Senators will work with Ottawa-based IBM Fan Insight, a solution that helps business professionals in the sports world gain actionable insights.

“The advent of smartphones and other technologies has urged sports organizations like the Senators to consider new ways to engage their fans online and across multiple devices in order to maintain a ‘captive audience’,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager of analytics solutions at IBM. “With access to more data about fans than ever before, the Senators recognize that these insights can be an incredible resource for understanding their fans as individuals, and engage with them where, when and how they want to be reached while increasing their own operational efficiency.”

The partnership will focus on five key areas to help individualize the Senators fan experience: fan insight and clustering, which will identify fan attitudes and psychographic characteristics; visual analysis of fan experience effectiveness; lead scoring to drive offers for renewals and upsells; ROI tracking on key initiatives; and data warehouse strategies, aggregating all sports and entertainment data sources into a cloud-based destination.

“We have an incredibly dedicated fan base that supports our team and players at every turn. We want to make sure we don’t just thank them for their support, but ensure their experience is second to none,” said Peter O’Leary, chief marketing officer and vice-president of ticketing with the Senators. “This agreement will enable us to gather new insights on our fans that will allow us to be more efficient in our operations and provide a more personal and enhanced experience for all of our guests.”

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