Two fans sat in the penalty box at Scotiabank Arena and watched the Toronto Maple Leafs warm up for their first-round Stanley Cup playoff game against the Ottawa Senators, their hockey heroes mere feet away.
“We didn’t know you could do this,” they said.
The fans were two of the 15,000 members trialing Fan Access, the fan engagement program that Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment (MLSE) is piloting during the Leafs’ Stanley Cup playoff run. MLSE plans to roll out the program more widely this fall. The company envisions Fan Access eventually becoming the connective tissue between the numerous sports properties it controls, including the Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC and the AHL’s Marlies, and Scotiabank Arena and its thriving concert business. At present, each of those entities (Marlies excluded) has its own app.
The Raptors are the only NBA team in Canada, and the Maple Leafs are one of the biggest, most established brands in hockey. Demand outstrips availability, and only 2% of MLSE’s fan base ever makes it inside Scotiabank Arena. Fan Access — fans sign up for free to enter contests and receive exclusives, including content; there are no loyalty points, per se — is intended to address that disparity.
“The key word is ‘access.’ It is not a reward program,” said MLSE CEO Keith Pelley. “It gives you access to benefits and a way to touch our brand, depending on what your priority is. In terms of the size of our portfolio, we wanted one pathway to interact with our brands.”
Since Pelley was hired in January 2024, he’s made all forms of access to MLSE’s properties a priority. For fans, that’s led to more arena tours, 10 open Leafs practices this past season (including some outdoors in other Ontario communities) and a Raptor Fan Day in which 10,000 fans paid average ticket prices of $30 to watch. By the end of that event, Raptors players were in the crowd tossing their jerseys and shoes to fans.
“It was extraordinary,” Pelley said. “Most of those fans would never have been to a Raptors game before.”
Humza Teherany, MLSE’s chief strategy and innovation officer, and his Digital Labs team built Fan Access from scratch after more than a year working on the project. Thus far, Fan Access offers around 7,500 access points, whether through pieces of content or experiences. Contests are free to enter and more than 8,000 prizes have been given out so far, including thousands of tickets to Maple Leafs pregame tailgates held outside the arena. When 2,500 free pregame tailgate spots opened to members, they were booked within 23 seconds. The program so far has more engagement than registered users.
The first contest winners claimed 10 pairs of suite tickets to the Leafs’ regular-season finale against the Detroit Red Wings in mid-April. Most of the fans had never been to the arena, and some had driven across Ontario for the game — three- or four-hour treks. Like the penalty box perk, making the set-aside suite available to the winners cost MLSE essentially nothing.
“Our unfair advantage is access,” said MLSE Chief Marketing Officer Shannon Hosford. “It’s our major differentiator from everyone else. How do we provide that in a meaningful way and create brand loyalty?”
Beyond thousands of Fan Access T-shirts and the free tickets that have been doled out, MLSE is producing special videos with players and coaches and taking Fan Access members into inaccessible parts of Scotiabank Arena, such as locker rooms.
Fan Access is likely to spur more intermingling of MLSE’s teams and athletes, whether through content or live experiences (meet a Toronto FC player before a Leafs game, for example) that can be won through Fan Access. That may, one day, include the Blue Jays, Canada’s only MLB team. Their owners, Rogers Communications, acquired a controlling interest in MLSE last fall, though few, if any, significant efforts have been made to more closely combine the MLB club and MLSE since.
“Obviously, we would love to incorporate the Blue Jays if they were interested, when the time is right,” Pelley said. “But that’s definitely down the road.”
The various MLSE team and venue apps have been installed more than 2.3 million times, with 300,000 monthly active users spread across the various platforms. Fan Access’ launch is the first step toward that ecosystem coming together. Fans’ data will be used to tailor experiences, so that Fan Access members aren’t bombarded with everything MLSE if they really only care about Toronto FC, for example. MLSE ticketing partner Ticketmaster will play a key role in that gradual process, too.
“I think our vision is a consolidated path in the future,” Teherany said. “You come into something like Fan Access and can access everything.”
MLSE opted against incorporating loyalty or rewards points in part because its huge fan base is already engaged, especially with the Leafs and Raptors; MLSE just needed to give them more. MLSE is also slowly integrating sponsors into the program, but Teherany noted that Fan Access is “not meant to be a giant ad network.”
At this early stage, fan education is key. In advance of the program fully opening to the public this fall, a big effort is showing off sweepstakes winners — akin to presenting the oversized check to a lottery winner — whether via social media or before and during games on broadcasts and in the arena.
Teherany’s Digital Labs team is studying fans’ dwell time, engagement and interactions in Fan Access.
Fan Access will always provide a free membership level, but will eventually include paid tiers with more premium perks. Pelley predicted that, next NHL and NBA seasons, every Leafs game will feature 100 free tickets attainable through Fan Access, and each Raptors game 250.
“The long-term vision is this provides incredible consumer clarity, instead of consumer confusion, if you’re a fan of all our brands,” he said. “Down the road, everybody that will interact with our brand will come here and we will communicate with them in there.”
