The new Huskies Rewards App may have caused a stir when it came to Beanpot tickets, but its goal for increased fan engagement at Northeastern could be bringing more attention to women’s sports. 

On July 1, 2024, Northeastern Athletics launched the Huskies Rewards App, a way for students to acquire tickets, check in at games to earn points and get rewards. 

Northeastern athletics has lagged in student enthusiasm and attendance for years, especially since eliminating the university football team in 2009. But the app is hoping to change that by increasing crowds at the university’s home games. A bigger crowd can be beneficial for the success and motivation of student-athletes. 

Various student organizations aim to support the university’s athletics, including the Northeastern Pep Band and NU DogHouse, a group of Northeastern hockey fans who attend every game. These groups, paired with the students drawn in by the new app, can make a difference for players, said Skylar Irving, a senior forward for the Northeastern women’s hockey team and a business administration major.

“I say this all the time, we have the best fans in hockey, so they just bring the energy every game and they’re there to support us. And it kind of raises our level of play because there’s people supporting us,” Irving said. 

Lauren Kaufmann, a fourth-year psychology and criminal justice combined major and leader of the DogHouse, said that attendance usually depends on how well teams are performing throughout the season as well as the game. She also said that students tend to come to games more when there has been a break in games or semesters and they haven’t been able to attend a game for a while. 

“I think [the] beginning of [the] semester is when we usually do our best because people miss [hockey]. They want to get back into it, especially freshmen,” she said. 

The Huskies Rewards App has tried to bring more fans to the arena through incentives including ticket priority to the city’s famous Beanpot tournament.

Tickets for the annual Boston hockey tournament between Northeastern, Harvard University, Boston College and Boston University have been difficult to acquire in past years due to high demand and difficulty getting into the ticketing platform. By checking in at games throughout the season leading up to the Beanpot and earning points, game attendees were given a rank that correlated with the time slot they would receive their Beanpot ticket link. 

Kaufmann was concerned about how effective the app would be in regulating Beanpot ticket sales, but was pleasantly surprised when she received the link at her given time slot. 

As a member of the DogHouse, she attends most games and holds a high ranking, but she was skeptical if the ranking system would actually reflect when students received their links. There are six levels on the app: Diamond, Premium, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Standard, each with correlating ticket times. 

“I actually got it on time. It worked pretty well, but I do think that tickets were sold out around 1 [p.m.]-ish, so lower tiers didn’t even have a chance unless someone gave them a link,” Kaufmann said. 

In 2019, Northeastern Athletics introduced a similar app called the Howlin’ Huskies Rewards app. According to its website, this app had similar features, such as check ins to earn points, game updates and the chance to earn rewards. 

“The reason we implemented the new app is so all of our data lives in one place,” said Victoria Boyle, the assistant athletic director of game day marketing and innovation for Northeastern Athletics. “Last year we signed on with Paciolan … and to include the Huskies Reward App we were able to align our Fanmaker and Paciolan platforms with ticketing and data to now align with our students.” 

The new app allows Northeastern Athletics to combine its ticketing and rewarding system into one space rather than two separate platforms. This allows students to streamline the process of acquiring tickets for high-demand games and have all of their information in one place. 

“I think one of the biggest … positive differences between this app and the last one is there’s point incentives for coming earlier and also for staying through the end of the game,” said Misha Ankudovych, a third-year data science and economics combined major and one of the leaders of the DogHouse. “I think that’s a really good thing, to incentivize people to stay there.”

On top of the point incentives, Ankudovych said he thinks the app is particularly successful in promoting themed games, including the Taylor Swift-themed women’s hockey game and the Star Wars-themed men’s hockey game, which were both hosted in January. 

Since the app is fairly new, NU Athletics is still continuing to get feedback from students and fans using the app and attending games. While the response has been positive overall, Boyle said she and her team are still working hard to continue developing the app to make it the best for students. 

“I would like to continue diving into data to see what types of students are attending different games and what games those are so that we can do a better job learning what gets students to games. One thing I would like to explore further is the point system, and I want to see how realistic it is to gauge how many games students are attending, understanding their workload as students.”

Additionally, Ankudovych said that during his time at Northeastern, he has seen a general increase in appreciation for women’s hockey specifically.

“In terms of women’s game attendance, we’ve been really trending up. … [It’s] just cool to see the appreciation grow for women’s sports, women’s hockey just in general, but especially [at Northeastern], and just seeing that is really awesome,” Ankudovych said. “I think that really has been the biggest growth over time.” 

Irving echoed this sentiment.

“I think there’s kind of been a lot more [fans at games] this year in comparison to my freshman year. It kind of felt like an empty stadium at times,” Irving said. “But I think [in the last] year and a half or so, there’s been more people coming to games, a lot more energy, a lot more talk about everything going on, which is cool because then we get more fans and it’s more fun to play.”

This year, the Women’s Beanpot semifinal broke the record for the highest-attended women’s hockey game in Matthews Arena, which Ankudovych said was particularly impressive as it was on a Tuesday night. The Women’s Beanpot final, hosted Jan. 21 at TD Garden, broke the record for the most fans at a women’s hockey game in New England, with 13,279 fans watching. 

For players like Irving, having such high attendance at the semifinal in Matthews helped boost team morale.

“We were kind of just needing a little bit of energy and whatnot, and we came out, we crushed BC, which was super cool, but it brought the energy up and kind of gave everybody the support [we needed],” Irving said. 

Increasing fan engagement also helps bring more visibility to college sports. This is especially important for women’s sports, Irving said.

“We want more talk about the sport because more talk means more exposure to media, and then more exposure just means more people get to know it,” she said. “And I think at the end of the day, we want as many people to know that women’s sports are really, really fun to watch.”