Most businesses evaluate customer value based solely on upfront ticket sales. The New York Red Bulls tested that assumption and discovered that evaluating total matchday engagement offers a far more accurate picture of fan value.
Vamsi Krishna Kunapuli leads analytics for the club, one of the original MLS teams, founded as the MetroStars in 1996 and rebranded by Red Bull in 2006. The club plays in a 25,000-seat stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, and hosts tens of major events a year beyond its MLS schedule. His team supports the front office across marketing, ticket sales, and partnerships with one core mission: maximizing operational efficiency and driving return on investment.
Vamsi came to sports through a rich background in experimentation. At YouTube Originals, he tested thumbnails and content performance across diverse global audiences. At Fanatics, he tested promotional models and engagement flows at scale. At the Red Bulls, the goal is converting fan touchpoints into stadium visits while ensuring an exceptional fan experience and protecting commercial efficiency.
Rethinking Fan Value Beyond the Ticket
A common assumption in sports business is that high-value upfront ticket buyers always represent the highest total spenders. Through multi-season data analysis and targeted testing, Vamsi’s team learned that fan value is multi-dimensional.
When evaluating attendance patterns and overall matchday spend, including concessions, merchandise, and stadium activations, the data revealed that attendee groups interact with the venue in distinct ways. Single-match attendees, for example, often seek a comprehensive event experience across all stadium touchpoints.
“Even with a lower entry ticket price, a fan's propensity to engage with the full matchday offering can be significant across different areas of the stadium,” Vamsi notes.
Rather than relying on simple averages, the team layers A/B testing onto fan segment comparisons to understand how different promotional structures influence overall engagement and repeat visits. “It's a combination of experimentation and analytics,” he says, “driven by experimentation first.”
Refining the Core Business Metrics
These insights helped evolve how the club evaluates success, moving beyond basic ticket averages to a more holistic view of fan contribution across the entire event visit.
This shift refined marketing strategies, audience segmentation, and outreach models. Vamsi emphasizes that customer segments should never remain static. A definition like “lives within 20 kilometers, attends five games a year” is only useful if continually re-tested. Today, the club refreshes fan segments dynamically, recognizing that every event features a unique opponent, timing, and audience profile.
A Losing Test Isn't a Failure
Drawing on his background in product management, Vamsi views negative test results as essential guardrails.
“A losing test isn't a failure,” he explains. “It prevents you from making costly mistakes.”
For example, if a strategic initiative or pricing adjustment doesn't move the needle, the result still offers valuable data. It clarifies whether price, timing, scheduling, or messaging was the true variable.
His advice for teams is twofold: first, don't let perfection stall execution; second, when an experiment yields negative results, conduct a root-cause analysis. Those learnings fuel smarter follow-up tests.
Host Ashley Stirrup noted a complementary strategy: testing the inverse of a hypothesis to confirm whether a true lever exists. Vamsi agreed: “Sometimes you learn a lot more from an unexpected result than from a successful experiment.”
Aligning Strategy with Clear Organizational Goals
Cross-functional alignment succeeds when leadership establishes clear, shared objectives. Challenges arise when technical and business teams operate in silos without a unified vision.
Vamsi stresses the importance of macro-level thinking: asking how a single change impacts the broader ecosystem and ensuring experiments serve strategic goals rather than existing “just for the sake of testing.”
Data Infrastructure Fuels Creative Ideas
High-quality test ideas stem from asking sharp questions about missing data. Once technical gaps are filled, stakeholders across the organization naturally generate new hypotheses.
Vamsi emphasizes that commercial stakeholders, who live and breathe the operational details daily, should drive the core testing questions. Analytics serves as both a data partner and a strategic thought partner to bring those ideas to life.
Looking ahead, the focus remains on advancing data integration, empowering business units to conduct sound experiments independently, and maintaining a culture of rigor. As Vamsi puts it, hosting every match is like planning a major 25,000-person event. It requires precision, seamless execution, and a clear focus on the outcome.
Key Takeaways
- Challenge core assumptions: Evaluate fan value holistically across all matchday touchpoints rather than relying solely on upfront ticket price.
- Align on total value: Track metrics that reflect overall engagement and operational return.
- Embrace negative test results: Treat failed experiments as valuable data points that prevent missteps and illuminate key business levers.
- Keep segmentation dynamic: Continuously update fan segments to account for event-specific variables.
- Empower domain experts: Let operational stakeholders drive testing hypotheses, supported by robust data infrastructure.
Full conversation with Vamsi Krishna Kunapuli, Director of Analytics at New York Red Bulls, on The Experimentation Edge.
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