In sport, the most valuable moments do not only happen on the pitch. They happen when a fan buys their first ticket, opens a club email, downloads the app, queues for merchandise, renews a membership, or brings their family back for another match.
In this feature, we speak with leading experts across sports marketing, advertising and event technology to reveal what it takes for sporting, media and entertainment organisations to win captive audiences before, during and after a major event.
Piecing the marketing signals together
Millions of interactions across ticketing, merchandise, concessions, mobile apps, loyalty programmes and marketing channels can tell a powerful story about fans. But when the data sits in disconnected systems, organisations are left with fragments: a ticket buyer over here, an email subscriber over there, a merchandise customer somewhere else. According to Billy Loizou, APAC Area Vice President, Amperity, for global events such as the FIFA World Cup, the scale of that challenge is enormous.
“That fragmentation makes it harder to deliver the experiences fans now expect. It also makes it harder for teams, leagues and rights holders to grow,” he says.
Peter Filopoulos, chief marketing and digital officer – consultant, Canadian Soccer Media & Entertainment (Formerly at Football Australia) agrees. In a recent sports, media and entertainment report launched by Braze, he explains how most organisations don’t suffer from lack of data, they suffer from fragmentation and misalignment.
“Data sits in silos, systems don’t talk to each other, and no one owns the full fan relationship,” he says. “So insight becomes reporting instead of action” This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a governance, structure and leadership problem.”
“The goal isn’t more data. It’s better signals. Who is this person? What do they care about? What’s valuable to them now?” he said.
Loizou explained how a single fan can leave a trail across dozens of touchpoints. They may hold a membership, buy tickets through a primary channel, purchase a jersey online, engage with a mobile app, respond to an email campaign and order food inside the stadium.
“In a traditional data environment, that same person may appear as five or six separate records, each incomplete. The organisation knows a lot, but it does not know enough in the moments that matter,” he explained.
This creates practical problems, he added. Marketing teams spend days building segments that should take minutes. Offers reach the wrong people or miss obvious opportunities. Fans receive irrelevant communications because the organisation cannot see their actual preferences, behaviours or level of engagement. Corporate partners also miss out on stronger audience insights, and revenue opportunities are left on the table.
“You cannot deliver great fan experiences without great data. When fan records are unified into a single, accurate profile, the possibilities change. Teams can understand who their fans are, anticipate what they may need next and make every interaction feel more relevant,” he added.
“That matters because sport is emotional. When fans feel recognised, it deepens the connection they have with a team, a league or an event. That connection is what keeps people coming back season after season.”
The Shift From Personalisation to Prediction
As AI and predictive analytics mature, fan engagement is moving from personalisation to prediction. Instead of waiting to see how fans behave, organisations can anticipate what they are likely to want next.
But according to Loizou, the promise of AI depends on the quality of the data underneath it. If the fan profile is incomplete, duplicated or out of date, the experience will be too.
“That is why unified customer data has become a strategic asset for sports organisations. Platforms such as Amperity help bring together disconnected records from ticketing, CRM, email, commerce, analytics and other systems, using AI-powered identity resolution to create accurate, actionable fan profiles,” he added.
Greater opportunity equals greater complexity
Sporting organisations have never had more opportunities to engage fans, but they have also never faced greater complexity, says Louis Rogers, senior director of partnerships & sales, APAC, Leap Event Technology
“Event technology is gradually enabling the unification of data. API connections between platforms like ticketing and CRM systems, as well as digital marketing tracking, build a clearer picture of who the fans are and the stimulus they respond to. But we’re a long way from all event-related systems talking to each other,” Rogers said.
“It’s important to note that it is still fairly common for some systems to be deliberately isolationist in how they capture and retain data. For example, not all ticketing companies make the data they capture available to their clients, or provide analytical tools. So making the data available and accessible is the most basic first step.”
According to Rogers, as expectations continue to rise, loyal supporters increasingly expect the same seamless digital experiences they receive from leading retailers, airlines and entertainment brands. They want simple registration, personalised communications, frictionless ticketing, easy upgrades and relevant offers throughout their entire journey with a club, league or sporting event.
“The organisations that succeed will be those that treat every interaction as part of one connected relationship, rather than a series of isolated transactions,” he added.
“This becomes even more important during major sporting events, where fan engagement extends well beyond the game itself. From participant registrations and volunteer management through to hospitality, merchandise, premium experiences and post-event engagement, every touchpoint shapes how people remember an event and whether they return.” A modern event technology platform helps bring these experiences together. By connecting registrations, ticketing, memberships, payments, communications and event operations into a single ecosystem, sporting organisations gain a clearer understanding of their audiences while reducing operational complexity behind the scenes.
“That creates benefits on both sides,” Rogers adds. “Fans enjoy a more personalised, intuitive experience, while organisers gain better visibility into attendance, participation, revenue opportunities and long-term engagement. Instead of reacting to isolated data points, they can make informed decisions in real time and build stronger, more valuable relationships over multiple seasons.”
Proof in Practice
The Seattle Sounders offer a useful example of what this looks like in practice. The club had invested in ticketing, CRM, email, personalisation and other systems, but those systems were not fully connected. That made it difficult to understand how fans interacted across the full relationship. By working with Amperity, the Sounders unified data from systems including SeatGeek, Ticketmaster, ExactTarget, Einstein Predictive Data, email subscribers and the league CRM. Machine learning helped resolve identities, deduplicate records and build richer fan profiles, even when data sources lacked common linking keys.
The result was a clearer view of fans and previously hidden segments: supporters who only attended matches against a specific opponent, last-minute ticket buyers, primary-channel purchasers who did not buy resale tickets, and fans at risk of churn.
With better segmentation, the Sounders were able to send fewer emails while making them more relevant. The club drove a 22 percent increase in open rates, a 29 percent increase in click-through rate and an 80 percent increase in conversions for a season-ticket reserve programme compared with the previous year.
Proof in Practice
The Oakland Roots and Soul Sports Club also offers a useful example of what success looks like in practice. They recruited Leap Event Technology as their trusted team member to scale their marketing and advertising efforts, scaling email marketing campaigns and bold, engaging, targeted ads to drive ticket sales and attendance to key sporting events.
By leveraging Leap event technology, the club saw a 3 fold increase in email subscribers and a 7x return on ad spend. Oakland Roots achieved a record 26,575 ticket sales to their home opener and double the event attendance from 2024 to 2025.
After playing an instrumental role in achieving this milestone, Leap continues to provide data-driven value to this partnership. In 2025, this sports club achieved the first and third highest
attended games across the league, ranking them with the sixth highest attendance overall in the USL.
The Future of Fan Engagement
Engagement metrics like open rates and click-through rates can indicate direction, but they are not the destination. The metrics that demonstrate real impact are retention, repeat engagement, lifetime value, frequency, churn reduction, and conversion velocity.
“If behaviour changes, revenue follows,” Filopoulos, said.
Ultimately, experts agree the future of great sporting experiences like the FIFA World Cup is not simply about delivering great events. It is about building lasting communities around those events.
“Sports organisations are no longer competing only with other teams or events,” Loizou said. “They are competing with every digital experience that has trained people to expect relevance, immediacy and ease.”
“The sporting organisations that invest in connected technology today will be the ones best positioned to grow participation, strengthen loyalty and unlock new commercial opportunities tomorrow,” Rogers concluded.
