Mobile makes up more than 50% of F&B orders at Vivint Arena, with almost 100% either mobile or at kiosks.Courtesy of Vivint Arena
The most difficult aspect of the Utah Jazz achieving mobile ordering adoption north of 50% was explaining to fans that they could order food and drinks from anywhere inside Vivint Arena.
As fans gradually returned to the arena during the past two seasons, many who were on board with mobile ordering continued to make their way to the concourse first before then making their selections on the Jazz/Vivint Arena app.
“It’s muscle memory,” said VenueNext CEO Anthony Perez, whose company provides mobile ordering capabilities at Vivint Arena. “At the level of adoption that the Jazz have, you’re in a much better position to start to change those habits.”
The Jazz, VenueNext and concessionaire Levy are still working to recondition their customers’ long-ingrained F&B habits, but the venue’s mobile ordering transition otherwise leads the industry. Mobile ordering adoption rates across sports tend to sit in the single digits or low double digits. But Vivint Arena was well down the mobile ordering path when the pandemic hit, giving its operators a valuable head start on a journey that’s now been undertaken by teams and venues at every level of sports.
“The Jazz are really in a league of their own, and there are a lot of good reasons for that,” said Sandeep Satish, vice president of strategy and analytics for E15 Group and managing director of DBK Studio for Levy.
One significant reason: Mobile is tied to every aspect of the fan experience at Vivint Arena — merchandise, ticketing, health screening, and an in-venue digital currency program called Jazz Notes are all housed in the team and venue’s shared YinzCam-built app. There are 60-plus guest-serving locations in the venue; roughly 98% use mobile ordering or self-service kiosks.
“The Jazz have really provided the blueprint on what a venue should do if this is the experience they want to create. They have great results to validate that this is an effective way to enhance the guest experience and leverage tech in a complementary way,” said Perez.
Road-mapping
The Jazz fan base is tech-savvy and highly engaged with the app, said Brooks Steele, Jazz director of digital. The team ranks in the NBA’s top six in terms of app users, but in the top two for pageviews, time spent in app, and app sessions, despite having half as many users as the Los Angeles Lakers, for example.
The team first introduced mobile ordering in early 2018 around the same time Vivint Arena became the first cashless venue in the NBA. Mobile ordering was limited to merchandise from the team store but spread to food and beverage and in-seat merchandise delivery by mid-2018.
The Jazz started the pandemic-hit 2020-21 season with just 10% crowd capacity, but that allowed them to experiment with their mobile strategy. By the 2021 playoffs, Vivint Arena crowds were at 100% and arena operators had settled on an order flow that begins as soon as a fan scans a ticket, which is housed in the team/venue app, to enter the building. An option to place an order through the app is immediately sent to the fan’s phone, or fans can scan F&B-ordering QR codes scattered throughout the building.
There are no menu boards in the arena; menus are viewed through the app or a kiosk. Once the order is placed, an SMS text message, email, or digital board lets customers know their order’s status. Staff were shifted into guest service roles in which they help direct traffic or fulfill orders as needed.
“We spent a lot of time with the Jazz and VenueNext road-mapping this,” said Satish. “The scale of this is really unparalleled, and we think it can work at other venues.”
The post-pandemic return of fans to Vivint Arena for the 2020-21 season gave the team and its partners an opportunity to share the mobile ordering message alongside other important info, like changes in the size of allowed bags, the move to digital ticketing and COVID-related info.
“All of a sudden you had a real strong purpose to use what was in your hand to have a good experience,” said Levy’s Rich Waters, vice president of hospitality strategy at Vivint Arena.
The arena significantly shifted away from hardware point-of-sale devices — over a hundred POS devices were eliminated. A few locations still have traditional POS checkouts, primarily for alcohol purchases.
Payoff
Perez said venues and teams have backed away from mobile ordering as the pandemic wanes and capacity restrictions are lifted. Labor shortages in some cases contributed to venue operators falling back on what they knew, the traditional queues and order flows of decades past. In many cases, Perez said those teams and venues hadn’t fully committed to a mobile-first experience throughout the arena.
That wasn’t the case with the Jazz, and they’re reaping the benefits.
Vivint Arena is now at 50% to 55% mobile ordering for NBA games; the figure fluctuates for other types of family events or concerts. Mobile ordering has improved pedestrian flow by reducing lines and crowds throughout the arena’s concourses. Customer satisfaction scores are going up, and the Jazz/Vivint Arena app went from a two-star rating in 2017 to now 4.8 in the Apple app store. The app ranked No. 1 in the NBA in dwell time during the month of December (2021), according to Steele.
The Jazz continue to promote pregame ordering by fans and use post-purchase push notifications asking for feedback to learn where adjustments need to be made.
Vivint Arena has seen an almost 100% increase in order volume since the mobile transition began four years ago. Basket size — the number of items in an order — increased 55% from October to December 2021 as compared to October to December 2020. Check averages have increased 7% to 10% for mobile orders, compared to non-mobile orders, and a fan can now get a Donovan Mitchell jersey delivered to his or her seat within 15 minutes.
Those sales figures could grow even more if Levy deploys the mobile age verification for alcohol purchases.
“There is so much more we can do with the phone, how you order, how you authenticate, how you fulfill,” said Satish. “It’s really going to come down to what the fans and the data tell us.”