Unlocking fan insights with stadium data: A guide for modern venues

When you understand your fans, you can give them better experiences. Knowing how to collect, share, and use the right stadium data turns everyday interactions into valuable fan insights you can act on to grow your business.

Connecting the dots: Teams, promoters, and your stadium data

If your stadium is home to a professional sports team, you’ve probably wondered if you can use ticketing data to enhance your marketing. The reality is, full access to raw, personally identifiable ticketing data often isn’t on the table, due to privacy rules and ownership agreements. But the good news? There’s a growing shift toward sharing and combining data from other sources so everyone, including you, your tenants, and your partners, can deliver a better experience for fans.

• Power highlights and AR experiences: You might have already seen this in action. Teams work with tech providers to show live highlights and player stats on your big screens, or to create AR (augmented reality) experiences that bring the game to life for fans in the stands. It’s all powered by location and engagement data - the kind that helps turn a good game into a memorable day out.
• Faster entry & deeper insights: The trend goes even further. More venues are linking ticketing accounts to fan identities (sometimes using biometric authentication) to speed up entry and unlock deeper insights into who’s in the stadium.  
• Improve segmentation & campaign effectiveness: Even basic digital tickets often capture an email address, while sponsorship deals increasingly come with access to anonymised fan demographics or buying habits so brands can measure the impact of their campaigns.

Making ticket data work for you 

If you sell tickets through a major platform like Ticketmaster, you know how much influence they have over your event data. For many stadiums, these systems are now the backbone of mobile-only ticketing, controlling the flow of information before fans even walk through the gates.

And they’re not just a piece of software. They're part of a much bigger entertainment network, with reach across promotion, ticket sales, and even venue operations. In some cases, your contract might lock you into using their system for every ticketed event. They take their service fee, you and the promoter can add yours, and the ticket price itself is usually set in discussions between the artist and the promoter.  

How to get more from your ticketing data:

You might not get direct access to raw, personally identifiable ticketing data, but you do get plenty of useful information. This often includes overall sales figures, attendance numbers, and anonymized demographic breakdowns. This usually comes via contracts or through your integrated venue management platform.  So how do you make that data work for you? How do you make it easy to access, simple to plug into your own systems, and ready to use in ways that make a real difference?

Turning stadium data into action

The answer is to use your in-venue stadium data. You can collect your own first-party behavioral data, such as foot traffic, dwell times, and concession visits, by using tools like Guest WiFi. Add this stadium data to the fan insights you already receive from ticketing and team sources to get a fuller picture of your audience. Having access to this “clean”, privacy-friendly data is a win-win for you and your tenants, as you both get the details you need to personalize marketing and fine-tune operations. 

By collecting first-party details through Guest WiFi or interactive maps, you capture real-time fan insights on behavior during the actual event - how they move, what they buy, and where they spend their time. This adds a whole new layer to your audience profile, giving you the detail you need to personalize marketing, sell more effectively, and work alongside your ticketing data instead of depending solely on it.

Bringing all your stadium data together

Having a lot of data is one thing. Making it work together so you can give fans a more personal experience and run your venue more efficiently is another. The goal is to bring all your stadium data into one connected system, so you can see the full picture and act on it.

Cloud partnerships are one way to make that happen:

For fans: Personalized mobile apps that use advanced analytics can be used to enhance the game-day experience, These can offer help such as: 

• Navigation support
• Tips for parking
• Food recommendations 

For staff behind the scenes: Cloud systems can pull in data from different secure sources, allowing them to:

• See what’s happening in real time
• Track performance
• Build dashboards
• Forecast attendance and revenue with more confidence 

Point-of-sale (POS) and payment partners are another key piece of the puzzle. Benefits of include:

• Handling every sale in a cashless stadium, from hot dog sales to jerseys from the team store
• Giving you instant sales figures and live inventory updates
• Providing tools for staffing and scheduling
• Integration with apps, signage, and inventory systems so all data flows into one place, ready to analyze

Making your data work as one

Think of a unified data system as one big home for all your data: ticket sales, concession purchases, fan behavior, staffing info, and more. Instead of each system holding its own separate records, everything flows into one place where you can see the full picture. That way, you can spot patterns, connect the dots, and use those insights to give fans a more personal experience and run your stadium more efficiently, whether you’re planning months ahead or making quick decisions on event day.

Key sources of stadium data and how to use them

Here’s a breakdown of the key places your stadium data can come from, and how each one helps you turn numbers into fan insights and smarter decisions:

When all these data sources work together, you get a clearer picture of your fans and your stadium, helping you create better experiences, run smoother events, and keep revenue growing.

Having these insights is just the start. In the next section, we’ll show how fan engagement strategies build on these insights to create experiences that keep fans coming back. Want to put your stadium data to work right away? Purple’s Guest WiFi and Interactive Maps give you the real-time fan insights that ticketing and POS can’t provide. 

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