Blog

• Room Full of Builders: Reflections from My First National Sports Forum

  Attending The National Sports Forum for the first time was equal parts exhausting and energizing, especially coming straight off our home opener at St. Louis CITY SC. Serving as a Case Cup judge and connecting with leaders from across the industry reinforced something powerful: the future of sports is in thoughtful, capable hands. From conversations on AI, sponsorship innovation, and event strategy to impromptu discussions about technology and youth soccer, the week sparked new ideas that are already influencing how we think at CITY. Hosting CITY After Dark at Energizer Park and showcasing what we are building in St. Louis made it even more meaningful. What stood out most was not a single panel, but the sense of community. It felt less like a conference and more like a room full of people genuinely committed to building better experiences for fans and for each other.

  Jeremy Tripp · 2/27/2026

• Beyond the Transaction: The Feedback Loop That Makes Local Work (Part 3)

  Operating a stadium with 100% local food vendors is complex, but the real advantage is not novelty, it is relationship. With 25 independent partners comes operational variability, shifting demand patterns, and constant learning. That is where the feedback loop matters. Through regular sales reviews and open conversations, we share data on throughput, mobile ordering behavior, demand by stand, and small operational changes that can unlock growth. These discussions are not about critiquing menus. They are about understanding behavior and helping partners succeed on matchday. Fan experience is not just software or payments or photos. It is the environment, the flow, and the human connections behind the scenes that make the system better every week.

  Jeremy Tripp · 2/21/2026

• Designing for Confidence: The Hidden Psychology Behind Stadium Food (Part 2)

  If control drives behavior on matchday, confidence is a close second. In a stadium environment where decisions happen in seconds, visuals reduce uncertainty and make exploration feel safe. With 25 local restaurant partners rotating menus throughout the season, traditional food photography was not an option. So we built our own system, complete with a mobile photo studio in the basement of Energizer Park. On matchday, new items are photographed, edited, and uploaded in near real time so fans can see exactly what they are ordering at kiosks and in the app. It may seem small, but removing hesitation increases cart adds, improves decision speed, and enhances the overall experience. Behind every great food photo is a little psychology and a lot of intentional design.

  Jeremy Tripp · 2/20/2026

• Food Is a Product: Designing Matchday Dining Around Human Behavior (Part 1)

  What does a product and technology team have to do with food? More than most people think. At Energizer Park, supporting 25 local restaurant partners goes far beyond keeping the POS online. It means understanding how behavior changes in a stadium environment where time is compressed and emotion runs high. Drawing on lessons from quick-service psychology, we focus on one core principle: people want control. When fans feel rushed, they default to safe choices. When they can order on their own schedule through mobile, they explore more, spend more, and tip more. What started as a bet on mobile ordering, once dismissed as insignificant in stadiums, now represents roughly 30% of orders and helps smooth peak demand. This is not just food operations. It is behavior design at stadium scale.

  Jeremy Tripp · 2/19/2026

• AI Isn’t Killing Product Management. It’s Expanding It.

  Hot takes claim AI signals the end of product management. I see the opposite. This moment feels like a return to fundamentals: clarity of objectives, deep customer understanding, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to move the work forward. With tools like Cursor, Vercel, and Supabase, product leaders can now build real, production-ready software themselves, not just decks and requirements. That shift reinforces core skills rather than replacing them. When you can prototype, test, and ship independently, measures of success become sharper, storytelling becomes tangible, and experimentation accelerates. AI does not eliminate the role. It increases leverage, expands the toolkit, and pushes product managers to become more technical, more opinionated, and more empowered builders while staying deeply customer-obsessed.

  Jeremy Tripp · 1/28/2026

• Designing for the Next Generation: Inside the Launch of CITY Kids Club

  Launching a kids club may look simple from the outside, but the reality is far more complex. It requires designing not just for children, but for parents making decisions around trust, privacy, value, and logistics. With CITY Kids Club, we approached it as a core part of our fan experience, not a standalone promotion. Built into the same digital foundation that powers the broader CITY ecosystem, the program was designed to feel seamless, intentional, and easy for families to navigate. We were especially deliberate about value, ensuring that included CITY2 tickets alone justify the membership cost, with everything else feeling like upside. More than a merch bundle or a few special moments, Kids Club is about starting a long-term relationship with the next generation of supporters.

  Jeremy Tripp · 1/21/2026

• Innovation Isn’t Flashy. It’s Frictionless.

  Innovation in sports tech is often confused with spectacle. New buzzwords, new sponsorships, new headlines. But the most meaningful advancements are rarely visible. They are operational, invisible, and focused on removing friction for real fans in real moments. From reducing entry bottlenecks to shaving seconds off concession transactions, this piece explores why true innovation is measured not by what looks futuristic, but by how seamlessly fans move through a matchday experience.

  Jeremy Tripp · 1/15/2026

• The Discipline of Less: Why Great Fan Experience Starts With Saying No

  In sports tech, the pressure to ship more never stops: more features, more integrations, more campaigns. But chasing “more” quietly drains the one resource no product team can replenish: time. This article explores the discipline required to build meaningful fan experiences in an environment defined by constant urgency. Instead of pursuing every good idea, high-performing teams focus on eliminating the single biggest point of friction for fans, protecting their roadmap, and limiting how many truly transformative features ship each year. The result is not less innovation, but more impact. If you had to obsess over solving just one fan problem this year, what would it be?

  Jeremy Tripp · 1/7/2026

• Ace: Building an AI Teammate for Every Fan

  When we launched Ace, the goal was never to chase headlines. It was to remove friction in the moments that matter most. Whether helping a fan quickly find vegetarian options near their section or guiding someone to the sensory room when they need it immediately, Ace is designed to serve real needs in real time. Built in-house to meet the standard our supporters expect, Ace evolves significantly in 2026 with new layers of capability that will reveal themselves as matches return. AI tools like this are not for everyone, and they do not need to be. But for the fans who rely on them, they can be transformative. This is just the beginning.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/23/2025

• Depth Over Volume: What 30 Books Taught Me About Thinking Better in 2025

  Last year I read more than 100 books. This year, I chose depth over speed. Fewer titles, denser ideas, and more time spent wrestling with complex thinking instead of consuming quick-hit business advice. In a world optimized for hot takes and short attention spans, reading deeply has become one of the few ways to build real mental models and sharpen judgment over time. From long-view biographies by Walter Isaacson to psychology and technology works that reshape how we think about decisions and power, plus a few unexpected fiction favorites, this list highlights the books that most meaningfully influenced my thinking in 2025. If you care about leadership, product, and the future of technology, there is something here for you.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/23/2025

• Forget the Title. Embrace the Mindset.

  Lately there has been a wave of anti-product-manager rhetoric circulating in tech circles. I do not fully buy into it, but it has forced a useful reflection. Strip away the frameworks and buzzwords, and product at its core is simple: find opportunities that genuinely matter and take ownership of fixing them. No gatekeeping. No inflated language. Just empathy for the user, clarity on what creates impact, and relentless follow-through. In fan experience especially, the people who embody this mindset are often the difference between incremental improvement and real progress. Whatever title they hold, they are worth their weight in gold.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/18/2025

• Own the Identity Layer: Why Clubs Must Stop Outsourcing Their Fans

  Fan experiences feel fragmented because the systems behind them are fragmented. Ticketing, concessions, retail, and membership often operate in silos, managed by vendors with little incentive to connect the dots, leaving clubs with only a partial understanding of their own supporters. At CITY, we treated this as a foundational problem. By making the app the front door and tying transactions, memberships, check-ins, and engagement into a unified profile, we focused on building a true fan identity layer. The best consumer companies would never outsource their customer understanding, because personalization and long-term growth depend on it. Sports organizations face real hurdles in replacing legacy systems and rethinking partnerships, but operating without a clear view of your fans is far harder in the long run.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/16/2025

• Leading With Intent in the Most Accelerated Technological Shift of Our Lives

  Public sentiment toward AI is cooling right as leadership pressure to adopt it is accelerating, especially in sports. The flashy demos are everywhere, but the real work is finding durable value that actually improves the fan journey. That requires a shift from “what could AI do?” to “what should AI do?” At CITY, that mindset shapes Ace, our in-app assistant designed to deliver instant, accurate answers and reduce friction, not replace human connection. We also treat AI conversations as a diagnostic tool: repeated questions are often a signal that our experience or communication is broken. The next wave is not chatbots that impress, but operational assistants that integrate with real-time data, personalization, and workflows to make matchday smoother for fans and staff. How are you moving from AI experiments to tools that actually run the business?

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/11/2025

• Beyond the Pitch: Building a Club That Belongs to Its Community

  A club’s value is not measured only in wins and losses, but in the lives it touches beyond matchday. Being recognized by Major League Soccer as Engagement & Inclusion Club of the Year and for Youth Fan Engagement reflects a deeper commitment to community impact. From building futsal courts in Cahokia Heights and offering free CITY Futures programming, to bringing CITY Moves into dozens of schools and partnering with touch2see to support visually impaired fans at Energizer Park, the goal is simple: lower barriers and create belonging. True legacy is built when a club invests in access, inclusion, and opportunity twelve months a year, not just under the lights.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/9/2025

• Beyond Season Tickets: Building the Subscription Layer of Fandom

  For years, many clubs have treated fandom as binary: you are either a season ticket holder or you are not. But today’s supporters are signaling something different. They want deeper connection, identity, and access beyond matchday, and they are willing to pay for it. That insight shaped the creation of myCITY+, a paid membership designed to turn high intent into a lasting relationship. With benefits like CITY Pay cashback, priority positioning on the season ticket waitlist, and exclusive perks, the model rewards engagement over time rather than one-off transactions. As subscription behavior becomes second nature across industries, the opportunity for sports is clear: shift from transactional thinking to continuous value creation. The next evolution of fandom will belong to clubs that build a true membership layer, not just a ticketing funnel.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/8/2025

• Utility Wins: Why the Best Sports Apps Focus on Function, Not Flash

  In stadium environments, speed and clarity matter more than spectacle. While flashy features often dominate headlines, fans consistently ask for something simpler: digital tools that are reliable, fast, and easy to use. On matchday, when thousands of supporters are scanning tickets, navigating concessions, and racing back to their seats, friction is the enemy. That reality shaped our approach to the CITY App as a utility-first platform built to reduce stress through integrated ticketing, seamless payments, and an AI assistant that delivers instant answers. The next layer is thoughtful personalization inspired by best-in-class consumer platforms, using data to surface relevant content, suggest shorter lines, and anticipate needs without being intrusive. Substance over sizzle is not just a philosophy, it is the foundation for meaningful fan experience innovation.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/5/2025

• Raising the Standard: A Year of Building the Connected Stadium

  Another year at St. Louis CITY SC meant another step forward in redefining what a club app and stadium ecosystem can deliver. From integrating myCITY+ directly into the CITY App to fully rebuilding CITY Pay and expanding it across every concession stand, retail shop, and walkout market, the focus remained on creating a seamless, high-value experience for fans. We introduced real-time CITY Pay Offers inside the wallet and launched Ace, our conversational AI designed to bring speed, personalization, multilingual support, and live stadium intelligence to matchday. Each milestone builds toward a smarter, more connected, and more rewarding environment at Energizer Park, with even bigger advancements ahead.

  Jeremy Tripp · 12/3/2025