Fandom is now global, presenting an opportunity for growth but also increasing demands on the digital platform. To ensure reliability and scalability, Fandom must address challenges such as unpredictable traffic spikes, peak-driven design, non-linear scaling, low latency expectations, and global reach. A reliable fan experience requires a distributed system with architectures that minimize latency, guarantee data delivery and integrity, scale on demand, are resilient, and maintain consistency. Selecting the right protocol for persistent communication is also crucial, with WebSocket being a popular choice due to its universal availability and ease of implementation, but requiring additional engineering effort to meet reliability expectations. Building in-house can be challenging and time-consuming, while leveraging a reliable realtime fan experience solution like Ably provides flexibility, predictability, and room to innovate.