Welcome to YinzLabs: Driving New Innovation at YinzCam

Welcome to Mobile Mondays with YinzCam. ??

Each Monday, we'll bring you a success story in the space of mobile apps for sports and live events. We'll share how our clients inspire us with their creativity, and dive into a data nugget, a user experience, a best practice, a client case study, a product launch, or a milestone. ??

Our origins lie in research at Carnegie Mellon University, and for 16 years, the spirit of research has fueled everything we do.?

Carnegie Mellon’s motto is, “My heart is in the work.”?

?? Our hearts have been in working with our clients on the work.

We’re thrilled to announce YinzLabs, our new R&D unit designed to drive bold, disruptive ideas. At YinzLabs, our mission is simple: dream big, take risks, test, learn, and lead the way with innovative solutions.

YinzLabs is where ideas take flight—where sketches on a whiteboard become market-ready products. And it’s all because of our clients, and because of their collaboration and unwavering willingness to explore the unknown. Our clients inspire us. They inspire our work.

?? 2020: During the pandemic, our clients inspired us to rapidly prototype a number of products within 72 hours of lockdown, products which we gave away at no cost for the benefit of all of them. Our goal has been to serve our clients, through good times and bad, and particularly when we know that digital products can be a force for good during bad times. We introduce the AR Portal, a way for fans to bring the stadium digitally to their homes, even when they couldn’t go the stadium physically.

?? 2023: We launched Live Activities for sports team apps during Super Bowl LVII—a feature now active in over 100 of our apps. Fans were also introduced to Ticket Memories, allowing them to personalize their game-day experience by saving a digital commemorative ticket and swapping in a photo from their device as the marquee image. Additionally, our clients also gained new tools, including YinzStories for sharing vertical stories. We also built an AR experience that brought statues outside a stadium to life with immersive storytelling.

?? 2024: We expanded Live Activities, becoming the first in sports to bring the product to the Apple Watch platform and an F1 Event, enabling real-time engagement across new platforms and sports. We introduced the accelerometer-based AR Maze game—a mobile experience that allows users to integrate physical gestures (like tilt and turn) into an interactive mobile gaming experience. Additionally, we explored new intersections of the physical and digital worlds with our Wearable Loyalty Badge Program. Developed in partnership with Avery Dennison, this first-of-its-kind initiative allows fans to earn, display, and celebrate their loyalty in a connected physical+digital ecosystem.

Watch more here: ??

As we step into 2025, we’re more committed than ever to turning your bold, groundbreaking ideas into reality.

YinzLabs exists because of you and for you. Together, with our clients, we’ll continue to push boundaries, redefine what’s possible, and lead the way into the future—one innovation at a time.