Dave Cohen joined the Sun Devil Athletics as the Senior Associate Athletics Director in June 2014. He is involved in all aspects of Sun Devil Athletics sports marketing, working with existing athletics staff, university staff and outside agencies to develop comprehensive marketing campaigns, including branding, advertising, promotions and ticket sales.
Cohen also has sports-specific responsibilities with administrative management, program development and operations oversight for men’s basketball, volleyball, hockey, gymnastics, swimming & diving, softball and the award winning band, spirit and dance squads. In addition, Cohen is on the Sun Devil Stadium working group, which includes a $256M design and reinvention of Sun Devil Stadium.
In his first year at Arizona State, working with athletic director, Ray Anderson, Cohen was instrumental in the hiring of new men’s basketball coach, Bobby Hurley and the new men’s and women’s swimming coach, Bob Bowman. In addition, he helped fundraise over $32M which successfully added hockey, triathlon and women’s lacrosse as Arizona State varsity sports. On the business side of the organization, Cohen orchestrated the return of Sun Devil Ticket Sales & Service to an in-house operation.
Prior to joining Arizona State Athletics, Cohen served as the Director of New Stadium Sales for the Minnesota Vikings New Stadium. For the project, he wrote and executed the strategic business plan and hired a new sales team, which was responsible for generating $130M in new stadium seat license revenue. Previous to the Vikings stadium project, Cohen was Vice President of Sales & Service for the Atlanta Falcons for ten years.
Prior to his time with the Vikings he was the President of CCG, LLC, and oversaw the sales and management of a small business that assisted organizations, teams and schools in revenue generation on a project basis. Clients included the New York Jets and Mother Nature Network, the most visited environmental news site in the United States. Cohen was also co-founder of Career Path Seminars; a firm that assisted college students in applying their education to their desired career field.
Cohen worked for the Atlanta Falcons for 10 years, including the final eight as Vice President of Sales and Service. He was charged with supervising all sales for the team, including corporate, general ticketing, suite and club premium sales, and all service-related items for those departments, as well as managing fan services, concessions, ticket operations, database development and research, and hospitality areas. He helped the organization average an 8.9-percent annual revenue growth and nearly quadrupled the team’s revenue budget, raising it from $19.2 million to more than $75 million. He co-led a $50 million renovation project within the Georgia Dome that impacted all premium levels and general admission seats, as well as video boards.
While with the Falcons he was a member of the New Stadium Project Team, part of the Atlanta Sports Council Executive Board and a key member of Arthur Blank’s Personal Strategic Business Team.
An innovator at every stop in his career, Cohen implemented a number of changes within the Falcons, including an online season ticket renewal and relocation program that resulted in $1.7 million in incremental revenue, research of a CRM Database System and a restructuring of the ticket operations department.
From 1996-2002 Cohen served as Director of Ticket Sales for the Portland Trail Blazers, where he led one of the most impressive streaks in recent professional sports history as the team sold out 104 consecutive home games during his tenure and averaged more than $5.5 million in annual new ticket revenue over a five-year period. He helped the organization reach new heights as its season-ticket base grew to 15,000 and ticket revenue jumped to $46.7 million.
Cohen earned his BA in Communications from the University of Portland in 1991. He also represented the Falcons at the 2004 NFL Stanford University Management Program.
He and his wife, Kathy, have one son, Casey (16), and one daughter, Kamryn (14).