The truth about building an in-house design team in sports

Many sports clubs assume that building an internal design team is the most sustainable long-term solution.

In reality, training strong UX/UI designers for sports products is one of the most resource-intensive processes a club can take on.

At Humbleteam, a UX/UI and product design agency working with sports teams and the sports industry, we see how much effort it takes to grow reliable product designers from scratch.

Twice a year, we run an internal UX program that attracts around 500–600 junior designers. From that pool, we carefully select up to 10 candidates.

For the next three months inside Humbleteam, they don’t work on client projects at all. They focus entirely on learning:

• real sports product use cases
• daily feedback
• structured design practice
• test projects based on real fan scenarios

After that, we narrow the group again.

Usually, only 4–6 designers move forward into a second three-month phase, this time working on real projects for sports teams and digital platforms — still under close supervision.

Only after six months of structured training do you get a solid, reliable UX/UI designer capable of working independently on sports apps, ticketing systems, and fan engagement platforms.

This is the reality of product design in sports.

Growing even a small internal team requires months of investment, senior mentorship, and structured processes. Many sports clubs simply cannot pause ongoing digital projects for that long.

That’s one of the reasons why sports organizations choose Humbleteam as a product design partner for sports teams. Instead of building capabilities from zero, they gain immediate access to experienced UX/UI designers who already understand fan behavior, sports monetization, and digital product strategy.

In the sports industry, speed and expertise matter. And building them internally takes more time than most clubs expect.