The $300 million deal brings Lava’s technology and partnerships with 56 professional sports franchises into Bilt’s “rapidly expanding neighborhood commerce ecosystem,” per the release.
“The deal marks a significant step in Bilt’s expansion beyond housing, bringing together two powerful networks: Bilt’s growing ecosystem of residential communities and neighborhood businesses, and Lava’s technology connecting sports teams, venues and their fans,” the release said. “At the center of the strategy is a simple idea. Some of the strongest communities in America aren’t defined just by where people live, but by the teams they love.”
Lava has relationships with teams across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS, including the Detroit Lions, Denver Nuggets, Carolina Hurricanes and LAFC, according to the release.
“We think there’s a really exciting way to start connecting sports loyalty and sports fandom into this neighborhood platform, both, by the way, from connecting our own housing residents into sports experiences, but also connecting sports fans into the neighborhood,” Bilt CEO Ankur Jain said, Bloomberg reported Monday.
Bilt is hoping to use Lava’s “real-time loyalty, identity, stored-value and customer engagement technology” to bolster its “ability to connect the home and neighborhood,” the release said.
In addition, Lava offers artificial intelligence capabilities that can complement Bilt’s own, according to the release. Bilt aims to “combine its AI agents with Lava’s real-time engagement technology to help coordinate personalized benefits and offers across businesses,” drawing on both companies’ data and integrations.
“We’ve spent years building technology that helps leading sports and entertainment organizations recognize and engage their fans in real time because that loyalty shouldn’t begin and end on game day,” Lava Co-Founder Wen Miao said in the release. “What makes Bilt so exciting is the opportunity to take that technology beyond individual venues and connect it to an entirely new network of neighborhood businesses and communities.”
Bilt announced in August that it was expanding its hospitality operating system to include a platform for travel advisers, a move designed to address the “operational fragmentation” that has plagued the luxury travel advisory sector, PYMNTS reported Aug. 9.
Launched in June 2021 to allow members to earn rewards on rent payments for apartments, the Bilt program has since expanded to cover condo homeowners association fees, student housing payments and mortgage payments. The company was valued at $10.75 billion in July 2025 when it raised $250 million, PYMNTS reported.
