Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Cleaning out the notebook from a day spent at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which celebrated its 10th year earlier this month. Kudos to the work of Jessica Gelman and Daryl Morey, both Forty Under 40 alumni, who founded the student-run event in 2006.
> DATA INTEGRITY: There was understandably a lot of discussion on player data and tracking at the event, but an underlying issue threatening this area centers around ownership and privacy. While one technology after another is getting introduced to the marketplace that can tell us more and more about player performance, don’t expect anything dramatic to be added without approval from the players associations. Sources from the tech side told me their efforts to introduce sophisticated new technology has been put on hold because it needs to be collectively bargained. Sitting on a panel with Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins in Boston, it was clear that all players aren’t on board with data tracking and have great concerns about who owns the data, how the data is used — for or against a player in negotiations — and what is released to the public. Also, when a player leaves a team, does that data go with the player or remain with the team?
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“Evolution of Ownership” participants: Stan Kroenke, Brian Lafemina, moderator Jessica Gelman, Wyc Grousbeck and Sam Kennedy
Photo by: COURTESY OF MIT SLOAN SPORTS ANALYTICS CONFERENCE |
Another eye-opener for the audience was when someone asked how long until wearable technology would be used at the high school level, and Catapult CEO
Adir Shiffman said, “Ah, one year ago.” So who is advocating for the rights of the high school athlete when it comes to this data? This technology is pervasive, but a number of legal questions must be addressed before this trend advances too far, too fast.
> EYE ON THE HAWK: Keep an eye on Hawkins. The 30-year-old NFL player has a warm personality and a great story. Many of you remember him from Michael Irvin’s football reality show, “4th and Long,” where he was runner-up in the competition that was broadcast on Spike in 2009. Entering his sixth year with the Browns, he is training in Tampa during the offseason and taking classes in the graduate program in sports management at Columbia University. He flies up to New York City on Wednesday evening, takes three sports management classes on Thursday, and flies back to Tampa that evening. He is in his second semester and is on track to finish up this summer before going to camp. I’ve met Hawkins a few times and find him articulate, engaging, humble and willing to speak freely on multiple issues. He’s a good guy to know.
> PATRIOT WAYS: New England Patriots President Jonathan Kraft spoke on a panel on the “Future of the Fan Experience” and detailed how the team leverages its internal database that has a massive 5 million active names, representing anyone who has touched their teams or facility. “We are spending a lot of time focusing on who is interacting with us and keeping track of all their interactive points across our platforms,” he said. “We can understand more about our fans, which helps us define and personalize their relationship with our organization and build profiles of new people who come into our system.”
Kraft also feels the team has made gains with its mobile app, which offers exclusive content for season-ticket holders, such as video the morning of a game from the team hotel, sent directly to season-ticket holders. It also features replays from six camera angles during home games at Gillette Stadium and includes an “alarm” on game day where certain Patriots players record wake-up messages with instructions around the game-day experience. Asked if coach Bill Belichick was one of those voices, Kraft smiled and said, “We don’t bother asking Bill to do those messages. There would just be a stare from him.”
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Some of the key subjects from the 2003 best-seller “Moneyball” participate in a reunion and panel, including author Michael Lewis, sports data pioneer Bill James and former Oakland A’s personnel executive and current Cleveland Browns chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta. The panel was moderated by Jackie MacMullan.
Photo by: COURTESY OF MIT SLOAN SPORTS ANALYTICS CONFERENCE |
Last year, the Patriots were cited by research firm Hookit as having the highest fan engagement across social platforms among teams in the NFL, and Kraft detailed how the team approaches the various platforms: Twitter is for hard news, Facebook is for lifestyle coverage, Instagram for visual moments and Snapchat for real-time event experience and coverage. Finally, Kraft touched on an area the team is struggling to improve. “We still haven’t been able to figure the traffic to and from Gillette Stadium, especially the egress. We are spending a lot of time on that,” he said.
> LIVE EXPERIENCE BACK IN VOGUE: It’s not a surprise that the message from many panelists is that the trend has shifted toward consumers wanting to be part of shared live experiences. Ticketmaster President Jared Smith said, “There is no evidence at all that people are staying home because the at-home experience is that much better. The numbers don’t support that. This macroeconomic trend toward collective experiences is really there.”
Brian Lafemina, NFL senior vice president of club business development, also cited league data as supporting live-event sales. “A few years ago, the biggest trend was that the at-home experience was so good, that fans would stop coming to venues,” he noted. “There has been a change in the conversation about the fans and the game experience. People want to go to stadiums again. It’s a challenge but fans are coming.” Meanwhile, when asked what fans seek the most in their ticket-buying experience, Smith said succinctly, “access and flexibility.”
> FANATICS DOUBLES DOWN: Few companies have been on a trajectory like Fanatics, and it doesn’t come as a surprise when you listen to the aggressive approach from Executive Chairman Michael Rubin. A couple of things stood out to me: The company has invested a beefy $80 million in the last year on new technology. Rubin also said “micro-moments,” where fans buy product customized instantly around a happening or game, is a $25 million business currently, with the ability to scale to up to an astonishing $50 million this year. He predicted the company’s micro-moments business could hit $1 billion in five to 10 years.
> NOTES & QUOTES: Kroenke Sports & Entertainment CEO Stan Kroenke made a rare speaking appearance at the conference. He doesn’t seem fully at ease with public speaking, and didn’t touch much on the NFL’s approval of his franchise’s relocation to Los Angeles. But he did shed some light on the vote in January. “It was positioned as a competition among ownership,” he said. “It became written about and seen that owners were pitted against each other. I never thought that was the case. In the end, this is a great project for the NFL.” When asked what league he would consider investing in, Kroenke said he has looked into adding a cricket team to his portfolio. … It was interesting to hear Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck say that when he bought the team in 2002, he didn’t anticipate how lucrative the international opportunities would be for the team. “I’m amazed when I see the enormous revenue stream for us in China,” he said. … Nick Kelly, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s director of experiential marketing, offered an honest and understandable answer when asked about opportunities the brand may have missed: He said his team was surprised by the appeal of MLS in Orlando with the first-year Orlando City SC. “We didn’t expect that team to be such a popular draw in that market. That’s one that we are now trying to get involved in,” he said.
Abraham D. Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
