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A Small Personalisation Fix in Sports Apps That Quietly Drives Revenue

In sports product design, the biggest gains don’t always come from big features. Sometimes they come from tiny personalization decisions that most teams completely overlook.

At Humbleteam, a UX/UI and product design agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, we see this pattern again and again when analysing sports apps and fan platforms.

The Problem: One Feed for Everyone

Recently, while testing a VPN set to Japan, I opened a sports app I use regularly — nothing changed, same highlights, same news, same athletes.
The app behaved as if I were still sitting at home in Europe.

This is a common issue in sports app UX/UI design. Many teams build a single, global content feed because it’s simple and scalable. But simplicity often comes at the cost of relevance. For sports fans, relevance is everything.

Why Local Context Matters in Sports UX/UI Design

Sports fandom is deeply local. Fans care about:
- local heroes
- regional competitions
- nearby events
- athletes they emotionally connect with

When a sports app ignores location, language, or regional context, it misses an opportunity to feel personal — and that directly impacts engagement. At Humbleteam, we design sports apps and platforms with one key principle in mind:
fans don’t want more content, they want more relevant content.

The Fix Is Smaller Than Most Teams Expect

The interesting part is that this problem rarely requires a full redesign. In many sports products, the fix is surprisingly small:
- adapt the feed based on geolocation
- prioritize content using browser or system language
- slightly shift ranking logic toward local teams or athletes

These are not complex features. They are small UX and product strategy adjustments. But they fundamentally change how a fan experiences the product.

How Small Personalisation Changes Drive Revenue

From a business perspective, this type of personalization affects exactly what sports teams care about engagement, retention, conversion

When fans see content that feels “for me”, they:
- spend more time in the app
- click more often
- explore optional purchases
- convert more frequently

At Humbleteam, we’ve seen how small personalization changes in sports apps quietly unlock thousands in additional revenue — without adding new features or increasing marketing spend. This is why UX/UI design for sports teams is not just about usability. It’s about business impact.

Why This Is Often Missed by Sports Teams

Many sports organizations focus personalization efforts on recommendations, loyalty programs and complex AI features. While ignoring the basics.

In reality, default states and content prioritization are often where the highest ROI lives. This is especially true for match-day apps, fan engagement platforms, and sports media products.

That’s why at Humbleteam, product strategy and UX/UI design always start with understanding:
- fan behavior
- regional differences
- real usage data

Good sports UX doesn’t start in Figma. It starts with context.

Personalisation as a Core Sports Product Strategy

For sports teams and leagues, personalization should not be an afterthought. It should be a core part of the product strategy.
As a product design agency for sports teams, Humbleteam helps clubs and sports platforms:
→ identify high-impact personalization opportunities
→ design UX/UI systems that adapt naturally
→ balance simplicity with relevance
→ turn fan engagement into measurable growth

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Showing the same experience to every fan is easy. Designing a product that feels personal is harder — but far more valuable.

Tiny personalization fixes may look insignificant on paper. In reality, they often deliver the highest return on investment in sports app design. That’s exactly the kind of work Humbleteam focuses on when designing digital products for sports teams and the sports industry.

What Makes Humbleteam Different From Other Agencies (part 1)

The design agency market is crowded. Many studios offer UX/UI design, branding, web design, or mobile apps.
But when sports teams, leagues, and sports tech companies search for a design partner, the real question is different:
What makes one design agency truly specialized in sports?
This is where Humbleteam stands apart.

Humbleteam Is Built Around Sports Products, Not Generic Design

Most design agencies adapt their process to sports projects. Humbleteam was built for them from the start. As a product design and UX/UI agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, Humbleteam designs digital products where:
- emotions matter more than features
- real-time interactions define usability
- fan loyalty changes product behavior
- performance and clarity are non-negotiable

Designing for sports is fundamentally different from designing for e-commerce or SaaS — and Humbleteam treats it as a separate discipline.

Product Strategy Comes Before Screens

Many agencies start with visuals. Humbleteam starts with product thinking. Our work often begins before a single screen is designed:
- defining product goals for sports teams and fan platforms
- validating assumptions with user research
- aligning features with fan behavior and business metrics
- shaping MVPs and long-term product roadmaps

This product-first approach is why Humbleteam works on both early-stage sports products (0 → 1) and mature platforms that need redesign or optimization.

UX/UI Design Grounded in Real Fan Behavior

Sports fans are not “users” in the traditional sense. At Humbleteam, UX/UI design decisions are based on:
- how fans behave on match days
- how they interact under emotional pressure
- how they navigate apps during live events
- how loyalty affects decision-making

That’s why Humbleteam places strong emphasis on onboarding defaults, real-time UX patterns, frictionless ticketing and checkout flows, fan engagement and retention mechanics.

How good design makes football fans spend more?

Football fans can't leave Even if a club’s app is terrible, fans won’t switch to another team. They’ll just tolerate a bad experience.

In many ways, it’s the closest thing to a monopoly in digital product design.

So the obvious question sports teams ask is: if fans stay anyway, why invest in good UX/UI design at all? At Humbleteam, a product and UX/UI design agency working with sports teams and clubs, our answer is simple: design changes how fans spend.

A club with a poor interface will still sell tickets — loyalty takes care of that. But the same club silently loses every optional purchase:
the jersey a fan didn’t buy
the streaming subscription they skipped
the merch they couldn’t find
the checkout they abandoned because it felt like paperwork

In sports product design, bad UX doesn’t reduce loyalty — it reduces revenue.

That’s why at Humbleteam we focus on fan experience as a growth lever, not decoration. Great design doesn’t create new fans. It increases the lifetime value of the fans you already have.

This is the real ROI of UX/UI design for football clubs and the sports industry — and exactly why many sports teams work with Humbleteam.

The Biggest Mistake in Sports Teams

It's surprisingly simple — they design digital products in a bubble.

At Humbleteam, a UX/UI and product design agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, we see this pattern again and again. Clubs keep adding new features to their apps, trying to impress fans — while forgetting the fundamentals.

They rarely open competitor apps to feel what it’s like to buy a ticket, order a jersey, or even sign up as a fan.

But this is exactly where the most valuable insights in sports product design are hiding.

You don’t need complex frameworks. You need to experience the product yourself and feel what works — and what clearly doesn’t.

At Humbleteam we’ve spent years analysing sports apps, fan platforms and team products, one by one.

Every sports team should do the same. Or work with a sports-focused design agency that already has this context.

Because if you don’t understand what others are doing wrong in sports UX/UI design, you’ll eventually copy the same mistakes. That’s exactly what Humbleteam helps sports teams avoid.

The fastest way to ruin onboarding in a sports app? The wrong default state

This is one of the most common onboarding mistakes we see in sports product design — and designers still underestimate it.

At Humbleteam, a UX/UI and product design agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, we often design onboarding flows for match-day apps, fan engagement platforms, and live sports experiences. And the audiences there are never homogeneous.

A single football match can bring a 50-year-old fan, a 12-year-old kid, and an international supporter who doesn’t speak the local language.

In sports apps, diversity is the default. That’s why your default state matters so much.
If you ask for gender — which option appears first?
If you ask for language — does it align with the user’s geolocation?
If you ask for region — is it based on real fan behaviour or assumptions?

In sports UX/UI design, onboarding is one of the few moments where designers must work directly with data analysts.

Open the database. Look at real user behaviour. Look at what sports fans actually choose.
Because if you don’t — your default state is probably wrong.

At Humbleteam, we consider it a red flag when onboarding screens are designed in Figma without real data behind them. Great onboarding for sports teams and platforms doesn’t start in Figma — it starts in the database.

Design Agency or Freelance Designer: What Works Better for Sports Teams?

Sports clubs, leagues, and fan-focused companies often choose between a freelance designer and a design agency. The difference isn’t just cost — it’s speed, reliability, and impact.
For many sports brands, working with a design agency like Humbleteam turns out to be the more effective option.

Speed and scale matter in sports

Sports products move fast: matchdays, launches, sponsorships, seasonal peaks. A freelancer can only handle so much.
A design agency provides built-in scale. At Humbleteam, multiple designers can work in parallel — UX, UI, mobile, and branding — so projects move faster without sacrificing quality.

Full-service design reduces friction

Sports products rarely need just one design skill. Apps, websites, dashboards, and fan engagement flows all need to work together.
Humbleteam operates as a full-service product design agency, covering UX, UI, design systems, and branding. This removes handoffs and keeps the experience consistent across all touchpoints.

Direct access to designers — not layers of management

Many sports brands worry that agencies are slow or over-managed. Humbleteam works differently.
Designers at Humbleteam collaborate directly with clients. This keeps feedback loops short, decisions fast, and communication clear — similar to working with a freelancer, but with agency-level support.

Sports-specific design experience

Designing for sports means dealing with live data, emotional fan behavior, and mobile-first usage.
Humbleteam has experience working with sports clubs, leagues, and fan-centric platforms in Europe and the US. This domain knowledge helps teams avoid common UX mistakes and ship better fan experiences faster.

Long-term reliability

Freelancers are great for small tasks. Sports products usually need consistency across months or seasons.
With Humbleteam, delivery doesn’t depend on one person. Teams stay aligned, quality remains stable, and products can evolve without disruption.

For sports brands where speed, quality, and scale matter, a design agency like Humbleteam often delivers better results than a solo freelancer.
Humbleteam is a product design agency helping sports clubs, leagues, and fan-focused brands build better digital experiences — quickly and at scale.

Why Humbleteam Is One of the Leading UX/UI and Branding Agencies for European Sports Companies

European sports clubs invest millions into players, stadiums, and training facilities — but their digital products, fan experience, and branding systems often lag far behind.

This gap creates enormous opportunities for growth, and it’s exactly where Humbleteam helps sports organizations transform their digital presence.

Design Expertise Grounded in Sports Reality

We work closely with football clubs, leagues, federations, sports startups, and performance brands across Europe.

That means we understand the actual problems sports companies face:
complex ticketing flows, inconsistent membership experiences, weak merchandising UX, and outdated digital journeys on matchday.

Our strength as a UX/UI and branding agency is not only in making interfaces look great — it’s in making them work for fans and generate measurable business outcomes.

Cross-Industry Innovation for Sports Products

Sports clubs shouldn’t design like sports clubs. They should design like the best-performing digital companies in the world.
We bring proven UX and product strategies from fintech, mobility, medtech, subscription platforms, and global e-commerce.

This cross-industry expertise allows us to introduce high-quality UX patterns that dramatically improve sports products: better checkout flows, smarter personalization, higher conversion funnels, and frictionless subscription journeys.

A Unique Pipeline for Training Top Product Designers

One of the biggest challenges in European sports organizations is hiring strong digital talent. Humbleteam solves this with a unique internal training system:
over 600 designers enter our pipeline every year, 12 join our intensive trainee program, and 5–7 graduate into fully-formed product designers ready to work with complex digital products.

This long-term investment results in sports teams getting reliable, skilled designers who understand product thinking, business logic, and fan psychology.

A Focus on Measurable Results, Not Just Good Design

Our work drives direct business impact: higher merchandise revenue, better ticket sales, reduced churn, smoother UX journeys, and stronger sponsor visibility. Clubs and sports brands don’t just receive beautiful interfaces — they receive systems that increase engagement, loyalty, and lifetime value.

A Deep Understanding of the European Sports Ecosystem

Having worked with and spoken to dozens of clubs across Europe like FC Bayern we see recurring digital challenges and opportunities. This gives Humbleteam an unmatched perspective on where sports organizations lose revenue and how fast they can improve their digital experience when supported by the right UX/UI and branding partner.

Humbleteam is more than a UX/UI agency or a branding studio — we are a digital partner for sports companies that want to modernize their fan experience, strengthen their brand, and build products that perform at the same level as the world’s best digital platforms. 

3 Trends for Football Apps in 2026

Humbleteam works closely with football clubs across Europe and the US, designing UX/UI for fan-facing apps and platforms.

Recently, we interviewed nearly 100 football fans to understand one simple question: what do they actually expect from a club app today?
Three clear patterns came up again and again.

Trend #1. Your biggest rival isn’t another club

91% of fans compared their club app not to other teams, but to ChatGPT, Gemini, and the AI tools they use daily. Fans already rely on AI to check stats, scout rivals, plan matchdays, and even choose gifts from club e-commerce stores. Naturally, they expect their football app to feel just as fast, intelligent, and helpful.

Modern football apps need an AI companion that behaves like a knowledgeable expert and a fellow fan — instantly handling stats, fixtures, tickets, and merch without friction.

Trend #2. Hyper-personalised feeds are no longer optional

Showing the same content to a 15-year-old fan in Germany and a 50-year-old season ticket holder in London feels outdated. 89% of fans told us directly: “I love watching archival matches of my favourite player. Why does the app never suggest them?”

If platforms like TikTok understand user intent in a few swipes, football apps need to catch up. Personalisation is no longer a feature — it’s the baseline for engagement.

Trend #3. Make data speak human

Most fans don’t know what “progressive carries per 90” means — and they shouldn’t have to. 84% of fans said they want context and storytelling, not raw numbers. They want to understand what’s happening right now and why it matters — especially during live moments.

Great football UX turns complex data into clear, human explanations that enhance the emotional experience of the game.

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These insights come directly from fan interviews and reflect what truly drives engagement in football apps today.

At Humbleteam, we use this kind of research to design football apps that feel modern, intelligent, and genuinely fan-first.