The Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association (NBA), based in Portland Oregon, today announced the launch of FanTrak; a new technology that enables the club to solicit feedback from fans during home games and then access the results immediately after each game over the web, from any computer in the world.

“FanTrak provides us with the ability to immediately know what our fans think, soliciting and tracking fan interaction and feedback,” said Blazers President Steve Patterson. “One of my priorities coming here was to find ways for our fans to have a voice and a interaction with the team on a consistent basis. We will always know what the fans are thinking and FanTrak will help us to react to those things quicker.”

FanTrak, owned by Turnkey Sports, enables any sports team or any other event or venue to intercept and survey fans in attendance at games and other events and receive results overnight. The system captures survey information from attendees on Palm Pilots. After the event, the Palm Pilots are “hot-synched” and the data instantly uploads to a robust, user-friendly reporting site. Clients access their data from anywhere in the world immediately. The FanTrak reporting site puts more control in marketers’ hands because it contains intuitive, user-friendly tools for marketers to sort, cross-tabulate and analyze any piece of data against any other piece of data, instantly.

FanTrak greatly reduces the traditional cost and turnaround time of on-site paper and pencil surveys. By bringing the data in digitally on PDA’s, the system avoids significant costs, including: the costly and time-consuming step to print surveys; the costly and time-consuming step of entering the data into a computer; the costly and time-consuming step of creating data tabulations; the costly and time-consuming step of drafting a report. And by eliminating these manual steps, the chances for error are greatly reduced, thereby making the information more accurate and more reliable.

“The Blazers recognized the power of this tool instantly. What’s it worth to be able to gather fan feedback constantly, and then have the results the day after each game? It’s worth its weight in gold. The Blazers have a rich history of success on the court and now they’re building a rich history of fan survey information. FanTrak enables them to track game-to-game, weekly, monthly and even season-to-season precisely where they stand with their fans on any given day. The Blazers realized that you can’t be truly fan-centric until you can benchmark it and measure it going forward,” said Len Perna President & CEO of Turnkey Sports.

“I’m excited about implementing FanTrak because we believe it will be an extraordinary asset to the Blazers,” said Patterson. “FanTrak gives the fans a powerful new voice and gives us a traceable history to make sure the games are enjoyable and fun for fans.”

“CRM (customer relationship management) software tracks what tickets a customer purchased from you. That’s like trying to manage your relationship with your spouse based on the monthly credit card statement. It’s clearly not enough. There’s a higher level of two-way communication needed. And then, of course, what about all the other people in your building that didn’t buy a ticket; they’re attending as guests? What do they want? What do they think? FanTrak provides a high level of detailed survey information about customers and prospective customers - instantly,” said Perna.

The Blazers have entered into a FanTrak License with Turnkey Sports, the owner of FanTrak. Turnkey Sports focuses its business on market research, executive search and new facility feasibility. Turnkey Sports currently is completing a yearlong, league wide market research study for the National Football League (NFL) and has performed market research assignments for clients across sports and entertainment. For more information, visit www.turnkeysports.com or www.fantrak.com.

Over the last 12 months Turnkey Sports worked with software developer InQuery, a leading-edge technology firm based in Buffalo, NY., to create and custom-tailor FanTrak for sports, live entertainment, family shows, concerts, arenas, stadiums, golf tournaments, fairs, festivals, theaters, etc. The InQuery \mobile data collection platform is an innovative, fully customizable market research tool, allowing corporations the ability to accurately target their customers and immediately measure on-site customer satisfaction, marketing effectiveness, brand awareness and important emerging trends. For more information, visit www.inquery.com.