The Room Has Changed. Has the Fan Relationship?

As the WNBA’s founding president and later Commissioner of the Big East, Val Ackerman spent most of her career as the only woman in the room. She said as much on stage at SBJ Game Changers last week. 

Our Client Success Lead for Sports & Entertainment, Channing Hankins, spent two days in that room, and it was one of the most energizing events we’ve been to this year. “Looking out at a ballroom packed wall to wall with women running leagues, building brands, and closing partnership deals across sports,” she said, “it was hard not to notice: that room has changed.” And the conversations in it had changed too. Leagues, teams, media companies, and brand partners spent a lot of time on the same question: once a fan shows up, what happens next?

The acquisition moment is here. The relationship is the hard part.

This may be the best year in recent memory for fan acquisition. The Men's World Cup, the 2027 Women's World Cup, and the Olympics kept coming up as the biggest opportunities in the room. Add in creators and social content reaching audiences leagues couldn't touch five years ago, and the acquisition funnel has never been wider.

NWSL shared a number that stuck with us. A recent Gotham FC match at Citi Field drew 40,000 fans, and 80% of ticket buyers were new to the club. That's a huge opening. It also creates a lot of pressure, because a ticket purchase alone doesn't tell you who those 32,000 newcomers are or how to reach them again, and most leagues are still struggling to close that gap.

This issue stuck throughout the remainder of the event’s conversations. Marketers want to see the whole fan journey across digital, live events, viewership, ticketing and merch, and right now those pieces sit in separate systems. People are excited about the interest they're seeing. Turning that interest into fans who keep coming back is the harder part. This is the problem we built Flowcode to solve.

Identity is the missing link

Every real-world moment at a game is a chance to connect: the ticket, the seat, the concession stand, the jersey tag, the halftime screen. When a fan connects through a Flowcode or FlowURL, the brand starts to learn who they are. Our first-party identity layer, or FlowID, helps to recognize fans across every touchpoint. Someone who connects for the first time at a stadium is recognized when they connect again across broadcast or digital channels, and their profile fills out with each interaction, helping you make more educated and personalized decisions with every touchpoint that follows.

That data then goes straight into the CRM your team already uses, no new data project, no separate place to manage fan profiles. Every connection adds to the record you already have, which is exactly how the 80% who were new at Citi Field can become known fans before the next home match, instead of staying a one-time attendance number.

Sponsorship is moving past the logo

The other theme that kept coming up was sponsorships. Partners don't want a logo on the board anymore; they want to be a part of the moment fans engage with, and see proof that it worked.

FlowHubs make that possible: an exclusive offer, a giveaway, a behind-the-scenes look, a reason to come back, all tied to the same fan identity layer that's already connecting a team's tickets, merch, and broadcast moments. Because every connection ties back to a known fan rather than an anonymous scan, teams can finally tell a partner who engaged, what they did next, and whether that fan came from a previous activation.

That's the real shift: a logo becomes measurable, attributable inventory instead of a line item on a sponsorship deck, and that changes the conversation teams can have when they're packaging and pricing the partnership itself.

What we're taking home

Most conversations at Game Changers came back to three ideas: know your fans, build relationships that last beyond a single moment, and create experiences that matter to fans and partners alike.

The women leading those conversations are building the next era of sports business. Women's sports are bringing in new audiences quickly, and the brands that turn those audiences into lifelong fans will set the pace for the whole industry.

We left inspired, and we're even more convinced that building that fan profile is where the next big wins in sports will come from. If you're thinking about how to turn your next big moment into lasting fandom, you can schedule a call with our team here.