What fans told the league in their own words this season. Across 40,111 written comments, fans rate the people and the show highest — staff and in-arena entertainment are real strengths — and point to the tech, the parking, and the concession stand as the places with the most room to improve. Running underneath it all is one thread: fans want the night to feel worth what they pay.
7 core survey categories40,111 fans wrote in117,975 surveys in total2024-25 season · Oct 22 – Apr 13
The front page
The core of the night, ranked by what matters most to fans.
The lead · start here
The most-talked-about part of the night — and the fix is the price, not the food.
More fans wrote about food and drink than any other part of the night, which makes it the single biggest place to win fans back. The food itself rates fine; it's the sticker shock at the register that fans notice. The same value question shows up in the parking lot and at the merch table too.
5,700fans mentioned it — the most of any topic
74%are unhappy specifically about the prices
3.74/5how the food tastes — not the problem
Read the full story
● Start here · Venue technology
The clearest quick win: make the tech just work
The app, mobile tickets, and scanners have the most room to improve. When they hiccup, a fan can get stuck at the gate — so this is about reliability, not new features.
2.41 / 5about half unhappy
● Start here · Getting there & parking
Fans treat the drive and the parking price as part of the ticket
Parking cost, traffic getting in, and confusing lots pile onto the bill before tip-off. Three separate problems that need three different owners.
3 problems in 1nearly half unhappy
● A strength · Staff & service
The best-loved part of the night — protect it
A friendly welcome is the single best-loved thing in the building. The one place to tighten up is fixing a problem once something's gone wrong.
Three parts of the night have the most room to improve. Two are already winning fans over.
We treated a part of the night as a priority when a fair number of fans were unhappy and enough of them raised it to trust the pattern. Here is every core part of the arena experience, from the biggest opportunity to the biggest strength.
Reading the chart. Venue technology, parking, and food & drink have more room to improve than a typical part of the night, while staff and in-arena entertainment are the arena's biggest wins, worth protecting. The cost question fans raise shows up here as a driver inside these categories — the loudest gripe within both food & drink and parking — and gets its own full write-up in the Special Report below. Merchandise looks middling here, yet almost two in three shoppers flagged a snag, so it stays one to watch.
A note on how to read this. The comments come from fans who chose to write something, so they highlight what people care enough to raise, not the exact share of everyone in the building. Each topic is counted among the fans who mentioned it, so we compare within a topic rather than lumping everything into one number. We looked hard for real, sizable gaps rather than running a formal statistical test, because the number of comments varies a lot from topic to topic.
The scoreboard
The tech, the parking and the prices have the most room to grow
Of the fans who brought each topic up, the share who were unhappy with it. Higher = more room to improve.
Room to improve Working well Typical across the night (31%)
Source: 2024-25 season fan comments. Each part is measured among the fans who mentioned it, so the counts differ. These are the topics fans chose to write about, not a poll of everyone.
Category by category
The seven parts of the night, each in full.
Seven parts of the arena experience make up the night, from the parking lot to the final buzzer. Each one gets a full write-up: what fans said, what's really driving it, and what to do about it. Click any card to read the full story.
01 · Start here
Venue technology
2.41avg / 5
49%unhappy
575fans
The app is the biggest opportunity. When it won't load a ticket, a fan gets stuck at the gate — so this is about making it work reliably, not adding features.
Read the full story
02 · Start here
Getting there & parking
3.25avg / 5
47%unhappy
2,553fans
Parking prices top the list, then traffic getting in. Three separate problems that each need their own owner.
Read the full story
03 · Start here
Food & drink
3.24avg / 5
40%unhappy
5,700fans
Price is the story, not the food. Fixing what fans pay matters more than changing the menu.
Read the full story
04 · Worth watching
Merchandise
3.53avg / 5
2 in 3hit a snag
1,414fans
Prices and selling out of popular items are the gripes. Fewer fans are upset than in the top group, but most run into some kind of snag.
Read the full story
05 · Middle of the pack
Getting in & out
3.97avg / 5
27%unhappy
2,419fans
Finding the right gate and the crush on the way out are the sore spots. Better than the top three, but still worth watching.
Read the full story
06 · A strength
In-arena fun
4.17avg / 5
18%unhappy
3,136fans
The atmosphere is a genuine win. Keep it sharp — music and the DJ are the one thing fans nitpick.
Read the full story
07 · A strength
Staff & service
4.45avg / 5
13%unhappy
5,369fans
Staff friendliness is the best-loved thing in the building. The one place to tighten up: fixing a problem once something's gone wrong.
Read the full story
Fans also raised five topics beyond these seven — cost & value, comfort, game presentation, buying tickets, and premium seating. Because they were read from the raw comments rather than asked as survey questions, they get their own Special Report below ↓.
We have the detailed breakdown of specific issues for food & drink, parking, venue technology, and staff. For merchandise, getting in & out, and in-arena fun, we have the overall score and the topic fans raised most, but not a full issue-by-issue split this time around.
The bigger picture
A win lifts the mood, but a bad night still follows fans home.
Winning clearly helps: fans are more likely to recommend a game after a win (a recommend score of 9.2 after wins vs 8.5 after losses, on a 0–10 scale). But the scoreboard doesn't erase a rough experience. Fans who bring up an operational gripe — the concession prices, the parking, the value question — give a lower recommend score than fans just talking about the game itself — so teams can't wave weak feedback away with "we lost."
The bigger picture
What a fan complains about matters more than the final score
Average recommend score (0–10) by what the fan mostly wrote about. Among 43,732 fans at games we could match to a win or a loss.
Here's the surprise. Fans who write about cost give the lowest recommend score of all (8.28) — lower than fans venting about the game itself (9.25). In other words, a pricing problem drags a fan's night down harder than a loss does. That's the case for treating the experience as something worth investing in, win or lose.
Source: 2024-25 season, games matched to a win or loss (43,732 fans). This is a directional read, not proof of cause and effect.
Who owns this: the league and the teams together on cost; each team's operations staff on the specific fixes. The takeaway: a clean, fair, well-run night sets a floor that the scoreboard can't fully lift.
Teams & fans
A few teams stand out on the core categories, and your regulars are the toughest critics.
San Antonio shows up on more than one list — its fans are among the unhappiest on both parking and venue tech. Dallas has by far the most comments, so its elevated parking numbers aren't a fluke. Teams with only a few dozen comments are leads to check, not verdicts.
Getting there & parking The teams whose fans are unhappiest about the trip in and the price of a spot.
Team
Fans
Score / 5
Share unhappy
Read
DAL
1,349
3.03
53%
big sample · real signal
SAS
149
2.09
84%
also worst on tech
ATL
68
2.14
84%
small sample
PHI
105
3.05
54%
small sample
OKC
50
2.71
60%
small sample
Worth noting: Dallas carries the only large parking sample (1,349 comments) and still runs above half unhappy. San Antonio and Atlanta look worse on rate, but on far fewer comments — treat those as leads to check. On venue tech, San Antonio and Philadelphia stand out again.
Venue technology Where the app, tickets, and scanners frustrate fans most.
Team
Fans
Score / 5
Share unhappy
SAS
59
1.87
73%
PHI
27
2.10
63%
CHI
109
2.52
46%
MIN
65
2.72
45%
Venue-tech coverage is thin (as few as 25–110 comments per team), so read these as early flags. San Antonio tops both this list and parking — the clearest single team to start a closer look.
One-off buyers vs regulars Your most frequent fans are the hardest to please on the basics.
Measure
One-off buyers
Members / plans
Recommend score
8.96
8.57
Unhappy about food
34%
53%
Ask about premium seats
78%
79%
Unhappy about cost expanded topic
79%
93%
Fans in this group
76,217
39,338
Read: Members and plan holders are noticeably harder on food (53% unhappy vs 34%) and give a lower recommend score, even though they ask about premium seats at the same rate. The lesson for keeping regulars: protect the everyday basics they hit every game, don't just pile on perks. They're also far tougher on the value question (93% vs 79%) — unpacked in the Special Report below. This is a directional pattern; we don't have their later spending or attendance to prove it out.
Special ReportExpanded Category Analysis
Beyond the survey: five more topics fans raised on their own.
The seven categories above mirror the questions the post-game survey already asks. This special report covers five more — cost & value, comfort, game presentation, buying tickets, and premium seating — that no survey question asked about directly. They surfaced because fans chose to raise them in their own words, and the analysis read them straight from the raw text of 40,111 written comments using AI.
That's the real headline of this section. Because these topics are derived from what fans actually wrote — not from a fixed list of survey questions — the NBA can stand up a new topic whenever a new question comes up, without changing the survey or waiting for next season. Curious about accessibility, the halftime show, or how fans reacted to a specific promotion? The answer is already sitting in the comments. This is a research layer that grows with the questions you want to ask.
Read from raw textEvery topic here comes straight from fans' written comments, not a survey checkbox.
No new questions neededNew topics can be added any time, without touching the survey or the next fielding.
Same rigor as the core sevenScored the same way: share unhappy, problem rate, and fans' own words.
The standout expanded finding
The most negative signal fans sent isn't a survey category at all: they want the night to feel worth the price.
Cost & value is the most negative topic anywhere in the data — the lowest average score and the highest share of unhappy fans. Because it lives outside the survey's seven questions, it's the clearest example of what this expanded layer can surface. It also explains the price gripe that keeps showing up as the top driver inside food, parking, and merch.
◆ Expanded topic · the value question
It's not that the night costs too much. Fans want it to feel worth the price.
Cost and value drew more frustration than any other single topic this season. Fans aren't only saying prices are high — they're saying the price and what they got don't line up. The same feeling shows up at the food stand, in the parking lot, and at the merch table.
84%of fans who bring up cost are unhappy about it
2.16/5the lowest score of anything measured
3,576fans raised it in their comments
Read the full story
Where the value gripe lands
Parking prices85% unhappy
Food & drink prices74% unhappy
Cost & value overall84% unhappy
Why it's here, not up top. Cost isn't one of the seven survey categories — so instead of crowning it the headline, we surface it where it belongs: as the thread that ties the paid moments of the night together, read straight from the comments.
The rest of the expanded layer
Four more topics the survey never asked about.
Each was read from the comments and scored the same way as the core seven. Two are quiet wins; two have real friction worth a closer look.
◆ · Quiet win
Comfort
4.05avg / 5
24%unhappy
4,651fans
Seats, restrooms, and temperature — a high-volume topic that mostly works. Over 3 in 4 come away satisfied, so this is one to protect, not fix.
◆ · Scores well
Premium seating & clubs
3.88avg / 5
19%unhappy
1,115fans
The premium product largely delivers: fewer than 1 in 5 are unhappy. About half still note some kind of snag, so there's headroom in the details.
◆ · Worth watching
Game presentation
3.40avg / 5
38%unhappy
971fans
The run of show — timeouts, promos, the video board. More divisive than the in-arena entertainment score alone suggests: 38% unhappy, and a 62% problem rate.
◆ · Worth watching
Buying tickets
3.19avg / 5
40%unhappy
572fans
The purchase and transfer path before gameday. A smaller topic, but 2 in 5 who raise it walk away unhappy — a clear place to smooth the pre-game experience.
The expanded layer at a glance — all five topics, scored like the core seven
Expanded topic
Avg / 5
Share unhappy
Hit a problem
Fans
Cost & value the big theme
2.16
84%
91%
3,576
Buying tickets
3.19
40%
61%
572
Game presentation
3.40
38%
62%
971
Premium seating & clubs
3.88
19%
54%
1,115
Comfort: seats, restrooms, temp quiet win
4.05
24%
35%
4,651
Which teams' fans feel the value gap most — cost & value, by club
Cost & value The teams whose fans are unhappiest about the price of a night out.
Team
Fans
Value score
Share unhappy
Recommend
Read
DAL
1,911
1.98
91%
9.27
big sample · real signal
PHI
180
1.74
94%
7.14
unhappy + low recommend
WAS
57
1.98
95%
7.65
small sample
SAS
122
1.97
86%
9.05
small sample
BOS
87
1.91
86%
9.03
small sample
MIA
58
1.96
86%
9.10
small sample
How to read the expanded layer. These topics are derived from fans' written comments using AI, so they carry the same caveat as the core seven: they show what fans cared enough to raise, not a poll of everyone in the building. Two topics fans also talk about — crowd atmosphere and team performance — couldn't be matched cleanly to the 2024-25 survey records this round, so they're noted here but held out of the numbers. The strength of this layer is flexibility: the same method can answer a new question the moment the league asks it.
How we did this
What's solid, what's a hint, and what we left out.
This reads the season's written fan comments (Oct 22, 2024 – Apr 13, 2025). 40,111 fans wrote a comment; 117,975 filled out a survey in total; and 43,732 of those were at games we could match to a win or a loss. We flagged a part of the night as needing work when a lot of fans were unhappy and enough of them raised it to trust the pattern. Scores like "share unhappy" come from what fans wrote; the recommend score (0–10, what researchers call NPS) comes from the survey questions everyone answered. This report is built in two layers: the seven core categories that mirror the experience questions the survey already asks, and an expanded layer of five more topics — led by cost & value — read directly from the written comments using AI, a flexible way to answer questions the survey never asked.
What we left out, on purpose. We didn't run a formal statistical test across every topic, because the number of comments swings a lot from one topic to the next — so treat team-by-team gaps as leads to check, not final rankings. Two topics (crowd atmosphere and team performance) didn't line up cleanly with the survey this time and were left out of the main comparison. We didn't have custom "teams like yours" peer groups this round. And anything about future fan value is exploratory — we don't have later spending or attendance to prove it.
Reading the numbers honestly. These comments show what fans cared enough to bring up, not the exact share of everyone in the building. Each topic is measured among the fans who mentioned it, so we compare within a topic rather than across one big number. Read team results as directional and always check the sample size. Two things to reconcile before anything goes public: the merchandise count, and the in-arena entertainment "unhappy" figure. Quotes are exactly what fans wrote, typos and all.
◆ Special report · Expanded topic
Making the night feel worth the price
The season's most negative topic · 3,576 fans raised it · 2.16 out of 5, the clearest place to improve
Of everything fans wrote about this season, one theme drew more frustration than any other: fans want a night at the game to feel worth what it costs. This isn't about one pricey beer — it's about the whole evening. And it's the clearest, most winnable opportunity in this report, because it lands in the exact places fans open their wallets.
84%of fans who bring up cost are unhappy about it
2.16/5the lowest score of anything we measured
#1most-negative theme across the whole season
It's less about price, more about value
That difference decides what you do next. Fans aren't only saying prices are high — they're saying the price and what they got don't line up. A $6 hot dog stings less than an $11 soda that feels like a rip-off. So the answer isn't a race to cut every price; it's making the money a fan spends feel fair. That's a bar a team can clear without lowering a single price, by making the experience match the cost.
Where it shows up
Share of fans who were unhappy, among those who raised each topic. The "not worth it" feeling repeats wherever fans spend.
Cost is the thread running through several of the biggest complaints. In the parking lot, the price of a spot is the single loudest gripe — 85% of fans who mention parking cost are unhappy. At the concession stand, price is the top issue, ahead of taste or speed. Wherever a fan pays, the same reaction follows. That's why we treat value as its own story rather than burying it inside one category.
In fans' own words
Make things a little less expensive. It’s extremely hard to take my family to a game
A single-game fan · Philadelphia
The consession prices are up 20% and the food is not better. I will no longer eat at the games. It's not worth the money.
A member / plan holder · Dallas
And $11 for a soda? That’s obscenely greedy.
A fan · Dallas
Who feels it most
Two groups feel this hardest. Families, for whom the running total of a night out can tip from "a lot" into a reason not to come at all — that's not just a complaint, it's a decision. And your regulars: members and plan holders are far tougher on cost than one-off buyers (93% unhappy versus 79%). The fans who come most often are the ones watching the value math most closely, and they're the ones you most want to keep.
Does winning fix it? No.
It would be easy to hope a good season quietly covers this up. It doesn't. Fans who write about cost give the lowest recommend score of any group — lower even than fans venting about a loss. A win lifts the mood in the moment, but an expensive, underwhelming night is the part that follows fans home and shapes whether they tell a friend to come.
What to do about it
Judge every price against what fans get, not last year's price.
Walk food, parking and merch through one question: would a fan feel this was fair for what they received? That reframes the fix from "cut prices" to "close the gap between price and experience."
Fix the symbols first.
A few notorious items — bottled soda, water, basic snacks — do outsized damage because they become the story fans tell. Re-price or bundle the specific items fans single out, and you buy back goodwill cheaply.
Protect the family trip.
Test family bundles or kids-eat-cheaper nights aimed at one thing: keeping the total for a family of four from crossing into "not worth it," so cost never becomes the reason they skip a game.
Take special care of regulars.
Members and plan holders are your harshest value critics. A loyalty price on the everyday basics they buy every game will land harder than one more premium upsell.
Be upfront about parking prices.
"More expensive than advertised" is a recurring sting. Publish the real, all-in parking price before fans leave home so the lot isn't where they feel surprised.
About these numbers: based on 3,576 comments that raised cost or value — the fans who chose to bring it up, not everyone in the building. Quotes are exactly as fans wrote them, typos included.
Start here · Venue technology
Make the tech just work
The lowest-scoring part of the night · 575 fans raised it · 2.41 out of 5
Venue technology scores lowest of the seven core parts of the night — which also makes it one of the fastest, most concrete wins available. It's the smallest topic by comment count, so read it as an early warning rather than a flood, but the moments fans describe are the kind that can stall a whole visit.
2.41/5lowest score of any part of the night
49%of fans who mention it walk away unhappy
1.58/5score for the app — the biggest single opportunity
What's driving it
Share of fans unhappy with each part, among those who raised it. Blue marks the one part that's working.
The app is where to start, and the gap is real — 94% of the fans who mention it are unhappy, and it scores 1.58 out of 5, the lowest single number in the report. The next tier is all about getting in: scanning a code, getting a ticket scanned, pulling up a mobile ticket. These aren't nice-to-haves. When they fail, a fan is physically stuck at the gate holding a phone that won't cooperate. The one bright spot is ordering from your seat, which works fine — proof that fans aren't anti-technology. They just need the essentials to work every time.
What to do about it
Treat the app like a turnstile.
If it goes down, fans can't get in. Set a gameday reliability target and staff a human fallback at every gate — a box-office lookup or printed backup — so a crashing app never becomes a line of stuck fans.
Test the whole ticket path under real conditions.
Loading a mobile ticket and getting it scanned are the two riskiest moments. Test them on the actual gameday network, at gameday crowd sizes, not in an empty arena.
Don't confuse this with a tech upgrade.
Fans aren't asking for new features — ordering from your seat already works. They're asking the basics to work reliably. Spend on reliability, not novelty.
Start with San Antonio and Philadelphia.
Both show the most tech feedback of any team, which makes them a natural place to begin the reliability audit.
About these numbers: the smallest topic in the report (575 comments), and each specific part rests on a small count, so treat it as a diagnostic flag and confirm with a closer look. No fan quotes were saved for this topic this round.
Start here · Getting there & parking
Fans count the drive and the parking as part of the ticket
2,553 fans raised it · 3.25 out of 5 · nearly half walk away unhappy
Getting to the game and parking isn't a side issue for fans — they treat it as part of the cost and effort of the whole night. Nearly half of the fans who bring it up are unhappy, and it splits cleanly into three different problems.
47%of fans who mention it are unhappy
85%are unhappy specifically about parking prices
3separate problems, each needing its own owner
What's driving it
Share of fans unhappy with each part, among those who raised it. Almost everything here frustrates most fans who mention it.
Parking price is the loudest complaint by a wide margin. After that comes throughput — the traffic getting in, crawling through the lot, and finding a spot — which is really about flow, not money. Finding your way around is a milder gripe but a common one. These are three different jobs: one is a pricing decision, one is an operations-and-traffic problem, and one is about signs and directions. A team can make real progress on one without touching the others.
Parking took a long time and was more expensive than advertised online.
A single-game fan · San Antonio
What to do about it
Split it into three jobs with three owners.
What parking costs, how traffic flows, and how easy it is to find your way are separate problems. Fixing one won't fix the others, so assign them separately.
Tackle parking price first.
It's the single biggest gripe. At a minimum, show the true, all-in price before fans leave home so the lot isn't where they feel gouged.
Ease the arrival crush.
Traffic getting in is the roughest part of the actual arrival. Give fans reasons to come early — early-bird parking, pre-game events — to spread arrivals over a wider window.
Fix the signs.
Confusion finding your way is common even if it's not the angriest complaint. Clearer lot signage and app directions are a cheap, quick win.
About these numbers: team-by-team parking coverage is thinner than food & drink, so read small-team gaps as leads to check, not verdicts.
Start here · Food & drink
It's the price, not the food
The most-mentioned topic of the season · 5,700 fans · 3.24 out of 5
More fans wrote about food and drink than any other part of the night. That makes it the single largest place to make a difference. And the story underneath is clear: the food itself is fine — it's the prices fans notice most.
5,700fans mentioned it, the most of any topic
74%are unhappy specifically about prices
3.74/5how the food actually tastes — not the problem
What's driving it
Share of fans unhappy with each part, among those who raised it. Price towers over everything else.
Price is the runaway problem — three in four fans who bring it up are unhappy. The next two are sharp but smaller: running out of popular items (every fan who hits an empty stand is unhappy) and a clunky ordering-and-paying step. Notice what's near the bottom: how the food tastes and how long the line is. Those score fine. So the instinct to fix food & drink by redesigning the menu misses the mark. The winning move is about price and reliability, not recipes.
Have more affordable concessions. We paid double what I would expect to pay for 2 burgers, cheese curds, and a few cokes.
A single-game fan · Minnesota
What to do about it
Start with price, not the menu.
The food scores fine; the value doesn't. Re-price or bundle the items fans call out before spending a dollar on new recipes.
Stop selling out.
Running out of an item is the harshest single moment — everyone who hits it is unhappy. Tighten stocking on the popular items so fans who came hungry can actually buy what they want.
Speed up paying, not just the line.
Ordering and checkout frustrate fans more than the length of the line itself. Smooth the payment step — more taps-to-pay, clearer menus, fewer dead ends.
Kill the symbolic rip-offs.
A handful of items become the story fans tell their friends. Priced fairly, the same items become an easy, cheap way to win goodwill back.
About these numbers: this reflects what fans wrote in their comments, which is a different question than the survey's separate food-satisfaction rating. "Running out of items" rests on a smaller count (185 comments).
Worth watching · Merchandise
The gear's a hit — the buying part needs a tune-up
1,414 fans raised it · 3.53 out of 5 · most run into some kind of problem
Merchandise is a mixed signal, and that's exactly why it's worth watching. Fewer fans are upset than in the top-priority topics — but nearly two in three shoppers who mention it ran into some kind of snag. The overall score looks okay; the experience underneath is bumpier than it looks.
3.53/5a middling overall score
2 in 3shoppers flagged some kind of problem
1,414fans mentioned it
What's driving it
The gripes cluster around two things: price fairness — the same value story that runs through food and parking — and running out of the popular items, especially the exclusive and giveaway pieces fans actually came for. The overall rating stays afloat because plenty of fans are happy with the gear itself. But the high snag rate tells you the buying experience is where fans get tripped up, not the products.
Because so much of the complaint is about price, merchandise belongs in the same conversation as concessions and parking: it's another place fans do the "was this worth it?" math, and often come away feeling it wasn't.
What to do about it
Use the same value lens as food.
Price fairness is the top merch gripe too. Review pricing on the signature items through the "would a fan feel this was fair?" test.
Keep the popular items in stock.
Selling out of the thing a fan came for is the second big issue. Plan inventory around real demand, especially for giveaways, promotional items, and player gear.
Reconcile the merch numbers before anything goes public.
There's a known question about the merchandise counts in this round's data. Settle it before any merch figure is used in an external-facing claim.
About these numbers: we have the overall merchandise score and the topics fans raised most, but not a full part-by-part breakdown this round. The merchandise count is also flagged as something to reconcile before external use. No fan quotes were saved for this topic this round.
Middle of the pack · Getting in & out
Mostly smooth, with two easy wins at the doors
2,419 fans raised it · 3.97 out of 5 · middle of the pack
Getting into the building and back out again sits in the middle of the pack — better than the top-priority three, but with enough friction that it's worth keeping an eye on. Fewer fans are unhappy here, and fewer run into a problem, than in the categories above it.
3.97/5a solid, middle-of-the-pack score
27%of fans who mention it are unhappy
2,419fans mentioned it
What's driving it
The two sore spots are finding the right gate on the way in and the crush on the way out. Neither is dramatic, but both are avoidable. This is also the part of the night that depends on its neighbors: a smooth entrance needs the parking traffic to flow and the ticket scanners to work. When venue technology stumbles at the gate, it shows up here too — which is why fixing the app and the scanners pays off twice.
What to do about it
Make the right gate obvious.
"Which gate is mine?" is the leading complaint. Clearer signage, and directions in the app tied to the fan's actual seat, take the guesswork out of arrival.
Plan the exit like you plan the entrance.
The crush leaving is the second sore spot. Stagger exits, open more egress paths, and manage the post-game flow with the same care as arrival.
Coordinate with parking and tech.
A smooth entry depends on traffic flowing and tickets scanning. Treat gates, lots, and scanners as one connected arrival experience, not three separate teams.
About these numbers: we have the overall score and the topics fans raised most, but not a full part-by-part breakdown this round. No fan quotes were saved for this topic this round.
A strength · In-arena fun
The show is a genuine win — keep it that way
A strength · 3,136 fans raised it · 4.17 out of 5
Not everything needs fixing. The in-arena experience — the atmosphere, the energy, the entertainment between plays — is one of the two things fans love most. It's a real asset. The job here is to protect it, not repair it.
4.17/5one of the two highest scores in the report
18%unhappy — well below a typical part of the night
3,136fans mentioned it
What fans love, and the one nitpick
The atmosphere is what fans credit most — the sense that they were somewhere alive, part of a crowd. That feeling is a big part of why people choose a live game over the couch, and it's working. The one thing fans nitpick underneath the strong headline is the music and the DJ — a matter of taste and mix more than a real failure. Worth tuning, not overhauling.
What to do about it
Protect the atmosphere.
It's a genuine win and a reason fans come back. Guard the budget and the staff behind it — this is exactly the kind of thing that quietly gets cut and quietly costs you.
Tune the audio.
Music and the DJ are the one recurring nitpick. Small, cheap adjustments to the mix and volume keep a strength strong.
Double-check the "unhappy" figure before using it publicly.
There's a known question about the in-arena entertainment number in this round's data. Refresh it from the source before it appears in anything external.
About these numbers: we have the overall score and the topic fans raised most, but not a full part-by-part breakdown this round, and the "unhappy" figure is flagged to double-check. No fan quotes were saved for this topic this round.
A strength · Staff & service
The best-loved part of the night, with one place to tighten up
The highest-rated part of the night · 5,369 fans · 4.45 out of 5
Staff are the best-loved thing in the building. Fans go out of their way to praise how they're treated. There's just one place the good feeling breaks down — and it's a specific, fixable one.
4.45/5the highest score of any part of the night
4.84/5for a friendly welcome — the single best-loved thing
3.07/5for fixing a problem once one goes wrong
Warmth is the win. The one gap is "something went wrong."
Share of fans unhappy with each part, among those who raised it. Blue = a real strength; red = where it breaks.
Look at the top and bottom of that chart together. A friendly welcome is almost universally loved — only 4% unhappy. But when a fan needs a problem actually solved, half walk away unhappy, and their recommend score drops from 9.4 (for a friendly interaction) all the way to 7.1. The staff aren't the problem; the hand-off when something goes wrong is. A warm hello doesn't help the fan whose seat is double-sold or whose complaint goes nowhere.
What to do about it
Keep the warmth.
Friendliness is the single best-loved thing in the arena. Protect the training, hiring, and culture behind it — it's a competitive advantage you already have.
Fix the hand-off when something goes wrong.
The place to tighten up isn't attitude, it's resolution. Give frontline staff a clear, fast path to actually solve problems — authority, a script, and a place to escalate — so a good interaction doesn't collapse at the worst moment.
Smooth the security check.
It's the next softest area and it's a fan's very first impression. A faster, friendlier screening sets the tone for everything after.
About these numbers: a fan's comment can touch more than one topic — a staff complaint might also sit inside a food or entry frustration. "Fixing a problem" rests on a smaller count (209 comments). No fan quotes were saved for this topic this round.
The bigger picture · why scores moved
A win lifts the mood, but operations set the floor
Games matched to a win or loss · 43,732 fans · a directional read
It's tempting to explain a rough score with a rough season. The comments say it's not that simple. Winning genuinely helps the mood — but the experience a team controls still sets the floor that the scoreboard can't lift.
9.2recommend score after a win (vs 8.5 after a loss)
8.28recommend score when a fan mentions cost — the lowest of all
9.25recommend score when a fan mentions the game itself
The surprising part
Wins clearly help: after a win, fans recommend the game more (9.2 vs 8.5), and more of them come away very satisfied. But here's the twist. Fans who write about cost give a lower recommend score (8.28) than fans who write about the game itself (9.25). In plain terms: a pricing problem drags a fan's night down harder than a loss does. A team can't shrug off weak experience feedback with "we were losing" — the numbers say the opposite.
Why it matters
This is the business case for everything in this report. The parts of the night a team fully controls — price, tech, parking, food, staff — set a baseline that holds whether the team wins or loses. Winning is a bonus on top; it isn't a substitute for a clean, fair, well-run night. Invest in the experience and you protect the fan's verdict on the nights the scoreboard doesn't cooperate — which, over a season, is most of them.
And $11 for a soda? That’s obscenely greedy.
A fan · Dallas — the kind of moment that outlasts the final score
What to do about it
Treat the experience as controllable and worth the money.
The scoreboard is out of your hands; the night out is not. Fund it like the retention tool it is, in good seasons and bad.
Own cost jointly, own the fixes locally.
Value is a league-and-teams conversation; the specific fixes — tech, parking, food, staff — live with each team's operations staff.
About these numbers: a directional read across 43,732 fans at games we could match to a win or loss — strong enough to point a direction, not to prove cause and effect.