Chief Operating Officer
Philadelphia Flyers
Shawn Tilger was named Chief Operating Officer of Business Operations on February 6, 2014. He is entering his 13th season overseeing all facets of the Flyers’ business operations, including marketing, broadcasting, communications, finance, budgeting, community relations, fan development, ticket sales, game presentation, customer service, digital media, publicity, and merchandising functions. His responsibilities include generating new revenue streams and leveraging partnerships for the Flyers and their parent company, Comcast Spectacor. He also serves as an alternate governor of the Flyers on the National Hockey League’s Board of Governors.
During Tilger’s tenure, the Flyers have enjoyed tremendous growth on the business side of the organization and have been consistently ranked among the NHL’s leaders in sales, marketing, public relations and community efforts. The team has set numerous franchise attendance records several times over, including a new single-season attendance record (1,020,699 – regular season plus playoffs) in 2009-10. The club sold out 175 consecutive games from November 18, 2010 through January 31, 2015, and set new franchise records for average attendance in each of the four consecutive seasons from 2010-11 through 2013-14.
The Flyers have also embarked on many new customer-oriented initiatives, including stored value ticketing, a secondary ticket marketplace, unique ways to gather feedback from season ticket holders, and other popular features. The team’s community outreach programs, including the Flyers School Assembly Program and Hooked on Hockey clinics, have reached hundreds of thousands of children. The public relations department has been a two-time winner of the Professional Hockey Writer’s Association’s Dick Dillman Award as the top staff in the Eastern Conference (2014-15 and 2011-12) and has been a finalist for the award on seven other occasions. The club has also created a digital media department to oversee mobile app development and its use of social networking, which comes as the Flyers surpassed one million social media followers during the 2012-13 season and saw a 30% increase in fans joining the team’s email marketing database.
Tilger was a 2010 recipient of the Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal Forty under 40 Award, given each year to 40 of the top sports executives under the age of 40. The publication also previously recognized him as one of its “Five People to Know in Ticketing.
Tilger has over 20 years of experience in the sports and entertainment industry. Prior to joining the Flyers, he served as Vice President of Marketing and Director of Marketing for Comcast Spectacor, overseeing marketing, public relations and sales of family events and concerts at the Wells Fargo Center and the Spectrum.
A native of Beverly, New Jersey, Tilger received an M.A. in Sports Management from Springfield College and a B.A. in Government and Law from Lafayette College. Tilger resides in Moorestown, NJ with his wife Erika, daughter Ava, and son Gavyn.