Fan engagement is no longer an event-driven function. It is becoming a continuous, platform-driven capability. Nearly 70% of fans seek additional digital insights during live events, reinforcing what many developers and platform teams are already seeing: expectations for real-time, personalized experiences are rising across industries.
In a recent AppDevANGLE episode, Paul Nashawaty spoke with Chris Koehler, CMO of Twilio, about the company’s partnership with the PGA of America and what it signals for developers building modern engagement systems.
The takeaway is clear: engagement is shifting from isolated moments to always-on digital relationships.
From Transactions to Lifelong Engagement
Sports organizations have previously focused on key transactions such as ticket purchases, event attendance, and occasional promotions.
That model is evolving into something more continuous. Engagement now spans the entire fan journey:
- before the event (discovery, planning, ticketing)
- during the event (real-time updates, stats, experiences)
- after the event (content, offers, ongoing interaction)
As Koehler described, the goal is to create a “lifelong conversation” with fans, not just a single interaction. This aligns with broader patterns across retail, travel and digital services, where customer experience is designed as a continuous lifecycle rather than a point-in-time event.
Engagement Is Now a Data + Communications Problem
At the core of this shift is the convergence of customer data platforms and communications infrastructure.
To deliver personalized experiences at scale, organizations need to:
- unify first-party customer data
- build real-time profiles
- activate those profiles across channels
- maintain context across interactions
This turns engagement into a systems problem.
Developers are now responsible for building:
- event-driven architectures
- real-time data pipelines
- omnichannel communication flows
- identity-aware engagement systems
“What we’re really solving is how to take data, build a profile, and reach customers where they are,” Koehler explained.
Omnichannel Is No Longer Optional
Modern engagement does not happen in a single channel. Fans expect interactions across platforms like SMS, email, mobile apps, voice and call centers, and in-person experiences. The challenge is not just supporting these channels, but coordinating them.
Without orchestration, engagement becomes fragmented. With orchestration, it becomes a continuous conversation. From our perspective, this is a key architectural shift: communications APIs are becoming part of the core application stack, not an external add-on.
The Crawl–Walk–Run Model Still Applies
One of the more practical insights from the conversation is how organizations adopt these capabilities.
Most teams:
- start with a single channel (often messaging)
- expand into additional channels (email, voice, apps)
- unify data and engagement into a platform
This incremental approach reduces risk and aligns with how modern platforms evolve. It also reflects a broader truth: building a full engagement platform is not a single project. It is an ongoing transformation.
AI Is Expanding the Engagement Surface
AI is accelerating this shift, particularly in conversational experiences. Organizations are increasingly deploying voice AI agents for customer support, enabling conversational interfaces across channels, and introducing AI-driven personalization engines to tailor interactions at scale. However, this expansion also introduces new layers of complexity. To be effective, AI requires clean, structured data, consistent identity models, and tightly integrated communication layers. Without these foundations, AI risks becoming just another silo in the architecture rather than the accelerator it is intended to be.
Why Developers Should Pay Attention
This shift toward continuous engagement extends far beyond sports and entertainment, with similar patterns emerging across retail and e-commerce, financial services, travel and hospitality, and SaaS platforms.
For developers, several signals stand out: engagement systems are becoming real-time and event-driven, customer data platforms are moving closer to core application logic, and communications APIs are evolving into foundational infrastructure. At the same time, AI is expanding interaction models while increasing architectural complexity. The result is a new class of application that is not just transactional, but relational, designed to support ongoing, context-aware interactions rather than one-time events.
The Takeaway
The Twilio–PGA partnership highlights a broader architectural shift. Engagement is no longer a feature. It is a platform.
Organizations that treat engagement as a campaign will struggle to scale. Those that treat it as infrastructure (integrating data, communications and AI) will be better positioned to build lasting customer relationships.
Watch the AppDevANGLE podcast with Chris Koehler to explore how organizations are building these platforms and what it takes to move from isolated interactions to continuous engagement.
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