The Minnesota Vikings are tackling opening a new stadium and launching a new app this coming season.

The National Football League team will relaunch its app at a party during the NFL Draft 2016 on Thursday, April 28, says John Penhollow, vice president of corporate and technology partnerships for Minnesota Vikings Football LLC. The new app will work in conjunction with the team’s new indoor stadium, U.S. Bank Stadium, which will open this summer.

The new app will allow fans to purchase tickets, enter the stadium via a mobile ticket, purchase food and drinks, watch video replays, earn points in a loyalty program, buy merchandise and navigate the stadium with turn-by-turn directions, Penhollow says. The team’s current app has none of this functionality and only provides content, such as news and information about the team, he says.

Without any of these features, the Vikings’ current app has amassed 450,000 downloads since its launch in 2012, Penhollow says. Once the new app launches fans with the current iteration of the Viking’s app will receive an alert to update their apps. Assuming this large base of fans updates the app, Penhollow hopes the app can reach more than a million downloads.

The forthcoming app will house the Vikings’ first-ever loyalty program. Instead of only offering rewards for ticket and merchandise purchases, the app-only loyalty program will also reward fans for interaction with the team. For example, if a fan watches a press conference video in the app, he will see a code at the end of the video he can enter into the loyalty program to receive points.

“We want to put engagement on equal footing with purchasing,” Penhollow says.

Another example is to reward fans for getting into the stadium at least 30 minutes before kickoff. Instead of lingering at the tailgate, fans would receive points once their ticket scans in at the gate.

“If we have all 66,000 of our fans in our seats at kickoff, that’s a big deal to the players,” Penhollow says.

Points can be redeemed for Vikings swag or Vikings experiences, such as sideline access before a game or VIP seats at a post-game press conference, he says.

The stadium also plans to sell beverages, including alcohol, and a limited food menu through the app. Fans can order and pay in the app, and an employee from a nearby concession stand will run the food up to the fan’s seat. Penhollow expects that the stadium will see an uptick in concession sales because of this convenience in the app.

As this is the first time the concession stands will receive remote orders and have to deliver them, the ordering feature will not be available stadium-wide at the first game, Penhollow says. The stadium will test the feature section by section and expand it slowly during the season to ensure that personnel can handle the changes, he says.

The Vikings are also building mobile technology into the structure of the stadium itself—in the form of 2,000 beacons. Beacons are small wireless transmitters that can sense a smartphone’s location via Bluetooth low energy.

The team also is placing beacons throughout the venue which will guide fans to their seats. Fans will be able to open up the app, type in their seat number, and receive turn-by-turn directions to guide them to their spot, Penhollow says.

Guiding fans to other places in the stadium via the app, such as restrooms, first aid, concessions and parking lots, is a bit more complicated. In the app map, fans first find what they are looking for by zooming out in the map and finding the label or icon of what they need and viewing the stadium section it is in. The fan then types in that section number to get directions. Fans cannot type in words, such as restroom, into the map.

Besides navigation, the Vikings also plan to send smartphone alerts to fans to enhance the game via the app, Penhollow says. However, he has not yet set a number for how many push notifications the app will send or what information the messages will convey.

One of the more basic functions in the app will be ticketing. The Vikings are doing away with season tickets that are printed on heavy, cardstock paper that come in a perforated set, he says. Tickets will soon only be available to purchase in printable PDF form or digitally in app. Fans can purchase tickets and enter the stadium via the in-app mobile tickets, while the PDF tickets must be printed out, Penhollow says.

Having digital tickets will allow easier ticket sharing, Penhollow says. For example, if a fan has season tickets in the app and wants to give a ticket to his brother, he can transfer it in the app instead of mailing it or leaving it at the Will Call window. In the app, he hits Send on a ticket and types in the email address of the desired recipient who will receive a link to the ticket in the email. If the recipient has the Minnesota Vikings app, the ticket will load into the app. If he doesn’t have the app, the link will open to Google Play or Apple’s app store for him to download it.

The Vikings do not expect a significant uptick in ticket sales because of the mobile tickets, Penhollow says. “It’s more about efficiency,” he says.

Even though the app is slated to launch in April, the first Vikings football game is not until August. The in-stadium features of the app, such as ordering food and getting directions, will only work if the fan is connected to the stadium’s Wi-Fi, Penhollow says.

Mobile tickets and beacons will also give the Vikings insight into how fans move about the stadium. For example, if a high concentration of tickets are scanned at a certain gate, the team knows that it may have to send more security to that area, or maintenance to clean the restroom, he says.

The Minnesota Vikings worked with both VenueNext and Adept Mobile to develop the new app. Adept Mobile provides the content in the app, such as news about the football team, and VenueNext provides everything else, Penhollow says.

It took more than a year to develop this app. The app is complex, as it has to work with several other companies and systems, such as Ticketmaster, the concessions’ POS, the security system, plus the beacon network, Penhollow says. Penhollow would not say how much the Vikings paid for the new app

When developing the technology, the Minnesota Vikings consulted with other sports and entertainment facilities that use mobile technology, such as Levi’s Stadium, where the San Francisco’s 49ers play, and indoor arenas Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden.