Enhancing the Game day Experience

There’s nothing quite like a live NBA game. The lights, the sound, the sea of jerseys. It all hits different when you're there in person.

But what fans remember most isn't always just the game. It's also everything that leads up to it: the parking, the lines, the entrances, the waiting. For a lot of people, that part feels stressful.

That was the gap we set out to close.

The Mavericks team came to us with a list of fan frustrations and ideas like parking headaches, arena entrance mistakes, finding seats, and figuring out how to participate in game day activities. None of the solutions existed yet, so we sketched ideas for each problem.

We imagined a parking helper, a food-order flow, an entrance guide, and more. We just needed to figure out where these individual solutions would live.

That question, “Where do all these things belong?”, turned out to be the moment everything changed.

To figure out where these ideas should live, we started by mapping the entire fan journey, from leaving home to finding their seat and everything in between.

We interviewed real fans, sketched out their steps, and looked at the moments that caused friction. Parking. Entry. Getting food. Finding seats. Staying in the loop during the game.

Seeing it all laid out helped us understand how these problems weren’t random. They were all part of the same timeline. One delay or confusion affected everything that came after it.

Answering “Where do all these things belong?” made the direction clear: they needed to live together, not apart. And that’s where the idea for the Gameday Experience really began to take shape.

Once we laid everything out, user journeys, pain points, and the rough sketches, it became clear. We weren’t just designing a few helpful features.

We were designing a new way for fans to move through game day.

That’s when the idea clicked, all of these tools needed to live in one place, built around the natural rhythm of game day itself. A single space inside the app that guides you from home to your seat and keeps you engaged the whole way through.

That’s how the Gameday Experience was born not a feature, but a flow.

The Gameday Experience wasn’t just a bundle of features, it was a flow, inspired directly by the fan journey we had mapped out earlier.

We designed it to follow the real timeline of a fan’s day, from leaving home to sitting in their seat. Every screen, every interaction was placed exactly where it made sense in that sequence.

We built a new Gameday section in the app. One entry point. A clear path forward.

Inside, fans could:

• Check their tickets and see exactly where they were sitting

• Plan their trip with custom directions for driving, public transport, or Uber

• Get smart parking suggestions based on seat location, and save where they parked

• Find the best gate to enter, cutting down confusion and long walks

• Order food and drinks from their seat, with real-time updates

• Follow the game with live stats, scores, and interactive features

• Buy merch while the game energy was still high

Everything was designed to match how a real game day unfolds no jumping between tabs, no hunting for the right screen. The app finally moved with the fan, not against them.

To bring this flow to life, I worked closely with the dev team and integration partners like Google Maps, Apple Maps, Uber, DART Metro, and Ticketmaster.

The Mavericks already had their arena mapped on Google and Apple Maps, which made it easier to calculate the best entrances and parking spots based on seat location. We used those views directly in the ticketing and travel planning flows.

Most of the work came down to stitching everything together and making sure it felt seamless, whether you were buying a ticket or figuring out where to enter.

Once the Gameday Experience went live, the results spoke for themselves:

It wasn’t just about the numbers. Fans started relying on the app for their entire game day before, during, and even after the match. The experience felt smoother, more connected, and a lot less stressful.

The app finally felt like it was designed around them. Because it was.