How Sports and Entertainment Brands Connect with Fans in Mobile Wallets
Mobile wallets are becoming the new fan surface, turning tickets into persistent, data-rich connections that extend far beyond game day. With Badge, teams and venues can capture fan identity, drive real-time engagement, and unlock measurable revenue across every touchpoint.
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Sports and entertainment brands are sitting on massive audiences, but most of that audience is still out of reach. Organizations today only have first-party data on about 24% of their fanbase, leaving 76% effectively invisible. At the same time, 87% are facing growing pressure from sponsors to prove real engagement, not just impressions. And while many have turned to mobile apps to close the gap, the reality is harsh. Most apps lose the majority of their users within weeks, with churn rates exceeding 81% in the first 90 days.
With people bringing their phones to events (and everywhere else), the fan relationship has a new home. The wallet is a natural place for sports and entertainment brands to create a better digital experience for their customers. Badge gives brands the tools to elevate their digital experience and unlock new sales and sponsorship revenue.
A Ticket Becomes a Persistent Fan Identity
Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are native operating system surfaces, present on nearly every smartphone.
Once a fan adds a wallet pass, they have opted into a direct, authenticated connection. This creates a durable, system-level presence tied to their device identity.
That pass can carry loyalty status, ticketing credentials, membership benefits, and personalized offers. It can be updated silently, without any action from the fan. And it can deliver proactive notifications to the lock screen, the highest-visibility placement on a smartphone.
Four Ways Wallet Infrastructure Drives Sports and Entertainment Outcomes
Because the wallet passes updates in real time and responds to time and location, teams and venues can act across the full fan lifecycle.
1. Own the Fan Relationship
According to a recent report, sports and entertainment organizations only have a direct fan relationship with 24% of their fanbase.When a fan adds a wallet pass, their record connects across ticketing, F&B, merch, and loyalty in a single programmable surface. Every visit is captured. Every interaction is attributable. The fan is known, not just counted.
2. Lift F&B and Merch Revenue
Geo-based, moment-based offers reach fans when they are inside the venue and ready to spend. A notification at halftime, a concession discount tied to a loyalty milestone, a seat upgrade prompt at check-in. Every offer is triggered by real behavior and tied directly to transaction data.
3. Build Persistent Presence
The wallet pass stays on the fan's device after the event ends. That persistent surface supports re-engagement between events, early access to future dates, loyalty accumulation, and season-long relationship building. The event ends. The connection does not.
4. Unlock Sponsor Integrations
Dynamic wallet passes create new sponsorship inventory. Geo-fenced messages, co-branded pass surfaces, and moment-based offers tied to major in-game moments give sponsors measurable, high-visibility presence inside the wallet. Performance is tied to moments that matter, not just impressions served.
Four Properties That Make the Wallet a Durable Fan Surface
1. Persistent. The pass lives on the device. It does not expire when the event ends or disappear when an app goes unused.
2. Time- and location-aware. The pass surfaces natively based on where the fan is and when the moment is right. Venue entry, concession areas, halftime, post-game. Each moment is programmable.
3. Fully measurable. Every pass add, open, notification delivery, and downstream transaction is tracked. Teams and venues can measure wallet performance end to end, from first add through to lifetime fan value.
4. Marketing enabled. Sports and entertainment marketers have full access to a new marketing channel that sees a 99% deliverability rate and outperforms engagement rate benchmarks compared to other channels like email, SMS, and social.
Wallets are Built for Sports and Entertainment
Sports and entertainment brands continue to struggle with maintaining an evergreen relationship with fans. . Fans attend, the event ends, and the connection goes quiet until the next one.
Wallet passes close that gap. They are present on the device the fan already has in their hand at the venue, on the way there, and in the weeks between events. They are a convenient, frictionless, direct line to your best fans.
The wallet is also a verified identity surface. It knows who the fan is, what tier they hold, and what they have purchased. That is the foundation for contextually relevant offers that convert.
Wallet is a Key Part of Your Infrastructure
The organizations moving on this are not treating wallet passes as a one-off event tactic. They are building wallet infrastructure into the core of their fan experience stack.
That means issuing passes at scale, updating them programmatically, and measuring wallet performance with the same rigor applied to every other revenue channel. And connecting wallet data to ticketing, loyalty, CRM, and commerce systems so the fan experience is coherent across every touchpoint.
Mobile wallets are now the core infrastructure for sports and entertainment. The question is not whether to activate them. It is how to build on them well.
Badge is the wallet platform for sports and entertainment. We provide the infrastructure for pass issuance, real-time updates, messaging, and measurement across Apple and Google Wallet.
Get in touch to talk about your wallet strategy at sports@trybadge.com.
