Chris Baretta begins his second year as senior associate athletics director for ticketing and revenue.
His primary responsibilities at North Texas involve overseeing the strategy with ticket sales and revenue generation, while increasing brand awareness in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Baretta is a member of UNT's Senior Staff.
Prior to North Texas, Baretta was the assistant athletic director at The Citadel from 2015-17, where he oversaw ticketing and revenue in the athletics department. The athletics department attendance and revenue grew substantially with football at Johnson Hagood Stadium. During Baretta's tenure, attendance grew from 9,505 to 13,468 in 2016.
Baretta created the blue print and executed growth of 220-percent and ranked No. 1 in the Southern Conference in attendance and revenue with football and baseball. The Pearson Club level seats sold out for the first time in Citadel football history in 2015 and sold out again in 2016 in the Club four months before the home opener. The Citadel ticket office was awarded Charleston's Best Ticket Office in 2016 for the first time, beating local professional and collegiate teams.
Baretta unveiled dynamic and variable pricing in 2015 to the athletics department and created the Junior Bulldogs Program which helped make a lasting impact with 6,000 children from local orphanages, fosters families and title one schools.
Baretta was instrumental in providing key analytics that helped garner successful grant acceptance from the State of South Carolina Legislature (Economic Impact Study). Baretta created an inside sales program managing staff with hitting metrics (call volume, meetings, revenue, and win percentage). Within weeks of his arrival in Charleston, South Carolina, he interviewed and handpicked CRM company Salesforce for the sales and service department.
Baretta served as a consultant for the Charleston Battery (USL) in 2015. In that role he was responsible for motivating, coaching and improving the Battery sales staff. Among the areas of improvement Baretta focused on with the Battery were ticket revenue growth, season ticket sales, service best practices and training. He was pivotal in helping guide the Battery in breaking records in attendance, revenue, and group ticket sales in 2015.
Baretta worked with the Seattle Sounders FC (MLS) and Seattle Seahawks (NFL) as a senior account executive, with an emphasis in season ticket and luxury suite sales, for six years (2009-14). Baretta was responsible for generating over $14.75 million in new sales revenue with the Seattle-based franchises and was named Major League Soccer Sales Executive of the Year in 2014. He led the league in total revenue on four occasions (2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014) and is recognized as the all-time revenue producer in the history of MLS. The Sounders FC sales team that Baretta was a key member of was voted MLS Sales Team of the Year (2009, 2010, 2011).
Baretta moved to Seattle from Dallas, Texas, where he was a corporate account executive for FC Dallas of the Major League Soccer (2008-09). He quickly made an impact in that role, finishing in the top 10 of MLS rookies in total revenue.
A 2005 graduate of USC Upstate, Baretta earned a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism and also holds a master's degree in sport management (The Citadel in 2017). Baretta is a four-year men's soccer letterwinner (2001-05) at USC Upstate where he was named first-team all-conference (2002), finished sixth nationally in assists (2002) and made two appearances in the NCAA Tournament (2002, 2003).
Baretta resides in Little Elm and is active with the Chamber of Commerce in Little Elm and Frisco.