Ticketmaster helps OneCourt bring haptic hockey to blind fans at NHL marquee events

Blind and low-vision fans at last week's Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic could follow the game through their fingertips. Accessibility tech startup OneCourt had its haptic devices in place, turning the action on the ice into vibrations.

That was the first stop on a league-wide deal. Sports Business Journal's Ethan Joyce reported that OneCourt and the NHL agreed to bring the devices to the league's tentpole events, in collaboration with sponsor Ticketmaster. Three more are scheduled: the Discover NHL Winter Classic, the Honda NHL All-Star and the Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series.

The device is the visible part of the story, but how it got into the building matters more to a team's fan-experience or venue operations lead. OneCourt runs on a data feed the league already produces, and it reaches arenas through a sponsor the teams already have a contract with.

From a puck-tracking feed to a fingertip

OneCourt's in-venue product pairs haptics with a tactile surface that outlines the playing area. Combined with game tracking data, the vibrations turn into low-latency play-by-play for users. In hockey, the input is NHL Edge, the league's puck- and player-tracking system. OneCourt was the Sports Technology of the Year winner at SBA: Tech in May.

Put simply, the surface supplies the rink and the tracking feed supplies the action on it. Without a reliable live feed of where the puck and players are, the device would have nothing to translate.

Hockey's data is far richer than it used to be. In a separate SBJ profile, Joe Lemire described how Stathletes started in 2009, when hockey stats rarely went beyond goals, assists and saves. Co-founder Meghan Chayka, her brother John and her friend Neil Lane built metrics that judged a player's skill rather than his output, on the reasoning that process holds steadier over time than results and better predicts a player's true value. A skater can have a good game without scoring.

Within a few years Stathletes had NHL teams as clients, some on contracts worth up to $1 million. The bootstrapped, Ontario-based firm now has more than 150 employees, a contract with the NHL and data coverage of 22 hockey leagues worldwide, and it works with teams, digital media and sportsbooks.

Chayka shares the co-CEO role with Lane, and she frames the work in language a fan-experience team would know. She told SBJ that the goal is to use what the company knows about the game to make experiences better, and not necessarily to turn everything into a data exercise. She added that the firm sometimes white-labels its data for other providers. In her view, when people often fail to notice the company's work, that is a good outcome for the business.

Stathletes and OneCourt are separate businesses. Stathletes' history shows that hockey data has become a commercial product with several kinds of buyer. OneCourt adds a different use for the data: the fan who can't see the ice. In leagues that already track the puck and players, the hard part of the data work is done before an accessibility vendor arrives.

Chayka's point about invisible work fits OneCourt's user especially well. A blind fan never sees the tracking feed at all. They only feel what it produces.

Ticketmaster as the delivery route

Ticketmaster's sponsorship has helped OneCourt spread through professional sports, so the route into arenas has run through a ticketing sponsor. SBJ counts nine NBA teams that deployed OneCourt with the ticketing giant's help. Four NHL clubs did too: the Avalanche, Blackhawks, Capitals and Red Wings, which will have devices at all of their home games this season.

For a startup, a sponsor relationship that reaches across many clubs could replace some team-by-team sales. Thirteen clubs across two leagues, plus a league-level deal, is the kind of footprint that would otherwise take a lot of separate pitches.

ColoradoBiz shows how that route worked. Scott Aller, who was Ticketmaster's regional vice president of sports, helped bring OneCourt technology into NBA arenas so blind and low-vision fans could follow games in real time. His job covered NBA, NHL and arena partnerships across North America: more than 52 teams and 35 million tickets sold a year. Aller became chief commercial officer of Pursuit Attractions and Hospitality in October.

The rest of that job was squarely commercial. Aller managed relationships with teams, arenas and the NBA league office, working on attendance, ticket revenue and distribution, and he supported the openings of Chase Center in San Francisco and Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. The OneCourt work sat in the same portfolio, which suggests the ticketing side treated accessibility as part of its client relationship with a club rather than a side project.

The NHL tentpole deal surfaced within weeks of Aller's move to Pursuit. That timing suggests the program had become a Ticketmaster relationship that does not hinge on one executive.

Marquee nights versus every home game

The league deal covers four tentpole events, which means four nights a season, and only the fans who attend them benefit. The deeper commitment may be from the four clubs that have the devices at every home game.

For a season-ticket holder who is blind, that difference is practical. A tentpole night is a special occasion; a full home schedule is what makes the device part of how someone actually follows a team.

The Capitals' home is the 20,356-seat Capital One Arena, which is also home to the NBA's Washington Wizards, according to Coliseum. Jim Van Stone, president of business operations and chief commercial officer at Monumental Sports & Entertainment, said the arena "is undergoing the most significant transformation in its history, with technology playing a central role in redefining the fan experience."

Under an LG Electronics USA partnership aligned with agency ANC, a new LG-powered Visibowl will replace the traditional concourse walls with more than 500 feet of immersive digital displays. The deal also includes the LG Collective, a premium seating destination on the arena's District Level debuting for the 2026-2027 seasons. OneCourt is a much smaller addition, though it could fit with that same push on fan technology.

Next stop: the living room

Hockey is not where OneCourt started. It recently supported games at the FIFA Men's World Cup, it is activating around select Seattle Seahawks games, and it had a deployment at the 2026 Super Bowl. The NHL deal moves it from individual teams to a league's flagship events.

OneCourt is also producing an at-home device, with an official launch sometime in December. That could let a fan feel a game from the couch on any night, rather than only from a seat in an arena that uses OneCourt. It would also give OneCourt a route to fans that does not depend on a club or a ticketing sponsor installing devices first.