Best Stories of 2025: "Changing the game"

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As 2025 comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to revisit some of the stories that resonated most across Mountain Brook. These aren’t just top clicks or biggest headlines — they’re pieces that captured something real about the people, places and moments that defined the year.

Blake Patterson looked at the screen and couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was the afternoon of Feb. 21, and Mountain Brook’s girls basketball team was playing in the Class 6A regional championship in Jacksonville — a game that would send the Lady Spartans to the state Final Four for the first time in school history. Back on campus, more than 700 students were engaging with Wunderfan, the sports fan engagement app Patterson cofounded.

Patterson pulled up the app’s heat map and saw a storm of activity centered over Mountain Brook High School — a dense cluster of logins from students in class, interacting with the platform during the game.

"We're respecting the polygon," Patterson said with a grin, referencing legendary Birmingham weather forecaster James Spann’s catchphrase when warning people to stay inside storm boundaries during tornado season. "It looked just like a radar image. The whole school was lighting up."

More than 700 of the school’s 967 students had actively used Wunderfan that day, a staggering 72% of the student body. Some were checking scores, others making predictions. When the Lady Spartans hit a big shot in their win over Fort Payne, dozens of students instantly claimed virtual points called Wundercoins for their reactions.

It was exactly what Patterson envisioned — turning engagement into an interactive experience and a win-win-win for fans, teams and brands. And the biggest proof was happening close to home.

SPARTAN WITH A VISION

Patterson’s journey to Wunderfan began long before that afternoon. He is a 2004 graduate of Mountain Brook High School, where he played multiple sports including basketball. After high school, Patterson attended Ole Miss, studying business and marketing. Though he didn’t pursue collegiate athletics, the lessons he learned on the court — strategy, perseverance and teamwork — laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial career.

Postgraduation, Patterson entered the corporate world, working in the insurance sector before pivoting to tech startups. He quickly discovered a talent for building scalable digital products, leading multiple ventures to successful exits. His passion for sports and technology never faded, and eventually, those two worlds collided in a way that would change everything.

"I kept seeing the same problem — student sections were emptying out, engagement was declining, and schools were struggling to keep young fans invested. I knew there had to be a way to make this fun — something that taps into what makes sports great: competition, community, and rewards," he said.

BIRTH OF WUNDERFAN

Patterson and his cofounders, Michael Testa (COO, formerly of AMC and FanDuel) and Geren de Klerk (CTO, formerly of the NBA and Virgin Mobile), started building Wunderfan with a simple but powerful goal: to incentivize fan engagement and create a platform where everyone wins.

The concept was tested through smaller ventures, including Wonderpar, a gamified golf rewards platform Patterson developed. The lessons learned from that project — particularly in scaling engagement models — became the backbone of Wunderfan.

Before the app even launched, Patterson knew he had something special. One of the first people he showed Wunderfan to was Samford University athletic director Martin Newton — a longtime industry veteran who immediately saw the potential.

"Every college in America is going to want this," Newton told Patterson.

That validation was a turning point. Within months, Wunderfan was ready for prime time.

The official launch came in September 2024 at the Georgia vs. Clemson season opener in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. From the outset, engagement skyrocketed. In the week after their debut, Patterson raised his first $300,000 from investors.

MORE THAN AN APP

Wunderfan turns fan engagement into a game. Fans earn points for attending, checking scores, making predictions, even cheering. Their loyalty translates into rewards — team merchandise, discounts, VIP experiences. The more they engage, the more they win.

"We built this so that everybody wins,” Patterson said. “Teams get better engagement, fans get rewarded and businesses get real ROI. That’s why this thing works."

Conner Schenk, founder of Constant Sports, a company that specializes in valuations for sports start-ups, sees this rewards-based engagement as a key driver of Wunderfan’s rapid growth.

“With so many apps, networks, and platforms, the downside is oversaturation — fans have more content than ever, but keeping track of everything can be overwhelming," Schenck said.

But Wunderfan appears to have found the right differentiator — it pays users to use it.

"The rewards aspect — earning credits, discounts or points — resonates especially well with college students who may be short on funds," Schenk said. "Any opportunity to redeem points toward restaurants, local businesses, or exclusive experiences is a plus. That’s a major factor in the success of fan-engagement platforms."

The gamification aspect keeps fans logging in, even when their favorite team might be struggling.

Marie Claire Kampanis, 12, didn’t believe it at first. When her friend told her about Wunderfan, she was skeptical.

“There’s no way this is real,” she thought. “What do you mean you can earn points and get gift cards?” 

But curiosity got the best of her, and soon, she found herself checking the app daily, racking up points just by attending school events.

Then came the raffle. She entered on a whim, not expecting much — until the impossible happened.

On Feb. 24, Patterson handed Kampanis a $1,000 gift card in front of her classmates at Mountain Brook High School. Her eyes widened as she took it, barely able to contain her excitement. For Kampanis, a member of Mountain Brook’s elite Dorians dance team — winners of multiple national championships — the thrill of competition was nothing new. But this moment felt different.

“This might be better than winning nationals!” she exclaimed.

For her, Wunderfan had started as a fun way to earn rewards — but it had quickly become something more.

“It actually motivated me to come to practice here at the high school and even to school more because I knew I could earn points and rewards,” she said.

That’s the magic Patterson and team had in mind.

“The reality is, some nights, your team is going to lose,” Patterson said. “But in Wunderfan, you’re always winning something — points, perks, whatever. That feeling of winning keeps people engaged even when the scoreboard doesn’t go their way.”

PROOF IN THE STORM

As Wunderfan continues to scale, Patterson credits much of his success to his wife, Joanne, a fellow Mountain Brook native and MBHS alum. He said her sharp mind and willingness to challenge his ideas in thoughtful ways keep him grounded and focused.

"I would not be where I am (without her). I cannot emphasize this enough,” Patterson said. “You need that rock. And that rock is my wife. … She isn’t just a cheerleader, where it’s like, ‘yeah, go for it.’ She’ll make something look like Swiss cheese by the fifth word (if she sees holes in the plan). She makes me look at all angles to see if I’m really looking at things in the right way.”

With fresh investment and a rapidly growing user base, the company is focused on expanding to more schools, deepening brand partnerships, and pushing fan engagement even further. While many sports apps focus on news, betting or team-specific experiences, Wunderfan is built differently — turning every fan interaction into a game with real rewards, both on campus or off, in venues or in front of the couch.

“We get told, ‘This sounds too good to be true,’ constantly,” Patterson said.

Wunderfan has already secured major brand partnerships, including Lululemon, Atletica, Fanatics, and Dick’s Sporting Goods, as well as Uber, DoorDash and Chipotle. It has executed successful student takeovers at the University of Oregon, Penn State and Ohio State. Patterson said multiple schools are engaged with Wunderfan.

The company recently partnered with its first NBA team, the Orlando Magic, to sell merchandise and tickets through the app.

The traction is impressive, but then again, lots of start-ups launch quickly then fade. Is it momentum or mirage?

As of mid-March, Wunderfan had surpassed 30,000 daily users, but is growing rapidly.

“We grew about 250% this weekend,” he said in late February inside the old gymnasium where he once starred as a teammate of Mountain Brook hoops legend Bucky McMillan, now the head coach at Samford. “ I’d hope to say we’ve got 10 million users by year’s end.”

A big risk for start-ups is often an inability to handle growth, something Wunderfan has anticipated in its launch. Built to handle 1 million daily users from Day 1, its product roadmap is rapidly accelerating to innovate in its niche.

“I think what's even more important is where we're going,” Patterson said. “With watch-to-earn, which we’ve discussed, and listen-to-earn, I think that completely changes the game. It’s one thing we’re doing with tech, but it’s another thing where we’re going with media — where there’s never really been anything out there where the average user gets true ROI for consuming sports.”

Rather than being just another team app, Patterson envisions Wunderfan as the platform for all teams.

Schenk also sees increasing opportunities in venue-based engagement.

"Sports venues are no longer just for teams—they’re now 365-day entertainment hubs, hosting concerts, monster truck rallies, rodeos and other large-scale events," Shenck said. "Capitalizing on these additional revenue streams is crucial for long-term success.”

The moment of validation came on the day the Spartans’ girls team made history by beating Fort Payne 52-40. As Patterson watched the school’s heat map light up, he saw proof that the fan experience was changing in real time.

“When I look at that, I see kids that all they had to do was walk into that school and hit go on the app and go on about their day. That’s all they had to do, and they’re earning with their phone in their pocket or their backpack or their car.”

What’s possible? The answers are found on his heat map, Patterson said.

“There’s roughly 20 million high school kids in this country,” he said. “There’s 20 million college kids. You do the math. You get 5% of them. 10% of them? You’re a billion-dollar company.”

The Wunderfan storm is here — and it’s only getting stronger.