The year was 2007. The world welcomed the first smartphone, social media was just beginning to grow, and catching a game or live concert meant a host of physical payment forms and lines to wait in. You might pay for parking or transit with cash, wait in line at will call to pick up your paper ticket, get in another line for snacks or merch, and carry different forms of payment for each stop.
Fast-forward to today: smartphones are ubiquitous, social media has swallowed a huge part of the internet, and many of those lines have become digital or are a thing of the past. The fan experience has evolved in many ways.
This year is a big year for sports around the globe, so we thought we’d take a look at how far we’ve come, what the future of fandom could look like, and how world-class event organizers can make the fan experience even better.
Before game day (or showtime)
From the Olympic and Paralympic Games to the FIFA World Cup™ to a concert at a local civic center, the fan experience begins the minute someone decides to attend in person. There’s a lot organizers can do to make a better fan experience — and it starts before the event.
Think about the virtual box office — where waiting in long lines has given way to refreshing a web browser. When a big tournament or a megastar comes to town, nobody wants a website meltdown and the simultaneous frustration of potentially hundreds of thousands of fans. Visa’s suite of Value-Added Services goes beyond the transaction, helping combat payment fraud, minimizing downtime while completing the transaction, and leveraging AI to improve the online ticket-purchasing experience through increased authorization rates. Strong fraud and dispute management practices are even more important for global events hosting fans from around the world.
To keep people coming back, it’s important to tap into the loyalty fans already have — to their team or favorite artist. Smart co-brand programs can help teams and event organizers offer new benefits and experiences.
The big day (or week or month)
Event organizers are, and should be, focused on what they do best: the game, the show, the event itself. And while we might not yet live in a world where you show up and get whisked to your seats where cold drinks and hot food are already paid for and waiting, some major innovations are already changing the game (pun intended).
Line-busting is a huge priority for event organizers. The future of the fan experience is one that can help tee up orders in advance to reduce lines and increase the time fans spend enjoying the event itself. Visa has clients taking advantage of the Visa Acceptance Platform and Visa’s tokenization¹ to streamline and help secure all payments for tickets, merch and concessions into a single, simple platform so that fans don’t have to pay multiple times in multiple ways across the same venue. As a result, guests can pay the way they like, including contactless and digital wallets on mobile devices, and merchants gain valuable insights into their consumer behaviors, making it easier to enhance loyalty programs and offer more of what fans want.
And while a caught fly ball or guitar pick always makes for a great souvenir, collectibles are taking on new forms. Just last year, Visa sent FIFA World Cup™ fans home with custom digital collectibles. For the 64 percent of global sports fans who say they would like to engage with their favorite teams in the metaverse, virtual offerings are a real value add. Tapping into innovative collectibles is just one way event organizers can leverage new technologies to keep fans engaged in creative ways.
Beyond the event
When the clock has run out or the house lights come up after the encore, the fan experience continues — on social media, in fantasy leagues and fan clubs, at bars and restaurants, and at nearly any of the 130 million merchant locations Visa is connected with around the globe. Events can be truly special moments in time, but fandom can be eternal. The future of the fan experience is omnichannel, and the opportunity to engage with fans when and where they are has perhaps never been greater.
All of this points to a future where the fan experience never really ends — a future filled with innovative ways to connect people with the things they are passionate about, IRL or on the couch. In a lot of ways, it’s our future to build together.
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