———————————————————————————————————————Key takeaways:
- Without a unified customer view across ticketing, matchday interactions, retail, and content, even fast-growing leagues struggle to fully understand – and monetize – their audiences.
- Customer data platforms enable leagues and clubs to move from passive data collection to active personalization, automating engagement across all touchpoints.
- AI-powered content and data technologies transform video into real-time behavioral intelligence, enriching fan profiles with signals that make individualized marketing at scale possible.
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Major League Soccer’s 31st season, which kicked off last month, will probably struggle to eclipse the achievements of its predecessor. In 2025, the league set new benchmarks for fan engagement across viewership, attendance, digital, and social platforms, cementing its position as a growing force in North America and beyond. Here are a few numbers to put it into perspective:
- The 2025 regular season ranked second-highest in total attendance in MLS history, with 11.2 million fans and average crowds of 21,988 per match, resulting in ticketing revenue reaching an all-time high.
- During the regular season, MLS games averaged 3.7 million viewers per week – a 29% increase over 2024. The MLS Cup final delivered record-breaking consumption, with over 4.6 million viewers across all platforms.
- League and club social media accounts registered a record 13.7 billion impressions in 2025, up 17% from a year earlier. MLS channels now reach over 109 million followers — a 10% year-over-year.
In one area, though, there was not enough progress. According to “MLS – Club Fan Data Assessment 2025,“ an internal audit conducted to evaluate how the league’s teams collect, manage, and utilize fan data, two main challenges remained:
- Teams lacked a full customer view from purchase behaviour, content engagement, game day activities, etc.
- Actioning data to automate and personalize the fan journey and experience was too difficult and time-consuming.
A league-wide data reset
To address these challenges, MLS recently partnered with StellarAlgo, a Calgary-based company that provides a customer data platform (CDP) tailored for sports organizations. StellarAlgo was no stranger to the league. It has been working with the LA Galaxy since 2017, and helped the club improve single-game ticket revenue, move fans up the ticketing product ladder, and maximize conversions and customer lifetime value.
As part of the new partnership with MLS, the league and its 30 clubs will have access to StellarAlgo’s CDP, allowing them to gain fan insights and deliver more personalized experiences through:
- A unified, single fan view. League data will be shared with clubs, including new fan records and deeper insights into existing fans, thereby deepening the understanding of fan interests.
- Detection of ideal engagement opportunities. Based on unified fan data, StellarAlgo’s CDP will recommend when to engage fans and suggest sports-specific plays to support ticket, merchandise, and fan loyalty objectives.
- Easier fan activation and measurement. MLS clubs will be able to easily activate fans, using no-code segmentation and reporting on results, revenue, and ticket growth.
Expanding the data playbook
The collaboration builds on StellarAlgo’s work with major sports leagues across North America, including the NBA, NHL, and Minor League Baseball. “Leagues and teams are looking to collaborate more closely around the shared view of the fan,” said Vincent Ircandia, StellarAlgo’s CEO. “The fact is fans expect more personalization. These audiences aren’t homogenous, so teams are looking to the leagues to give them more support.”
To fully meet fans’ expectations, rights holders must amplify their CDPs with an essential component: real-time content metadata. By tagging and indexing each piece of video content they publish, sports organizations can feed CDPs with rich insights that can be used to personalize every interaction with fans across all touchpoints.
Some organizations are already doing that. The NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, for example, uses WSC’s content platform to create a myriad of video assets. When published, these assets unlock valuable first-party data about fans’ content preferences – e.g., what players or play types (dunks, three-pointers, blocks) a user cares about most – which can be used to personalize future offers.
Where AI meets the fan journey
The lesson is clear: personalization requires more than isolated data points. The fan journey only becomes truly individualized when information from ticketing, retail, streaming, owned channels, and partners is brought together into a single view. But transactions alone don’t tell the full story. To understand intent, affinity, and momentum, rights holders must also see how fans interact with content and factor that behavior into every decision.
This is where AI-powered content and data platforms come in. By automatically tagging and indexing every highlight, clip, and recap, video content becomes a continuous stream of behavioral signals that enrich fan profiles in real time. Those insights allow teams and leagues to personalize faster, act smarter, and measure impact more precisely. If MLS builds on that foundation, the league’s 31st season will be its most personalized one yet.
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Actionable Insights:
- Make sure every highlight, clip, and recap is indexed. Structured metadata turns everyday publishing into a stream of behavioral signals that can feed your CDP.
- Align content output with commercial goals. This involves understanding priority segments and producing tailored content journeys that support specific revenue objectives.
- Monitor how specific content types correlate with downstream actions (ticket purchases, merchandise sales, registrations) and refine your editorial strategy based on what actually drives fan activation.
