The one thing you can fix tomorrow to level up your sports club’s app

Try using your own product like a real fan.

At Humbleteam, a UX/UI and product design agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, this is one of the first things we recommend: buy a ticket, order merch, try returning it.

Simple steps — yet surprisingly few clubs actually do them.
I recently ordered a small item from a British football club’s store. The checkout UX was excellent. Fast, smooth, frictionless.

But everything after the purchase was broken.

The return form link didn’t work. Support replied five days later. In sports product design, that’s not a small issue — it’s a revenue leak and a fan experience failure.

We see this constantly in sports apps and club platforms. Teams design flows in theory, but don’t experience the product end-to-end like fans do.

The result is a product full of invisible cracks that loyal supporters hit every day.

At Humbleteam, we call this “fan-mode testing.” It’s basic, but powerful. Before redesigns, strategy decks or new features, we go through the full fan journey ourselves — ticketing, merch, support, account flows.

The fastest way to improve a sports app’s UX/UI? Become a fan for one afternoon. Use the app for two hours. You’ll uncover more real issues than from any research presentation — and that’s exactly how Humbleteam approaches product design for sports teams.