Modern fans arrive at the stadium with the same expectations they bring to any public space (airports, malls, cinemas) where digital experiences just work. They assume secure access, paperless tickets, and personalized offers that recognize who and where they are will be available, as this is already standard in their daily lives everywhere else. To attract and retain a new generation of fans, stadiums can’t be left out of this equation. However, the truth is that legacy architecture and underinvestment have kept many venues and organizations behind the curve. Therefore, leagues and clubs are racing to replace fragmented systems with a single journey by converging ticketing, payments, and loyalty into a unified, continuous flow, which is the shortest path to first-party data, higher conversion rates, and measurable sponsorship value.
Sports teams are discovering new ways to unlock monetization by engaging fans at the exact moments they expect and desire interaction, both in and out of the stadium. The next step in this evolution is the seamless integration of the fan’s digital wallet and the Fan App, creating a unified layer that organizes and enhances the entire game day experience and extends the connection well beyond it.
What is experience convergence?
In a converged model, the fan’s digital wallet and club digital assets work in tandem as a single control surface, represented by a Fan App. In them, teams can make tickets available through their own branded purchasing experience, rather than relying exclusively on ticketing platforms. Match and event tickets can reside in the wallet or, even better, become unnecessary via a one-to-one tie to the fan identity. And, with loyalty and stored value read at the same NFC touchpoint as payment, friction can be reduced for fans, lifting opt-in rates and conversion at both in-app and in-stadium checkouts.
For example, MLB’s Ballpark app blends secure mobile tickets with offers and rewards inside a companion experience that is already familiar to millions of fans. Apple and Google have standardized loyalty and event pass rails that enable these journeys, including NFC “wake” for passes and APIs to issue and update membership at scale; teams and venues just need to enable it.
The same wallet-anchored fan identity can be carried through to point-of-sale and pop-up stands on the stadium’s concourse, as tapping and other modern payment orchestration methods allow venues to accept contactless cards and wallets without extra hardware, while still being able to tie each transaction back to the fan profile. Payment providers serving stadiums now market venue-wide commerce, mobile ordering, and loyalty as a single offering because a unified checkout reduces queues and increases attribution events per game.
The LA Clippers’ Intuit Dome, for example, has publicly showcased its vision for frictionless concessions and unified fan touchpoints, demonstrating how next-generation venues are redefining what a seamless game-day journey looks like.
The value case: identity, conversion, and sponsorship
When tickets, payments, and loyalty live in a single flow, the club stops guessing and starts seeing. You start taking control of the Demand, not just the Supply. You know not just that a seat was occupied, but which fan sat there, what they purchased, and when; how they responded to an aisle-side offer; and whether that interaction moved their tier status or next-game intent.
Building stronger first-party relationships can radically increase the value of every fan record. When ticketing and checkout experiences are designed to recognize and personalize for each fan, they unlock a new level of engagement and conversion. These same principles also power a wallet-led journey, one that captures richer signals across touchpoints and transforms them into measurable revenue.
A growing set of market examples confirms the direction. League-wide IDs demonstrate how a free, unified membership as part of a comprehensive customer loyalty program could become the connective tissue across content, venue, and commerce, creating a platform where benefits, voting, and recognition flow through one fan profile. Imagine how a single loyalty currency could bridge merchandise and wagering and, through partnerships, even translate into stadium concessions credits. This is the kind of seamless flow fans understand and have come to expect, and that sponsors can amplify and benefit from as well.
A roadmap to convergence
Phase 1: Unify the front door.
Set up a branded ticketing experience that sits on top of your primary engine and routes logins through your club’s SSO with “One Fan, One ID”. Insert one new consented attribute at purchase and enable wallet provisioning for tickets and membership on the confirmation screen. Use the SSO Fan ID across the club app, ticketing front end, and OTT (if possible). Progressive profiling, combined with a fan intelligence engine, enables the personalization of offers and content without adding friction at the gate. Expect immediate gains in identifiable purchasers and transfer recipients.
Phase 2: Turn on wallet-powered membership.
Issue digital wallet Fan ID Cards tied to loyalty status and offers. Use NFC loyalty reads at premium entrances and member-only concessions to make benefits visible and automatic. Want to take it further? Enable biometrics for an even faster and more awe-inspiring access experience.
Phase 3: Connect POS and mobile ordering.
Expand acceptance with Tap to Pay for roving staff and upgrade hawkers to accept wallets, applying loyalty with one tap. By enabling real time payments and modern payment orchestration, you can process transactions instantly. Roll out mobile ordering in high-congestion zones and measure queue-time delta and basket lift. The same Fan ID Card can reveal eligibility, trigger welcome moments, and apply special pricing and offers automatically at POS. This will shorten lines and raise conversion rates.
Phase 4: Launch a single “Loyalty currency”.
Award points or credits for attendance, spend, and engagement. Take a page from marketplace players that allow redemption across categories and, where regulation allows, across experiences, as interchangeability drives perceived value. Gamifying fandom can maximize fan engagement, knowledge, and activation.
Phase 5: Close the loop with journeys and reporting.
You can measure pre-game parking, biometric or turnstile entry, first beverage, in-seat reorder, and post-game merchandise within a single journey. In that case, you can prove uplift per segment and price sponsorship against actual engagement, not merely impressions. Trigger post-event flows based on actual behaviors, not assumptions, and publish a weekly identity, conversion, and sponsorship report to move partners from fan signals to actual measurable outcomes.
How Globant and Sportian can help
This is not simply a UX exercise; it’s a system integration challenge across identity, ticketing, POS, wallet, data, and measurement. Globant and Sportian have deployed these ecosystems and experiences for teams, leagues, and venues worldwide, whether through custom-built solutions or one of the many white-label solutions we have created. We can accelerate the design and deployment of the app and web experience with a sports-specific design system and integration layer that lets you ship wallet provisioning, fan intelligence, loyalty widgets, and commerce flows without starting from scratch.
Our teams have delivered loyalty and competition platforms, ticketing experiences, and OTT services on compressed timelines while capturing consented fan data by design.
Tickets, payments, and loyalty are converging because fans want a seamless experience and because organizations need a single, comprehensive fan identity. The Fan App is not a monolith; it is a coordinated set of capabilities that can be staged in a short time. If you’re looking for a concrete architecture, a sprint plan, and a partner to wire it end-to-end, we would love to compare notes and demonstrate how a wallet-led journey can drive revenue while making the entire day feel effortless.
