Adult Learn-to-Play Analysis

UC Irvine · MSBA Capstone

01/2026-06/2026

Project Context: As part of my UCI MSBA Capstone, I was placed with the Anaheim Ducks and The Rinks, a network of Southern California ice rinks operated by H&S Ventures / OCSE, to assess the health of the Adult Learn-to-Play (LTP) program, the Rinks' beginner hockey program for adults with no prior experience, and to build the analytical infrastructure the organization needs to measure the success of future retention and marketing initiatives. I served as the analytics lead, responsible for connecting disconnected registration and ticketing data across two enterprise systems and delivering four maintainable Power BI dashboards to the Ducks business intelligence team.

Business Question: Does Adult Learn-to-Play participation drive sustained Rinks program retention and Anaheim Ducks ticket purchasing behavior, and where are the highest-leverage opportunities to deepen participant engagement?

Open Interactive Dashboard →
High Priority
Close the LTP-to-Hockey League Gap
45.7% of LTP participants never return, well above the 34% baseline for all Rinks customers, with the steepest drop-off after their second visit. A structured off-ramp at program completion, paired with a short survey on why people leave, timed right around that second-visit window, is the highest-leverage fix.
Medium Priority
Target Female Participants
Female converts average more tickets per person than male converts, even though men drive more total volume. Outreach built specifically around female LTP participants would align with the client's existing strategic priority and compound an already-strong conversion profile.
Medium Priority
Align Campaigns to Seasonal Peaks
LTP registration peaks in May and September; Ducks ticket purchases peak in January and May. Timing retention and marketing pushes to these windows, instead of spreading effort evenly across the year, gives every campaign a stronger starting position.
Lower Priority
Re-Engage Lapsed Buyers
14.2% of matched participants bought Ducks tickets before but have since stopped. It's a small group, but one that has already shown interest in both hockey and live games, making it a high-return, low-cost re-engagement target.
Methodology
  • Data extraction and matching: pulled registration data from DASH and ticketing data from Archtics using SQL in SSMS, then matched 685 of 1,285 LTP participants to a Ducks account by email to connect the two systems.
  • Data prep and modeling: standardized inconsistent program names into four clean categories and built DAX measures for fiscal-year, seasonal, and demographic views.
  • Dashboard delivery: built eight Power BI dashboards designed for the Ducks BI team to maintain and refresh independently after handoff.
Takeaways
  • The real deliverable was the connection between two systems that had never talked to each other, not the charts built on top of it.
  • The most actionable insight came from sequence, not the headline retention rate: attrition peaks after the second post-LTP touchpoint, not the first.
  • Good analysis often means reading two numbers together. Ticket volume and per-person rate told opposite stories by gender, and only one supported the client's actual goal.