Digital transformation has expanded the ways fans engage with sports, creating new opportunities for personalization, global reach, and interactive experiences. At the same time, it has introduced fragmentation. Fans now follow teams and leagues across multiple platforms and streaming services, often at the expense of the communal, in-person experiences that have traditionally defined sports culture. As a result, organizations face a dual mandate: leveraging digital tools to grow and engage audiences while preserving the social and emotional foundations of fandom.
The Mack Institute’s Spring Conference, Innovation in Sports Fan Engagement, brought together Wharton faculty and industry leaders to examine how sports organizations are responding to this shift. Across sessions, a consistent theme emerged: traditional models of fandom—rooted in local identity, in-person community, and shared viewing experiences—are under increasing pressure.
Speakers explored a range of responses to this tension, from new approaches to measuring fan value to evolving sponsorship models and investments in fan experience. These discussions point to a broader shift in how sports organizations define value, moving away from a focus on individual transactions and toward long-term fan relationships.
The Double-Edged Sword of Digital Transformation
Valery Yakubovich, Executive Director of the Mack Institute, described digital transformation as a “double-edged sword” for the sports industry. On one hand, advances in streaming, mobile platforms, and data analytics have enabled more personalized and interactive fan experiences. On the other, they have fundamentally changed how those experiences are delivered and consumed, dispersing fan engagement across platforms, formats, and moments.
Geoff Kalan, Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Finance at Playfly Sports, positioned this shift as part of a broader evolution in media consumption.
“You used to get your sports through the newspaper, then radio, then television,” he said. “Now it’s on your phone.”
Felipe Monteiro, Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and a Mack Institute Senior Fellow, illustrated the implications of this shift through the example of FC Barcelona. While the club is rooted in a city of roughly 1.5 million people, it has over 400 million social media followers worldwide.
“The question, then, is what to do with such a global fan base. How do you convert those followers into long-term, valuable fans?” said Monteiro. “While many European clubs have strong global audiences and generate revenue through media and streaming, it is still not entirely clear how to fully capture that value.”
Fan Lifetime Value: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Fandom
In response to the increasing fragmentation of fan engagement, the sports industry is seeking more structured and comprehensive ways to understand and measure fan behavior over time. Rather than focusing on discrete transactions, such as ticket purchases or individual interactions, organizations are adopting a longer-term perspective.
Prof. Peter Fader’s concept of Fan Lifetime Value (FLV) offers one such framework. An extension of his work on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), it centers on three core questions:
- How long will the relationship with the fan last?
- How often will the fan engage?
- How much will the fan ultimately spend?
This framework shifts the focus from short-term outcomes to the full trajectory of a fan’s relationship with a team, incorporating not only direct spending but also broader forms of engagement (such as social media interaction or app usage) that may signal future value.
Understanding fans through the FLV lens enables more deliberate decision-making around pricing, marketing, and fan experience. As Fader emphasized, FLV is not simply an emotional metric capturing affiliation or loyalty, but is fundamentally financial.
“There are many different currencies of engagement, but ultimately it comes down to dollars and cents,” he explained. “As much as we value engagement—whether through mobile apps, conversations, or simply supporting the team—lifetime value is fundamentally a financial metric. It is about profitability.”
In other words, the goal is not simply to measure engagement, but to understand when and how that engagement translates into meaningful financial outcomes. In practice, this may include converting viewership into sponsorship revenue, translating app usage into targeted marketing offers, or turning casual engagement into ticket purchases and merchandise sales over time.
Who is a Fan?
Adopting new strategies for monetization is complicated by a more fundamental challenge: sports organizations often lack a consistent way to define and measure their fans. Tracy Schoenadel, COO of Vision Insights, a data platform focused on sports, illustrated this point by noting that users of the platform have generated more than 42,000 different definitions of what constitutes a “fan,” reflecting the wide range of ways organizations segment and interpret fan behavior.
“This shows how much variation there is,” she said. “Definitions differ not just across leagues, but even within them. The NFL defines fans differently than the NBA, and even teams within the same league use different criteria.”
At the same time, speakers emphasized that, despite the growing volume of data generated through digital platforms, the industry is still in the early stages of operationalizing that information. Fan behavior is distributed across multiple touchpoints (e.g., ticketing systems, digital platforms, media consumption, and in-venue experiences) making it difficult to construct a unified view.
Michael Cunningham, Senior Director of Enterprise Applications at the Philadelphia Phillies, noted that organizations often gather large volumes of data without translating it into meaningful action. In many cases, teams are collecting extensive information but lack the systems or processes needed to use it effectively. Like many of the days speakers, he also encouraged organizations to think holistically about creating and capturing fan value.
“Fan value isn’t created by technology alone—it’s earned through intentional, connected engagement,” he said. “My experience shows that simply building next-generation experiences doesn’t guarantee fans will come—or stay. The real impact comes when technology solutions are thoughtfully deployed and seamlessly paired within a connected commerce ecosystem, enhancing the fan experience while deepening their relationship with our brand. When innovation is aligned with how fans engage, transact, and return, it transforms moments into lasting loyalty.”
Michael Schreiber, Executive Chairman and Founder of Playfly Sports, asked another provocative question: Are fans loyal to teams or individual players? In the digital era, some players command a world-wide following and own their brand independently of the team they currently represent. If so, how should teams and players generate and share FLV? This is an emerging area for research and practice.
These insights highlight a central tension in the sports industry. While the abundance of data enables more precise segmentation and targeting, it also introduces complexity that organizations cannot manage unless they are clear about their goals and pain points. Understanding fans requires both scale and nuance, combining large volumes of data with a deeper understanding of the social and emotional dimensions of fandom.
Emerging Strategies for Monetizing Fan Engagement
While digital transformation presents new challenges for the sports industry, it also creates new opportunities for monetization. As Schreiber noted, sports organizations are uniquely positioned to capitalize on these opportunities because they already operate across multiple revenue models.
“A sports team has to be good at three things: building an audience like a media company, selling partnerships like a B2B business, and driving transactions like a B2C company,” he said.
This structure allows teams to monetize fan engagement in several distinct but interconnected ways. Three approaches highlighted at the conference were corporate sponsorship, integrated commerce, and ecosystem partnerships.
Corporate Sponsorship
Corporate sponsorship remains one of the primary ways sports organizations translate fan engagement into revenue. Unlike traditional industries, where value is generated through direct transactions, sports monetization often depends on connecting fans to brands.
Because sports content is consumed live and generates strong emotional engagement, it offers a uniquely valuable platform for advertisers. Sponsors benefit not only from visibility, but from association with teams and the communities that support them. At the same time, advances in data collection are enabling teams to more clearly demonstrate the value of these partnerships, linking fan behavior (such as viewership, attendance, and digital interaction) to measurable outcomes for sponsors. The current practical and research challenge is explicitly incorporating sponsorship revenues into FLV calculations.
Integrated Commerce
Advances in streaming and digital platforms are enabling the integration of commerce directly into the fan experience. Rather than separating content consumption from transactions, organizations are increasingly embedding purchasing opportunities within live and digital environments.
For example, viewers may be able to purchase a specific player’s jersey via a QR code that appears during a live broadcast. Emerging technologies are making these shoppable moments more contextual and seamless, allowing products to be surfaced dynamically based on what is happening in a game. These developments reflect a broader shift toward interactive media environments, where engagement is no longer merely passive but encompasses social interactions and economic transactions.
Ecosystems and Partnerships
At the same time, sports organizations are increasingly turning to external ecosystems to build these capabilities. Rather than developing all technologies in-house, teams and leagues are partnering with startups and corporate technology providers to experiment with new tools and business models. In this respect, innovation in sports is beginning to mirror other industries, where firms rely on external collaborators and complementors to utilize new technologies and accelerate their commercialization.
This shift has also attracted increased investment activity. Chad Stender, Managing Partner of SeventySix Capital, noted that, until recently, sports had seen relatively limited technological disruption compared to other sectors.
“Ten years ago, there really weren’t any investors focused on sports as an asset class,” he observed, “even though it’s a massive, global industry that touches us in so many ways.”
Today, however, the industry is increasingly viewed as a space for innovation. Programs such as Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech, represented by Vice President of Sports Venture Partnerships and SportsTech Business Development Jenna Kurath, illustrate how these partnerships are being structured in practice. By working with early-stage companies, organizations can test and deploy new solutions without the cost and time required to build them internally. These models allow teams and leagues to iterate more quickly while expanding the range of monetization opportunities available to them.
Balancing Value and Values
Virtually every participant touched on the emotional and community dimensions of fandom, emphasizing that sports are uniquely powerful because they speak to fans’ identity, family, and memory. From personal stories about lifelong team loyalty to anecdotes about fans who want their allegiance reflected even in death, speakers repeatedly underscored the ways in which fandom is enduring, identity-based, and frequently passed down across generations.
This creates a fundamental tension for organizations seeking to monetize fan engagement. While the industry is increasingly sophisticated in its use of data, segmentation, and pricing strategies, the industry is also aware that trying to squeeze every penny from its fanbase can be alienating and self-defeating in long-run.
“There are some fans to whom you should offer a discount, and others who you should try to sell a premium product,” said Schreiber. “You have to know the difference.”
Ashley Buttrick, Senior Director of Revenue Strategy at the Philadelphia Phillies, illustrated how teams navigate the value vs values tradeoff in practice. While the organization is responsible for driving revenue across ticketing, sponsorship, and in-venue experiences, it also prioritizes long-term relationships with fans and the surrounding community. She emphasized that success is not measured solely in transactions, but in the quality of fan experience and engagement across every touchpoint, from watching at home to attending games at the stadium.
This approach extends beyond the stadium. The Phillies invest in community initiatives and youth engagement programs designed to grow the game locally and build generational connections to the team. These efforts may not produce immediate financial returns, but they contribute to long-term fan development and brand affinity. In this sense, the organization’s strategy reflects an understanding that not all value should be immediately monetized, and it should be shared with the community.
The Phillies’ model demonstrates how economic value and social values are ultimately interconnected. A strong sense of community and identity drives attendance, viewership, and engagement, which in turn supports sponsorship revenue and commercial growth.
Introducing SpInE: Sports Innovation Ecosystems
Building on these insights, the Mack Institute, in collaboration with Comcast and Playfly Sports, is launching a new initiative focused on FansTech-driven innovation in sports. The Sports Innovation Ecosystem (SpInE) will bring together academic research, industry expertise, and emerging technologies to better understand how digital tools are reshaping fan engagement and the business of sports.
Anchored in Philadelphia and aligned with major upcoming events such as the 2026 FIFA World Cup and MLB All-Star Game, the initiative aims to connect Wharton researchers and students with teams and leagues, media and merchandising companies, startups, and investors.
All photos by Emma Needleman