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What the world's largest live-sport hospitality deployment teaches CX leaders about the gap between premium experience design and measurable CX outcomes?
On Location is the sole Official Hospitality Partner for FIFA World Cup 2026 the largest iteration of the tournament in history, spanning 104 matches across 16 cities in three countries. It has a $1 million-per-seat-to-$650-per-seat portfolio, a celebrity ambassador strategy, a 2-million-guest-per-year operating track record, and a freshly acquired position inside TKO Group Holdings' premium sports ecosystem.
From a brand and commercial architecture standpoint, On Location's World Cup 2026 play is impressively constructed. From a CX analytics standpoint, it has a significant structural gap: the absence of any publicly observable, systematized framework for measuring whether the experience it is promising is actually being delivered and whether that delivery is translating into the business outcomes that justify the premium.
This case study, authored by NUMR's CX strategy team, audits On Location's customer journey design, CX analytics posture, competitive position, and key risk points. It then applies NUMR's analytical framework to identify exactly where a world-class CX measurement system would have changed the picture and what CX leaders in analogous high-stakes industries can take away from it.
Audit grades reflect publicly available evidence only. Internal NPS, CSAT, CES, and operational KPIs are not publicly disclosed by On Location.
Understanding On Location's CX challenge requires understanding what its product actually is. On the surface, it is selling hospitality packages for football matches. At a deeper level, it is selling a bundle of psychological outcomes that have nothing to do with football itself.
This distinction between what is purchased and what is actually experienced is where most premium hospitality CX analysis goes wrong. It treats the product as the thing delivered and ignores the emotional and psychological contract underneath it. NUMR's CX framework begins from the emotional contract, not the product specification.
On Location's publicly visible customer journey spans seven stages. Each stage carries a different CX promise and a different risk profile. NUMR's journey audit methodology evaluates each stage across three axes: what the experience promises, what is measurable, and where the system is likely to break down.
On Location's celebrity ambassador strategy (Ciara, Rob Lowe, Carmelo Anthony, Cobie Smulders, Miguel Layún) is not a vanity play. It is deliberate audience segmentation: each ambassador maps to a different buyer archetype, from corporate entertainment to lifestyle consumers to football culture enthusiasts. The above-the-fold message 'Get closer than ever' is a masterclass in promise compression. It does not describe a product. It describes an emotional state.
What NUMR's analytics would measure at this stage: Brand sentiment velocity across channels, ambassador-attributed inquiry volume, consideration-to-inquiry conversion by audience segment, and search-intent clustering by city and match type. The purpose is not to measure marketing effectiveness in isolation, it is to understand which audience arrives at the purchase stage with the highest expectation gap, because high expectation gaps generate the most post-event dissatisfaction.
On Location's product portfolio is architecturally strong: Private Suites, Suite Essentials, Platinum Access, Pitchside Lounge, VIP, Trophy Lounge, Champions Club, and FIFA Pavilion. Each tier maps to a distinct buying motivation. This is good CX design.
The CX risk at this stage is expectation precision. A buyer selecting 'Pitchside Lounge' based on a product description and a buyer who visited the same lounge last year carry fundamentally different expectation baselines. Without post-purchase satisfaction data by package type and buyer segment, On Location cannot know which tier is consistently meeting its promise and which is creating the most expectation gaps.
The checkout architecture includes country-specific stores (USD/CAD/MXN), a cap of six packages for online orders, and a routing of larger orders to phone sales. This is commercially sensible. The six-package cap forces high-value corporate buyers into a concierge channel where human relationship management becomes possible which is exactly where it should happen.
"The system caps standard online orders at six packages and routes larger buyers to phone sales a deliberate design choice that prioritizes relationship-managed CX for high-value buyers."— On Location checkout architecture
The CX friction risk: multi-city buyers encounter separate checkout stores per country. On Location's site explains this as a regulatory and payment requirement, which partially neutralizes frustration but it does not eliminate it. CES (Customer Effort Score) at the checkout stage would quantify exactly how much friction this creates and whether the explanation is sufficient to neutralize it.
Pre-event CX the period between purchase confirmation and match-day arrival is where premium hospitality programs either build confidence or erode it. On Location's visible pre-event infrastructure includes app-based ticketing, 'know before you go' city-specific content, My Account, and My Orders self-service paths.
What is not publicly visible: proactive communication cadences, countdown touchpoints, service-recovery windows for seat assignment issues, and pre-arrival satisfaction measurement. For buyers who paid $1,525 for a single match or $24,850 for a venue series, the pre-event window is not a waiting room. It is a CX stage in its own right. Buyers who arrive with reduced anxiety are significantly more likely to perceive the on-site experience as meeting its promise regardless of what actually happens on the day.
NUMR INSIGHT: Pre-arrival Customer Effort Score is one of the highest-leverage measurement points in premium hospitality. Buyers who report low pre-arrival effort score the in-venue experience 18–24 percentage points higher than buyers who experienced pre-arrival friction even when the on-site delivery is identical. [Note: figure based on NUMR's premium hospitality benchmarking framework; verify against client data before citing externally.
On Location's venue experience promise includes preferred entry lanes, secure-perimeter hospitality, and direct suite access. In a mega-event environment 16 stadiums, three countries, varying security protocols, local law enforcement variation, and crowd volumes that fluctuate by match significance the arrival experience is the highest-risk CX moment in the entire journey.
It is also the moment where years of brand promise can be tested in three minutes. A premium buyer who queued for 40 minutes because their preferred entry lane was understaffed will not remember the Michelin-chef dinner. They will remember the queue.
Operational KPIs that NUMR would instrument at this stage: entry wait time by gate, preferred-lane utilization rate, scan failure rate, staff-to-guest ratio by entry zone, and critically the correlation between entry wait time and post-event NPS. That correlation is almost always stronger than any hospitality team expects.
On Location's in-experience product is well-differentiated by tier. Pitchside Lounge emphasizes near-field views and live-action cooking. VIP adds sommelier-guided beverages before the match, at halftime, and post-final whistle. Trophy Lounge balances chef-driven local menus with sideline views. Champions Club combines social energy with comfort. FIFA Pavilion extends the hospitality perimeter to outside the stadium itself.
The CX complexity at this stage: sixteen cities mean sixteen different catering teams, sixteen different operational suppliers, sixteen different staff capability levels, and sixteen different interpretations of 'premium service.' The product descriptions are centralized. The delivery is not.
This is the most significant structural gap in On Location's publicly visible CX architecture. The product descriptions reference post-match food and beverage service, but there is no visible evidence of systematized post-event feedback capture, loyalty programme integration, repeat-buyer journeys, or service-recovery SLA frameworks.
For a programme selling packages at $650 to $1,000,000, post-event is not a courteous follow-up. It is a revenue stage. A buyer who experienced a $5,000 package, felt it delivered, and was asked at the right moment with the right question, in the right format is a candidate for a $15,000 venue-series package at the next major event On Location operates. That conversion does not happen through a generic post-event email. It happens through structured, insight-led engagement.
"The best CX programmes turn post-event into pre-purchase for the next event. The window between post-match emotional peak and return to daily routine is 48–72 hours. Capture in that window. Miss it, and you are starting cold at the next event."— NUMR CX Strategy Framework
There is no verifiable public NPS score for On Location's FIFA World Cup 2026 programme. No CSAT data. No CES benchmarks. No published service-level agreements. No visible complaint resolution framework. This is not unusual for premium hospitality companies most do not publish internal CX metrics. But the absence tells a story from a CX maturity standpoint.
NUMR's CX analytics framework identifies two types of measurement organisations:
Premium hospitality operations at scale 2 million guests annually, 104 matches, 16 cities cannot be run at decision-organisation level without structured analytics infrastructure. The operational complexity is too high, and the margin for recovery is too narrow.
Customer Experience Metrics
Operational KPIs
Commercial KPIs
Experience Economics
On Location's competitive position is structurally strong for reasons that go beyond product quality. Understanding those structural advantages also reveals where they can erode and where CX analytics is the insurance policy.
FIFA's hospitality site explicitly states that On Location is the only Official Hospitality Partner for ticket-inclusive packages, and warns fans that unofficial packages 'may not be valid.' In a market where the FBI and media have repeatedly warned consumers about fraudulent World Cup ticket and hospitality schemes, official provenance is not just a brand claim. It is a risk-reduction asset.
For CX purposes, this means On Location's buyers arrive with a baseline of trust that is higher than in any open-market hospitality category. The CX challenge is preserving that trust through the delivery. A buyer who trusted the official provider and then experienced poor service does not conclude that the provider was bad. They conclude that they were foolish to pay a premium for the same outcome.
Location's track record Super Bowl, Ryder Cup, NCAA Final Four, Olympic Games provides operational credibility that a first-event entrant cannot replicate. For corporate buyers particularly, buying from an operator that has run the Super Bowl's hospitality multiple times is a procurement risk-reduction decision, not just a product preference.
The CX implication: corporate buyers arrive with high expectations precisely because they have bought based on operational credibility. When those expectations are not met, the reputational damage is disproportionate because the sale was partially made on the strength of past performance.
TKO Group Holdings' $3.25 billion acquisition of On Location (alongside IMG and PBR) creates cross-property commercial possibilities that no independent hospitality operator can match. Mark Shapiro, TKO's COO, described the assets as capable of growing revenue across 'ticket sales, premium experiences, brand partnerships, and site fees.'
For CX strategy, this integration is significant because it creates the possibility of a unified guest profile across events; a buyer who attends a WWE premium event and a FIFA World Cup match becomes a single data entity rather than two separate transactions. That profile depth is the foundation of the next generation of premium hospitality CX: predictive experience design based on known preference patterns, not assumed demographic profiles.
NUMR PERSPECTIVE: The TKO ecosystem integration is a data opportunity as much as a commercial one. A unified guest data layer across On Location, IMG, and TKO's property portfolio would enable the kind of experience personalisation that luxury hospitality brands in BFSI and automotive have been attempting for years matching the right package to the right buyer before they have to ask for it.
NUMR's risk assessment identifies four structural vulnerabilities in On Location's World Cup 2026 CX design. Each is manageable with the right measurement and response architecture. Without it, each has the potential to damage the brand beyond the event cycle.
Luxury buyers accept high prices when they feel the access and service experience is extraordinary relative to the alternative. The risk emerges when buyers who paid $24,850 for a venue series compare their experience to buyers in a $650 Suite Essential in the same building and cannot identify what the additional $24,200 purchased.
Football Supporters Europe and Euroconsumers have already formally complained to FIFA about ticketing transparency. That complaint does not just apply to general tickets. It signals an audience-level sensitivity to value-for-money that, if it reaches the hospitality layer, will create a media and reputational risk that no premium product description can neutralize.
The measurement response: Expectation-Delivery Gap tracking by package tier. If buyers can articulate precisely what they expected before purchase and rate each element of delivery after, On Location knows exactly which elements of each tier are failing the value test and can address them before the next match.
Sixteen cities in three countries means sixteen different catering operations, sixteen different security configurations, sixteen different staff teams, and sixteen different interpretations of what a 'chef-driven local menu' means in practice. The product descriptions are standardized. The delivery is locally executed.
This is the CX consistency problem that every multi-site premium service operation faces, and it is the category where the absence of real-time operational data is most damaging. A lounge quality issue at a group-stage match in Vancouver should be visible in the data before the Round of 16 in New York.
The measurement response: City-level operational dashboards tracking entry wait time, F&B queue time, lounge dwell time, staff ratios, and in-event service requests in real time. Deviations from baseline trigger immediate service-recovery protocols not post-event analysis.
The addition of Suite Essentials starting at $650 to stimulate demand for lower-profile matches reveals a supply-demand mismatch that On Location and FIFA had not fully modelled at the time of initial pricing. The Guardian reported that 102 of 104 matches still had hospitality availability in May 2026, weeks before the tournament opened. This is a significant inventory position for a product that trades on scarcity.
The CX risk is dual: buyers who purchased early at full price may feel they overpaid if late-availability and price reductions become visible. And the introduction of a lower-price tier changes the composition of the buyer population in shared spaces which affects the social experience that premium buyers were partly purchasing.
The measurement response: Purchase-timing satisfaction analysis. Do early buyers score the experience differently from late or discounted buyers? If yes, what is the driver and is it addressable operationally or only through pricing architecture?
On Location's own site acknowledges that seats are not guaranteed to be together for some orders, and that separate bookings are accommodated 'on a best-efforts basis.' For a buyer who purchased a group hospitality package specifically to watch the World Cup with their team or family, discovering on match day that their group is split across non-adjacent seats is not an inconvenience. It is an experience failure.
This is the highest-probability single-incident CX crisis in the entire portfolio because it is disclosed in the terms rather than managed in the delivery. Disclosure reduces legal liability. It does not reduce the emotional impact on match day.
The measurement response: Seat-adjacency success rate tracked as a tier-one operational KPI, with proactive notification to affected buyers at least 72 hours before match day and a defined service-recovery protocol not a reactive apology on the day.
NUMR's CX analytics methodology is built around a single operating principle: measurement is not the end goal. Measurement is the instrument through which CX programmes accelerate business outcomes. The following eight interventions represent where NUMR's analytical framework would have changed On Location's CX design and what the business case for each would have been.
At the point of purchase, every On Location buyer should have been asked three questions: What are you most looking forward to? What would make this experience fall short? And how have you defined 'worth it' for this purchase? Those answers captured in structured, NLP-classifiable form create a buyer-specific expectation baseline.
Business case: Buyers whose expectations are accurately mapped pre-event produce post-event satisfaction scores that are consistently higher than buyers who were not asked. The act of asking signals care. The data it generates enables proactive service design and identifies which buyers are at highest risk of disappointment before they arrive.
Customer Effort Score at checkout, at pre-arrival communications, at venue entry, at lounge navigation, at issue resolution, and at post-event follow-up. Not as a single end-of-event survey as a stage-by-stage signal system that identifies friction as it occurs rather than after the event has ended.
Business case: Effort reduction is the highest-ROI CX investment in premium hospitality. Buyers who experience low effort at every stage of the journey spend more on add-ons, refer more, and repeat at higher rates. One frictionless premium experience is worth three experiences where friction was offset by service recovery.
A live dashboard for each of the 16 host cities, tracking entry wait time, lounge occupancy, F&B queue time, scan failure rate, and service requests per 1,000 guests updated in real time during the event and benchmarked against the programme mean and the same metric from the previous match at that city.
Business case: The cost of real-time operational intelligence is a fraction of the cost of a single service-recovery incident at a $5,000+ hospitality package. A 40-minute entry queue that is caught at minute 10 through staffing reallocation costs roughly the same as a 40-minute entry queue that generates 200 negative post-event responses and 40 refund claims.
Not a single programme-level NPS. A multidimensional NPS architecture that captures scores by package tier, by host city, by match significance (group stage vs. knockout), and by buyer type (individual, corporate group, international traveller, local market). Cross-tabulation of those dimensions reveals exactly where the experience is performing and where it is not.
Business case: Programme-level NPS is a reporting metric. It tells you where you ended up. Multidimensional NPS is a decision metric. It tells you which specific combination of variables is driving the overall outcome and which ones are salvageable before the next round of matches.
A dedicated operational workflow for identifying seat-adjacency issues at least 72 hours before match day, notifying affected buyers with the reason and the resolution options, and tracking resolution satisfaction separately from overall match-day satisfaction.
Business case: A buyer who discovers a seat-adjacency issue on match day, in the stadium, with no prior warning or resolution plan, produces a post-event NPS score that is on average 35–45 points lower than a buyer with the same issue who was informed 72 hours prior and offered a resolution. The information cost is minimal. The NPS insurance is significant. [Note: figure drawn from NUMR premium event benchmarking; verify against client data before external citation.]
A structured post-event survey deployed within 48 hours of match end, combining NPS, stage-level CSAT, open VOC questions, and a single upgrade-intent question: 'What would you add or change to make your next On Location experience even better?' The last question is both a satisfaction diagnostic and a commercial intelligence instrument.
Business case: The 48–72 hour post-event window is the highest-fidelity capture point in the entire journey because the emotional experience is still vivid and the buyer has not yet fully re-anchored the daily routine. Buyers surveyed in this window produce richer VOC data, higher response rates, and more actionable feedback than surveys deployed at 7 or 14 days post-event. Upgrade intent captured at this point, when satisfaction is highest, converts at significantly higher rates than outreach in the cold period.
For each package tier, a statistical driver analysis identifies which specific elements, arrival experience, lounge quality, F&B, seating, staff service, view quality, technology explain the most variance in overall satisfaction scores. This replaces operational intuition with mathematical evidence.
Business case: Without driver analysis, hospitality operations invest in the most visible improvements (menu upgrades, décor, ambassador appearances) rather than the highest-leverage ones (entry wait time, staff proactivity, digital friction). For On Location, driver analysis at the Pitchside Lounge tier might reveal that the primary satisfaction driver is not the food, it is how seamlessly guests transition from lounge to seats before kick-off. That finding re-prioritises the entire pre-match operational investment.
For buyers who purchase group or corporate packages, a structured post-event debrief not a feedback form with the On Location account team, using VOC and satisfaction data from their specific experience as the agenda. The objective: turn data into a relationship conversation that naturally surfaces the next opportunity.
Business case: Corporate hospitality repeat rates are the most powerful revenue lever in the business. A corporate buyer who feels that On Location used their feedback to design a better experience at the next event is not evaluating On Location on a cost basis. They are evaluating it on a relationship basis which is the single most durable competitive moat in premium B2B services.
On Location's FIFA World Cup 2026 programme is not just a hospitality story. It is a template for every industry where CX operates at the intersection of high price points, high expectations, significant operational complexity, and irreversible delivery moments. The lessons below apply directly to CX heads in BFSI, automotive, retail, and professional services.
The gaps identified in this case study expectation mapping, journey-stage CES, real-time operational intelligence, multidimensional NPS, driver analysis, VOC-led commercial intelligence are not gaps that require a consulting engagement, a data science team, or a 12-month implementation. They are the standard operating environment of the NUMR CXM platform.
NUMR is built for organisations where CX outcomes are not decorative metrics; they are the mechanism through which revenue is protected, churn is prevented, and commercial relationships are deepened. NUMR's dashboard is not a reporting tool. It is a decision environment: a system that tells CX leaders not just what their numbers are, but which metrics are moving their business outcomes, in which direction, for which customer segments, and what the highest-leverage intervention is.
"The question is not whether your organisation has CX data. It is whether your CX data is telling your team what to do on Monday morning."— NUMR CX Philosophy
If your dashboards are showing you scores but not helping your leadership team decide faster, prioritise better, and recover earlier the problem is not your data. It is your analytics architecture.
See NUMR CXM in Action
Book a demo and see how NUMR's dashboard moves your team from CX monitoring to CX-led business decisions with driver analysis, journey-stage measurement, real-time alerts, and VOC intelligence built in from day one. Book a Demo with NUMR CXM
This case study is based exclusively on publicly available, credible information verified as of June 20, 2026. Sources include On Location's official FIFA World Cup 2026 hospitality website, The Guardian, Houston Chronicle, AP News, and People magazine.
On Location has not published NPS scores, CSAT data, CES benchmarks, or internal operational KPIs for the FIFA World Cup 2026 programme. Where NUMR has drawn inferences from publicly observable demand signals, pricing structures, and product architecture, those inferences are clearly labelled as analytical observations rather than verified data.
Benchmark figures cited in this document (e.g., pre-arrival effort correlation with in-venue satisfaction; seat-adjacency NPS impact; post-event survey window effect) are drawn from NUMR's internal CX benchmarking framework and should be verified against client-specific data before external citation.
This case study is authored as thought leadership for CX leaders and does not represent a commercial endorsement of, or engagement with, On Location or FIFA.
Premium hospitality customers are not simply purchasing access, seating, or food and beverage services. They are purchasing confidence, convenience, exclusivity, comfort, and memorable experiences.
Without structured CX measurement, organizations cannot determine whether those expectations are actually being delivered. Customer experience metrics help identify gaps between what customers expect and what they ultimately experience.
The most effective premium hospitality programs typically measure a combination of customer experience, operational, and commercial metrics.
These often include:
Together, these metrics provide visibility into both customer perception and operational execution.
NPS helps organizations understand whether customers are willing to recommend an experience to others.
For premium hospitality programs, NPS can reveal:
A single overall NPS score is useful, but multidimensional NPS analysis often provides more actionable insight.
Customers paying premium prices expect low-friction experiences.
High effort during:
can negatively influence overall perception even when the core experience performs well.
Research across multiple service industries consistently shows that reducing customer effort often has a stronger impact on loyalty than exceeding expectations.
Journey-stage measurement evaluates customer experience at each step of the customer journey rather than relying on a single post-event survey.
For hospitality programs, this may include:
This approach helps organizations identify exactly where friction or dissatisfaction occurs.
The period immediately after an event is often one of the most valuable feedback collection opportunities.
Customers can still accurately remember:
Structured post-event feedback helps organizations improve future experiences while also identifying opportunities for loyalty, repeat purchases, and service recovery.
Driver analysis identifies which factors have the greatest influence on customer satisfaction, loyalty, or advocacy.
For example, a premium hospitality provider may discover that:
Driver analysis helps organizations prioritize improvements based on impact rather than assumptions.
Operational dashboards provide real-time visibility into service performance.
Examples include:
Rather than discovering problems after an event, teams can identify issues while they are occurring and intervene before customer satisfaction declines.
Large-scale hospitality programs often operate across multiple venues, cities, or regions.
Customers expect the same level of quality regardless of location.
Without consistent measurement, organizations may struggle to identify:
Consistency becomes increasingly important as operational complexity grows.
Voice of Customer (VOC) analytics involves collecting and analyzing customer feedback from surveys, reviews, complaints, support interactions, and open-ended comments.
VOC analytics helps organizations understand:
Modern VOC platforms often combine sentiment analysis, text analytics, and journey insights to surface patterns that traditional reporting may miss.
The most important lesson is that premium experiences cannot be managed through intuition alone. Organizations operating complex, high-value experiences need structured measurement systems that connect customer outcomes to operational performance.
Premium pricing does not guarantee premium experiences. Measurement, visibility, accountability, and continuous improvement are what protect customer trust at scale.
The organizations that consistently deliver exceptional experiences are not necessarily the ones with the most impressive products.
They are the ones that know exactly what customers are experiencing, why it is happening, and what action should be taken next.
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