Fans With Disabilities Represent A $490 Billion Growth Opportunity — And The Technology To Help Capture It Has Arrived
By Adam Grossman
This newsletter is an builds on a previously published JohnWallStreet column that featured Grossman’s analysis.
The most under-served fan segment in professional sports has the same disposable income as the African American and Hispanic markets, and has, until very recently, been functionally locked out of the in-venue product.
That segment is fans with disabilities. According to a 2018 American Institutes for Research report, the after-tax disposable income pool for working-age adults with disabilities sits at roughly $490 billion — on the same order of magnitude as the African American ($501B) and Hispanic ($582B) markets that every major league already builds dedicated, year-round marketing programs around. The CDC estimates that more than one in four U.S. adults lives with a disability.
Despite that scale, the segment has historically been treated as a community-service line item rather than a revenue opportunity. The reason is straightforward: the in-venue experience for blind, low-vision, deaf, hard-of-hearing, and sensory-sensitive fans has historically been worse than the experience for the rest of the fanbase. This depresses willingness to for these fans to spend and engage even when the desire to attend or consume content is there. New technology has now changed this equation.
The Update: The Tech To Capture That $490B Has Finally Arrived
The headline example is OneCourt, a Seattle-based startup whose haptic display lets fans who are blind or have low vision ‘feel’ a basketball game on a tablet-sized tactile court. The device pulls from the optical tracking data the NBA already collects at 25 frames per second and translates the position of the ball and players into vibrations and audio narration. As OneCourt co-founder Jerred Mace put it, “You can think of it like a normal screen, but instead of visual pixels, they’re tactile.”
The Portland Trail Blazers were the first to put OneCourt into commercial use. After a pilot in April 2024, the team, in partnership with Ticketmaster and OneCourt, expanded the program to every Trail Blazers home game at Moda Center, making them the first professional sports team to do so. Devices are offered at no additional cost on a first-come, first-served basis. A longtime blind Blazers fan said games were “boring” before the device because he often didn’t know what was happening. With the device, the fane is meaningfully engaged with the on-floor product for the first time.
Why This Is A Business Story, Not Solely A CSR Story
Three things have changed at once. First, the data already exists: leagues have spent a decade building optical and player-tracking systems for officiating, broadcast, and betting, and the marginal cost of repurposing that feed for haptic devices is low.
Second, the hardware is ready. OneCourt, Ireland-based Field of Vision (now deployed for rugby and football in Dublin and AFL at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne), and Orange’s 5G-enabled Touch2See have all moved from prototype to in-venue deployment, with CNBC reporting accelerating adoption across pro teams in 2025.
Third, the audience is monetizable. The $490 billion opportunity can now be tapped into in novel ways using new technology.
It’s Not Just The NBA
FIFA used the Club World Cup 2025 to deploy free audio descriptive commentary at every U.S. stadium. UEFA followed, partnering with ITV and Guinness to bring audio description to Women’s EURO 2025, and AFCON 2025 rolled out audio-description tech across the tournament. In the U.S., the Atlanta Falcons run an in-venue app with real-time audio commentary, the Boston Red Sox’ app offers audio descriptions of the game and Fenway’s amenities, and a growing number of venues are using Bluetooth beacon technology to help visually impaired fans navigate concourses.
Where The Value Gets Created
The impact to sports properties' revenue should be real. Incremental ticket sales as a previously ‘boring’ experience becomes engaging. Per-cap and concessions lift as oriented fans move around more. Partnership inventory as brands with disability-focused mandates (financial services, telcos, healthcare) seek credible activations beyond logo placement as the Guinness on UEFA’s audio description demonstrates.
Bottom Line
The original column predicted that sports properties would increasingly engage with fans with disabilities. That’s no longer a forecast.
The Trail Blazers’ OneCourt rollout, FIFA’s Club World Cup audio description program, the Falcons’ and Red Sox’ in-venue apps, and Field of Vision’s spread across rugby, football, and AFL all point the same direction. The league, team, or venue operator that ignores the disability community in 2026 is now ignoring a $490B addressable market with the tools to actually serve it.