How an NFL Team Became #1 in Game Day Fan Satisfaction through Data Collaboration

Fans are the heartbeat of every sports team. But today’s fans aren’t like the fans of yesteryear. They expect no less than personalized experiences, which modern businesses know all too well are table stakes today. Meanwhile, streaming has amped up teams’ competition for people’s hard-to-capture and sustain attention spans. 

Know your fans

Teams that really know their fans and what they want have substantial competitive advantages. They can deliver truly personalized experiences, such as customized ticket offers and merchandise recommendations, as well as granular optimizations to ticketing and marketing by channel, including email, social media and web. For instance, a team with insights into fans’ peak social media engagement days and times can send them posts about ticket sales at the optimal time on TikTok or Facebook, significantly increasing the chance that fans will see and take advantage of the offer.

But this level of intelligence requires an expanded fan 360 approach, powered by a modern data platform that provides business-wide data collaboration at scale. Few sports teams and leagues currently have the technology foundation to support this robust data strategy.

The Detroit Lions’ Analytics War Room, powered by Trace3 and Snowflake

The leadership at the Detroit Lions, the U.S. National Football League's fifth-oldest franchise, doesn’t take their fans for granted. It could be said that they are fan obsessed. The team completely reinvented its analytics capabilities to improve the overall fan experience, becoming the team with the most advanced analytics in the NFL. 

"The Detroit Lions Analytics Team has a strategy and vision to further the franchise's leading reputation in analytics within the NFL for years to come," says Matt Rousso, Practice Director of Sports, Media and Entertainment at Trace3.

To achieve this in-depth transformation, the Lions collaborated with Trace3, a premier IT consulting organization and Snowflake and AWS partner.

“The Trace3 team is thrilled to develop and implement a cutting-edge solution to enable the Detroit Lions to achieve their long-term goals. Our team worked closely with the Lions, Snowflake and AWS to design, build and support an industry-leading data and analytics platform,” says Rousso.

Data collaboration for the win

The first phase of the Detroit Lions’ data strategy was to build the Trace3 Analytics War Room housed on-site at Ford Field, with the goal of improving the game-day experience for fans. A Snowflake on top of AWS solution, the War Room pulls together data and analytics tools from a wide range of sources, including Ticketmaster, Salesforce, Fanatics, sensors from Ford Field and food and beverage data. It allows the organization to easily and securely collaborate on and analyze its vast array of data.

The War Room’s real-time insights

The War Room’s data and tools provide real-time insights to eight data dashboards, enabling the Lions to get in-depth intelligence on fan behavior and what the game day stadium experience is really like for them. Soon after implementing the War Room, the Lions learned that thousands of fans were stuck waiting in long lines throughout the stadium. To quickly remedy the situation, they implemented more effective signage, new ticket scanners, and emails sent to fans based on their seat location. The result was a noticeable increase in fan attendance as well as the team being ranked number one in the league for game day fan experience in 2024.

The War Room also helps make sure the concession stands don’t run out of the fans’ favorite foods and even directs fans to shorter lines as well as provides personalized merchandise offers during the game.  

What’s next

Trace3 and the Detroit Lions are continually elevating the team's data and analytics capabilities to make real-time decisions that improve the overall experience for Lions fans. The partnership promises the opportunity to expand into other areas of focus in the future, including crowd intelligence, player data and more.

“We’re really looking forward to the next phase in the Detroit Lions’ War Room, where we will be integrating player data as well as expanding into AI and processing of unstructured data with Snowflake. It’ll take their War Room to the next level and unlock even more competitive advantages for the team,” says Todd Gallina, Vice President of Marketing, PR and Brand at Trace3.

Just like fans are the lifeblood of sports teams, data collaboration is essential to a winning data strategy for today’s modern sports teams. Powered by a trusted, secure and easy-to-use AI data platform, it unleashes a whole host of advantages, from creating better fan experiences to optimizing player performance. Learn about Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud for Sports today.