Ordr is building a new kind of intelligence layer for sports — one that connects payments, fan behavior, and partnership data to help teams better understand what their fans do and what that behavior is worth.

Every transaction is a signal. What fans buy. When they buy it. How often they return. Which categories they over-index in. Ordr brings together data that has historically lived across separate ticketing, concessions, retail, and payment systems, giving teams a more complete picture of the economic value of their fans.

Now the company is putting that model to work through a new five-year partnership with the Chicago Sky. The relationship combines payment infrastructure and data intelligence with sponsorship, B2B connections, and community business outreach — creating a platform designed to generate measurable value for the Sky, its partners, and businesses across Chicago.

“We’ve always known who bought the ticket,” says Ordr CEO Ryan Bott. “But teams have struggled to understand what goes beyond that.”

Ordr is setting out to answer that question — and, in the process, give teams a new way to use fan intelligence to drive partnerships, revenue, retention, and growth.

Q&A with Ryan Bott, CEO, and Dr. Dan Kaufmann, Business Advisor

What is Ordr really solving for teams?

Ryan Bott: We’re a vertically integrated payments and data intelligence platform built specifically for live experiences — sports, entertainment, hospitality, tourism. Payments are the foundation, but intelligence is the differentiator. For decades, payments in sports were treated as plumbing — necessary but not strategic. But every payment is a behavioral signal. It tells you what someone values, when they value it, and how often they return to it. Because we’re an approved processor across ticketing platforms, concessionaires, and gateways, we can unify transaction data that historically lived in silos. That unified view allows teams to understand the economic value of a fan beyond the ticket itself.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: From the rights holder side — where I spent more than 20 years — that’s the missing link. You know who showed up. You know where they sat. But you didn’t have a consolidated view of how they behaved across concessions, retail, premium areas, and secondary spend. That impacts renewals. It impacts sponsorship strategy. It impacts pricing models. It even impacts forecasting conversations with ownership. Without behavioral clarity, you’re operating partially blind.

Give us an example of how this comes to life.

Ryan Bott: When we interviewed hundreds of rights holders before launching, we asked a simple question: Do you know how many season ticket holders buy a beer? No one could answer it. And not just whether they bought one — but where they bought it, when they bought it, what type of beer, whether it was draft or packaged, how much they spent, and whether they were repeat buyers across games. Even sophisticated organizations were estimating because those systems didn’t connect. Once unified, you move from attendance to participation.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: And that’s where it becomes commercially meaningful. If your data shows that your fan base over-indexes on craft beer buyers, that informs activation strategy. Maybe you build a dedicated craft beer section. Maybe you redesign an existing space to reflect demand. Maybe you approach a regional brewery with behavioral proof instead of demographic assumptions. Now the partnership conversation is rooted in actual purchasing behavior. We’ve even discussed hyper-local examples. In Pittsburgh, pierogis are culturally relevant. If purchasing behavior shows strong engagement around that product, that informs how you design space, how you structure sponsorship inventory, and how you tell that story commercially. That’s integration driven by behavior — not guesswork.

How does behavioral insight translate into smarter activation?

Ryan Bott: There’s also a timing layer. If we understand arrival patterns and purchasing behavior, teams can activate promotions more intelligently — even triggering value or partner messaging as a fan approaches the stadium, not just once they’re inside. Now activation isn’t just visible. It’s timely. You’re aligning sponsor messaging with demonstrated behavior and physical proximity. That’s a very different level of sophistication.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: Sponsors care about measurable relevance. Instead of broad-based promotions, you’re creating targeted moments aligned with what fans are already doing. That makes ROI conversations far more grounded.

Many organizations say they want to be data-driven. What makes the shift difficult?

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: It’s not the technology. It’s organizational alignment. Ticketing reports into one department. Sponsorship into another. Finance somewhere else. If those groups don’t align around a shared definition of fan value, the data remains fragmented. Innovation requires change management. It requires leadership commitment to break down silos and rethink how sponsorship fits into broader enterprise strategy. It’s a cultural shift as much as a technological one.

Ryan Bott: If a solution operates in isolation, it won’t create systemic value. The organizations that win are the ones that integrate insights across departments and allow behavioral intelligence to inform decision-making at multiple levels.

Are CFOs influencing sponsorship decisions more than before?

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: Absolutely. Fifteen years ago, sponsorship was largely marketing-driven. Today, finance leaders are asking harder questions: How does this drive revenue? How does it impact retention? How does it improve enterprise value? That scrutiny elevates sponsorship. It forces partnerships to mature. If you can’t connect sponsorship to measurable contribution, it becomes vulnerable during budget cycles.

Ryan Bott: When behavior becomes quantifiable, those conversations shift from narrative to evidence. Sponsorship becomes defensible in boardrooms — not just attractive in marketing decks.

Where does AI fit into this evolution?

Ryan Bott: AI enables scale and prediction. It allows us to identify patterns across thousands or millions of transactions — who’s likely to renew, which segments over-index in certain categories, which partnerships may outperform. That predictive capability moves sponsorship from reactive to proactive.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: But this is still a relationship business. AI surfaces insight. People build partnerships. Technology informs the strategy. Humans execute it.

What is a current partnership you'd like to tell us about? (Who? How long will the deal run? What types of assets are included? What types of activations are included?)

Ryan Bott: One of the partnerships we are most excited about is our five-year partnership with the Chicago Sky. The relationship was designed to go far beyond payment services modernization and traditional sponsorship, and instead create a true business and community growth platform built around payments, technology, and economic impact via OrdrPay.

The partnership includes exclusive payment processing and platform partnership rights, team IP and logo rights, LED signage, PA reads, digital and social inclusion, presenting rights for partner events, golf outing participation, and direct access to the Sky Business Alliance network.

What makes the activations unique is that they are tied directly to measurable business outcomes. Through B2B introductions, community business outreach, executive networking events, and educational initiatives, we are helping connect local businesses with enterprise-grade technology that improves operations, strengthens compliance, reduces payment costs, and unlocks new revenue visibility.

Why was the Chicago Sky the right partner?

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: The Chicago Sky is the right partner because the organization shares our vision around innovation, inclusion, and community impact. From our earliest conversations, it was clear the Sky understood that payments are no longer just a back-office utility. They are a strategic growth engine for businesses and organizations.

Chicago is also one of the strongest business communities in the country, with a vibrant ecosystem of entrepreneurs, hospitality operators, local brands, and emerging companies. The Sky provides an authentic platform to connect with that community in a meaningful way.

Equally important, the organization has been incredibly collaborative and forward-thinking in how they approach partnerships. They understood immediately that OrdrPay could become something much larger than sponsorship visibility alone.

What is special about this partnership?

Ryan Bott, CEO: What makes this partnership special is that it combines enterprise fintech infrastructure and AI payment processing intelligence with tangible outcomes, and at the same time creates a program with high impact in community business modernization.

Most sports partnerships focus only on exposure. This partnership is designed to create measurable economic impact by helping the Chicago Sky understand their own fans, partners, alliances, and market better via the Ordr product suite, and by helping local businesses access enterprise-level and transparent services to improve security, streamline operations, reduce hidden payment costs, automate workflows, and better understand their customers through data intelligence.

The relationship also creates a bridge between enterprise-level sports technology and local businesses that normally would not have access to these tools. Through the Chicago Sky platform, we are able to bring innovation directly into the community while creating long-term value for both organizations.

How have you integrated Ordr's services into the deal?

Ryan Bott: We intentionally integrated Ordr's services directly into the structure of the partnership rather than treating payments as a standalone sponsorship category. Currently, the Sky's ecosystem has access to OrdrPay's enterprise-level payment infrastructure, compliance, and operational reporting solutions, and is about to be onboarded to Ordr Transact IQ, Partner IQ, and Fan IQ. At the same time, through the Sky Business Alliance and B2B introductions, we are able to engage directly with local businesses and help them modernize how they operate.

What is OrdrPay and how is it creating community impact?

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: OrdrPay is enterprise-grade payment infrastructure designed to help businesses modernize operations, reduce costs, improve compliance, and unlock better financial visibility. Traditionally, many local businesses operate with disconnected systems, limited reporting visibility, manual reconciliation processes, and hidden payment inefficiencies. OrdrPay helps solve those challenges through secure payment technology, billing automation, transaction intelligence, and operational analytics.

The community impact comes from helping businesses keep more of their revenue, operate more efficiently, and become more competitive in the long term. Stronger local businesses create stronger local communities.

By partnering with organizations like the Chicago Sky, we can extend access to enterprise-level technology and education to a much broader network of businesses while creating measurable economic value within the community.

How does SponsorUnited fit into your approach as you build partnerships?

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: I’ve used SponsorUnited for a long time — going back to my time on the rights holder side — and the biggest value is simple: it saves time.

One of the hardest parts of this business is getting to the right person. You can have a strong idea or a strong product, but if you’re not connecting with the right decision-maker, it slows everything down. The platform helps us identify who we should be talking to and how to reach them much more efficiently.

It’s also useful from a market perspective. On the brand side, we’re constantly evaluating what’s happening across categories — who’s partnering with whom, how deals are structured, what messaging looks like. That context helps us refine how we position ourselves and where we can be differentiated.

Ryan Bott: Early on, when we were building Ordr, it was a very outbound-driven effort. We were introducing something new to the market, so being able to quickly identify the right contacts and get in front of the right organizations mattered.

As we’ve grown, it’s still part of how we operate — whether that’s reaching out ahead of major events, connecting with potential partners, or following up on conversations we’ve started in person.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: At the end of the day, it’s about efficiency. You can map out how much time a team would otherwise spend trying to track down the right contacts or piece together information manually. When you reduce that friction, it allows you to focus more on the actual relationship and the strategy behind the partnership.

Five years from now, what separates leaders from those left behind?

Ryan Bott: Leaders will treat fan behavior the way other industries treat customer lifetime value. They’ll model it. Forecast it. Build sponsorship strategies around it. They’ll understand not just what happened — but what’s likely to happen next.

Dr. Dan Kaufmann: And they’ll sell intelligence, not just inventory. If you’re still selling static assets without behavioral insight five years from now, you’ll be behind. The industry will divide between predictive operators and reactive sellers.

The measurable fan is not a passing trend. It represents a structural shift in how sponsorship is valued.

As behavioral intelligence becomes central to enterprise strategy, the most competitive organizations will be those that understand not just who their fans are — but what they do, and what that behavior is worth.

Visibility still matters. But valuation defines the future.

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