Fan Experience hub · pillar page
Fan Experience: Engaging Audiences and Monetising Downtime
Fan experience covers everything a spectator goes through in a venue apart from the show itself: arrival, waiting, half-time, the interval, leaving. It is built from activations, services and content offered on site, most often from the spectator’s own phone. Clubs, stadiums and venues use it to engage their audience, collect data with consent and create revenue beyond ticketing.
What is fan experience?
A football match lasts ninety minutes; a spectator spends two and a half to three hours in the venue on average. A concert lasts two hours; doors often open two hours earlier. Fan experience is the sum of those minutes when nothing is happening on the pitch or on stage, and what the organiser decides to do with them.
Fan experience, fan engagement, audience experience: what is the difference?
The three terms overlap but do not mean the same thing. Fan experience describes what the audience goes through, from the car park to the exit. Fan engagement measures what the audience does in return: they take part, they respond, they leave their details, they come back. Audience experience is the term used in live entertainment and venues, where the audience is not made up of supporters but of occasional ticket buyers. Luckysit uses “Fan Experience” as the umbrella name and handles all three situations with the same solution.
Why downtime is the heart of the matter
In Ligue 1, the 2023-2024 season drew 8,269,406 spectators over 305 matches, an average of 27,113 people per match, with an occupancy rate above 85% (source: Ligue 1, « Affluences 2023/2024 : les chiffres », 26 August 2024). Every one of these spectators has a phone in hand during the pre-match period and at half-time. Downtime is not a problem to be hidden: it is the only moment when the organiser has an audience that is captive, geolocated and available for something other than the show.
What does a digital fan experience solution do?
A digital solution performs three functions, in this order. It fills the wait with a short activation that the spectator launches from their phone. It collects, with consent, a piece of data that the club or venue did not already hold. It gives a partner a visibility slot at the moment the audience is most attentive.
| Moment | What the spectator experiences | Suitable activation | What the organiser gets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queues (entrances, refreshment stands, toilets) | Standing in line, phone in hand | Solo quiz, question of the day | Opt-in contact, partner display |
| Before kick-off | Settling in, stands filling up | Match prediction, live quiz | Participation, CRM data |
| Half-time, interval, stage changeover | Ten to twenty free minutes | Wheel of fortune, digital tifo, Fan Cam | Partner prize handed out, animated big screen |
| Full time, exit | Result known, waiting to leave | Match MVP, guess the price | Loyalty, ticketing follow-up |
No app: why it is the starting condition
A spectator does not download an app for one evening. A search for “football club app” mostly returns the apps of the big clubs, not activation solutions. The Luckysit solution is launched from a QR code displayed on screens, in boxes, lounges and queues; it opens in the browser, with no account to create, and the game page loads in under three seconds.
What does fan experience deliver in figures?
The figures below come from our own activations. The participation rate is calculated as the number of players who left their details divided by the event’s attendance.
- Across our club deployments, between 15% and 25% of the attendance plays at least once during the evening (Luckysit internal data). At Stade Français and RC Strasbourg Alsace, this rate reaches 15%.
- At LDLC Arena, a Rocket League competition weekend brought 2,000 participants to the activations.
- At Allianz Riviera, on the first night of The Weeknd concert in July 2026, 1,913 spectators discovered the experience in the equipped areas (lounges, boxes, fan zone); 891 saw the partner’s message and 23 clicked through to ticketing. At concerts, the view rate of partner messages is between 45% and 47%; the click rate is between 2.4% and 2.6% at concerts and between 5% and 9% at trade shows.
Connected stadium, kiss cam, announcer: what do these terms cover?
The connected stadium
A connected stadium is a venue whose infrastructure (network coverage, screens, ticketing, access control, payment) communicates with the spectator’s phone. Digital fan experience is its most visible use: without decent network coverage, no activation runs. We detail the state of French venues in the article Connected stadiums: what the digital transformation of venues really changes.
The kiss cam and the Fan Cam
The kiss cam films spectators and displays them on the big screen. Luckysit’s Fan Cam is the selfie version: the spectator takes the photo from their phone, adds a message, and a member of the production team approves it before it is shown on screen. The audience chooses to appear, the organiser controls what goes on screen, and minors are excluded from the feature (date of birth is requested at registration).
The stadium announcer
The announcer remains the first host of a venue. A digital solution does not replace them: it gives them something to announce. “Scan the QR code, the wheel draw takes place in three minutes” is the sentence that makes participation take off; a QR code displayed without an announcement does nothing.
How to choose a fan experience solution?
Three approaches coexist on the market. They do not meet the same need and do not cost the same.
| Approach | Who it is for | Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official club app | Major clubs with an established fan base | Lasting relationship, ticketing and content in one place | Mandatory download, development and activation costs, useless for the occasional concert audience |
| One-off event activation (agency) | One event, one partner operation | Tailor-made, strong physical presence | Not repeatable from one match to the next, little or no data collected |
| SaaS platform with no app | Clubs and operators running activations all season | Launch by QR code, opt-in data, reusable activations, autonomy after training | Needs support on the screens and from the announcer to reach full performance |
How much does it cost?
Luckysit offers two plans. Business is an all-inclusive annual subscription: the club’s or venue’s teams are trained, then create, launch and analyse their own activations across every event of the season; the advertising sales house is available as an option, billed per campaign. One Shot covers a single event. The details of both plans are on the page Pricing.
What does not work
A QR code placed on a screen with no announcement and nothing at stake generates almost nothing: how visible the code is in each area of the venue (big screens, box screens, entrance, refreshment stands, toilets) decides the result before the content of the activation even matters. An activation that is too long loses the audience when play resumes: one minute, no more. A form that asks for more than first name, surname and email causes participation to drop. And data collected with no clear purpose is never used: the question “what do we do with the contacts the next day?” has to be settled before the first match, not after.
The articles in this series
- Fan engagement: the guide for sports clubs
- Pre-match activation: how to keep fans busy while they wait?
- How to reduce queue frustration in stadiums?
- Live experience vs streaming: how can venues win their audience back?
- How to improve the audience experience in a performance venue?
- Connected stadiums: what the digital transformation of venues really changes
- How to create a loyalty programme for a sports club’s supporters?
- Non-ticketing revenue: how can a concert venue increase it?
- How to monetise downtime at a sporting event?
- Turning waiting time into revenue: practical examples
Frequently asked questions about fan experience
What is fan experience in a nutshell?
It is everything a spectator goes through in a venue apart from the show: arrival, waiting, half-time, the interval, leaving. A digital solution turns it into short activations launched from the phone, which engage the audience, collect data with their consent and give partners visibility.
Do you need an app to run activations in a stadium?
No. An activation launched from a QR code opens in the phone’s browser, with no download and no account. That is the condition for reaching the occasional audience at a concert or trade show, who will never install a venue’s app for one evening.
What participation rate should you expect?
Across our club deployments, between 15% and 25% of the attendance plays at least once during the evening. The result depends first on how visible the QR code is in each area of the venue and on the announcer’s calls, then on the prize at stake and the length of the activation.
Who gets the data collected?
The club or operator that signed the contract. Data is collected with the spectator’s consent, in line with the GDPR, then exported to their CRM. When a club and the venue operator both use Luckysit, each keeps its own data.
Does a fan experience solution work outside sport?
Yes. The same activations run at concerts, trade shows and corporate events: doors opening, the interval and the stage changeover are downtime just like half-time. At Allianz Riviera, the solution was deployed at concerts and trade shows in 2026.
See Luckysit running in your venue
For a club: professional sports clubs. For a stadium, an arena or a venue: arenas and performance venues.