In this episode of Game Time Tech, Robert Kramer and Melody Brue, VP and Principal Analysts at Moor Insights & Strategy, dive into the intersection of sports and technology. Explore how cutting-edge technologies like AI, data analytics, and personalized fan experiences are transforming Major League Baseball, The Masters Golf Tournament, and the Intuit Dome.

Highlights include:

MLB’s Data Evolution with Google Cloud: Data and AI are enhancing fan engagement, team strategies, and broadcasting through platforms like Google Cloud’s BigQuery.

Masters Golf Tournament’s AI Innovations: IBM’s Generative AI is powering predictive insights for fans with features like “Every Shot” and “Every Hole” in The Masters app.

Inside the Intuit Dome: A look at advanced fan experience technologies, including facial recognition for entry, autonomous stores, and real-time analytics, powered by Teradata.

Mercedes-Benz’s Cutting-Edge In-Car Experience: Technology is transforming connectivity, from live sports streaming to Zoom calls integrated directly into vehicles.

Fan Behavior and Smart Stadiums: How data-driven technologies are shaping stadium interactions, from personalized fan experiences to autonomous retail systems.

Watch the episode here:

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Disclaimer: This show is for information and entertainment purposes only. While we will discuss publicly traded companies on this show, its contents should not be taken as investment advice.

Transcript:

Robert Kramer: Okay. Welcome to this week’s edition of Moor Insights and Strategy Game Time Tech. We’re on podcast Episode 14. I’m Robert Kramer with Melody Brue. We’re both VP and Principal Analysts at Moor Insights and we’re talking a little bit about sports technology today.
So on this show we’ll be talking about Google Cloud, the Masters Golf Tournament. IBM was doing a lot with the Masters with data. Mercedes-Benz and how data is driving experiences and operations at the Intuit Dome with TeraData and more.

So quick disclaimer now. This show is for information and entertainment purposes only. We will discuss publicly-traded companies on this show. Its content should not be taken as investment advice. So, let’s get started. How are we doing today? What’s going on? It’s Friday and the weekends upon us.

Melody Brue: It’s Friday. And for all our viewers, it’s your birthday. Happy birthday.

Robert Kramer: Oh, my God, thank you. I feel like I’m getting old and hopefully not looking like it. But God, it’s one of those things where you don’t cherish those birthdays as much as you used to.

Melody Brue: Well, it’s worth celebrating, anyway, yeah.

Robert Kramer: Well, thank you.

Melody Brue: Yeah-

Robert Kramer: So where you been lately?

Melody Brue: Been busy. All of us have been on the road. Some travel. I just came back from Canva Create. And while I was there, I got to go to the Intuit Dome and a Clippers game. So we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But that was really fun, really some really interesting technology there. And you were at Google Cloud next?

Robert Kramer: Yes, yes.

Melody Brue: And I’m excited. I saw you recorded a podcast with MLB, so isn’t out yet, but give us a teaser.

Robert Kramer: Yeah, so MLB is using data pretty extensively and we all remember the Moneyball movie…

Melody Brue: Yeah.

Robert Kramer: … with Brad Pitt. I actually asked, I met with Rob Engel, he’s the VP of Software Engineering at Major League Baseball. He’s been there, I think, about 15 years. And I asked him what prompted everything to get this whole evolution of data with Major League Baseball. And he said that was really the beginning. The General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, he was doing everything manually. But his insights and vision on using that data to make certain choices, and to tag different players, and how they would perform, et cetera, is really the enclave of what they’re really doing. So they’re getting all this data from different various areas and leveraging the data and AI from Google Cloud to change the way the game is watched, and actually experience.

I interviewed Rob and it was interesting during the conversation I go, “Are you sure you’re giving the St. Louis Cardinals this data, because they don’t look too good this year?” Because that’s my team. But he was really funny about it. But he basically said, “If you don’t have analysts to really track all the data and utilize what they’re giving all the teams, then you’re not able to take advantage of it.” Because they’re tracking millions of data points and the performance of the players, the updates of the delivery of how they’re playing, and the pitches. And this all goes back to, like what we always talk about, how you can improve the experience for the fans, because that’s really what it’s about. And they have an amazing app that they have, as well as this all delivers that information to that, helps broadcast. So it’s some pretty cool stuff. What do you think about all this?

Melody Brue: Yeah, so, one, I got a tour of the MLB Headquarters in New York. And this was last year. And it is amazing, just the amount of technology and the number of feeds that are coming in there and what is happening. Even down to the temperature of the servers on each field. So they’re monitoring the health of the systems throughout. It is such an operation, it’s amazing. It’s really actually very cool if you’re ever there and you can get in there to do that. But they did do some updates to the Ballpark App this year. And one of the things, so we’re actually going to the Padres-Astros game in Houston this weekend. So I just did an update to my app so that I could do the, just walk in, which is, I don’t think the actual word for it, or the actual, where you don’t have to, the hands free, where you…

Robert Kramer: Right.

Melody Brue: … you don’t have to show your ticket or anything. So I did this and I’m getting ahead of myself here a little bit, but I did this at the Intuit Dome. And it’s amazing how quickly it identifies you. I can see how people could potentially be creeped out by this, but we’ll talk about how they erase the data and it’s actually way safer than you think, than people think. But it’s a very cool experience. And you’re able just to walk in. And then, in some cases, You can use it to pay for your concessions and all of that. But they’re also doing, like you said, using that data to inform these little stories. So if you put, “Padres are my team,” so I get my own personalized little chronicles each day. And I can get for whatever team. And it starts to get catered to me by what I consume. So this is all from data that’s being pulled in to the Ballpark App. So very interesting. And of course, they’re working with Google Cloud on that.

Robert Kramer: Yeah, it’s really interesting how these managers will actually look at all this data. And then how it also affects the broadcasters and affects the fans. So it’s really going around in a lot of different ways. But they’re using PASS data, which is being stored in Google Cloud, BigQuery. And then they’re using current data they’re getting and then they can make decisions based upon the probability of this to happen, or predicting the baseman, or is going to make the success of this based upon what the pitcher pitches, and who the catcher is, and the conditions of the field, et cetera. I think it’s really interesting.

But one question I have is, how far do you want to go? Because sometimes the angry manager or player with the umpire’s call, or some of this natural things that happen, should we just, and we’ve talked about this a lot in the past, shouldn’t it just stop where it just cleans up the game where it’s needed? Or how far does it go? Because the enjoyment of baseball is really going to the ballpark and sitting there, it’s almost like actual park and enjoying just people talking in the sun, or the day, if it’s fall, or October baseball, where it’s cold, and if someone makes a bad call, it’s okay, but how far do you want to go?

Melody Brue: I agree with that and I think there’s two sides of that, which is the fan side that makes it fun, right, even if your team gets a bad call. But there’s always this excitement of like, “Is it a strike? Is it a ball? Were they safe?” There is that technology now that they can, actually Zoom provides that technology of the replay. And that was one of the things that I saw at the MLB Headquarters, which is the Zoom Replay Center. They actually send those replays back to New York to be reviewed. So there is a side of that that becomes, I guess, more clinical, in a way.

But then actually it was Noah Syken from IBM who made a really good point about this. That these players train their entire lives for these moments and so they deserve to get the call right. And so when you put it that way, I agree. And I have a son who’s a pitcher,. And there are times when a strike has been called a ball. And I’m like, “What?” So I get it from both sides, anyway. But talking about that historical data, that’s definitely something that IBM has brought into the Masters. And we’ve talked about that last year we covered all of the Masters. And I don’t think that the data could have predict Rory was going to miss that two-foot putt.

Robert Kramer: Oh, my God. He’s always had tough times. Well, me too. Those short putts, everybody does. But he pulled it out. His game was fantastic. But you know, IBM, and I actually participated in a recent article with NOAA for the Wall Street Journal, based upon IBM using data, or having the data available for the Masters. And how AI and data is used for that being an experience through the app and the website. And I think it allows the fans to see a different perspective of the holes, and the prediction of who’s going to win, and the broadcasting teams.
But the whole insights that it has, and I think another one’s called Every Shot, and then there’s ones called Every Hole, they use Generative AI for real-time predictions and different types of video clips. But have you played with that app at all or what do you think of everything?

Melody Brue: Oh, yeah. And actually, there was a visualization of the app with all of the data points that come in. And it was really interesting about, it was actually visually really beautiful. But just all the data points that come in, like on the golf course. And it’s insane the number of data points that go into each one of these predictions. And we saw this at the U.S. Open too, it’s very accurate. When you take 20 years of historical data and you put it in there, they’re able to generate a pretty accurate prediction of what’s going to happen next. T. Hat, to me, it’s cool. That’s a cool novelty. But also, one, there’s going to be moments like the two-foot putt that’s missed that makes it super exciting.

Robert Kramer: Yes.

Melody Brue: But then there’s also just, do we want to wait, and watch, and see? Or do we want to know what’s going to happen? You don’t want to predict the future too much, right?

Robert Kramer: Exactly. But going back, the ballgames, going back to baseball, remember when you sat there, or people sat there, and they kept the score on a scorecard?

Melody Brue: Oh, I know people who used to do it.

Robert Kramer: But how do you still have that and not get so obsessed with the Major League Baseball app, or the fan experience, how far it needs to go? Is the person, or the user, or the client of all this data, is it the fan, or is it the fan, the Millennials, or who needs this information to keep more busy at the games? Because I think certain information is great for the game. But certain information is probably taking it too far and you can’t even enjoy the game because you’re so busy doing on these apps. Is there a fine line?

Melody Brue: That is true. Actually, Verizon put out a study of how people are using their phones in stadiums. And this was actually a study with the NFL. But the amount of time people are spending on their phones and the amount of data they’re using on their phones during games shows that people aren’t entirely paying attention to the game, right?

Robert Kramer: Right.

Melody Brue: They’re probably checking their fantasy league, they’re sharing things on social, they’re doing all of these things. So we’re losing our attention span for just watching a game and paying attention. We’re like, are we enjoying the game anymore? But I do think that there are people who enjoy sitting there, and still with their pencil and paper, and marking the balls and strikes, and tracking the game. The data also really informs how I think the teams manage their players.

Robert Kramer: Yep.

Melody Brue: And there’s data that the fans don’t have access to that really inform just, is this player ready to play, or are they showing signs of illness, are they showing signs of injury? There’s so many things now that really, actually, just for safety reasons, are super important. And we talked about this with AWS, that that actually is trickling down. So at a large level like NFL, they’re taking all this data and they’re predicting things for helmets, different helmets for different positions because they now see the injuries that happen. So they’re able to take that data and inform the younger, Pop Warners and things like that. So preventing these injuries when the kids are little, not when they’re in NFL. So I think those things are really important on the player side and protecting them.

But back to the Masters, this is actually a really cool thing. And I wish that we had had it because I’m telling you, when we were watching the Masters when it went into the playoff. And we were all glued to the television. But we actually, we had a birthday in our house and so we were leaving to go to dinner. And we were all on our phones just trying to watch it in the car. And everybody had different delays and everything. But Mercedes actually launched a Masters app, an in-car experience.

Robert Kramer: I saw that.

Melody Brue: Yeah, very cool. Mercedes, they’ve always been the Champion Partner at the Masters tournament and they have a longstanding partnership. But one thing that Mercedes has done with their in-car experience is, they’ve acknowledged the fact that you don’t only do things while you’re driving. So with a remote workforce, people often are on the road and they have to take a call, or they have to even get on a video call. They’ve enabled Webex in Mercedes so that you can sit in your car, as long as you’re parked. There’s obviously safety features here. As long as you’re parked, you can watch the Masters or you can join a Webex meeting. So, I think this kind of technology, there’s the CarPlay, and those things. And then there’s the actual native to the car, technology that’s really changing the way people experience things that aren’t happening within your drive time.

Robert Kramer: That’s really neat. Yep. One of the things I wanted to also mention, I think the fans benefits huge from MLB and golf, but also obviously. The teams and the players. But the broadcasters, I think it makes their job probably a little bit easier because they’re able to get so much data from the past in the present to actually do their play-by-play, their color routines, and bringing information a little quicker to the audience, versus in the past.

Melody Brue: Mm-hmm.

Robert Kramer: And I also think that there’s some sustainability that we’ll talk about with some other companies on some later podcasts and assets that we’re doing. But I think that the broadcasting is a major component of this, as well.

Melody Brue: Yeah. Well what it does, and this is the same thing with the Masters, is it allows them to cover more than just the leading pack, right? So it allows them to say, “You have your favorite player is not even on a leaderboard. You can still get updates on each player.” Where before, they didn’t have the manpower, the womanpower, the peoplepower to do that. So if it’s a family member, you’re just a fan, whatever. It allows them…

Robert Kramer: Good point.

Melody Brue: … To give that coverage across all the players in all the places. They did that at the U.S. Open and it was really amazing to be able to see of all the different courts everywhere, you could still get updates of whoever’s playing at any given time.

Robert Kramer: So you went also, you were there last week, I believe you were talking about the Intuit Dome. How’s that stadium? Is it a pretty cool place?

Melody Brue: It is massive. Yeah, it was pretty cool. So while I was in LA, I went to a Clippers game. They were playing the Rockets. Just happened…

Robert Kramer: Fun.

Melody Brue: … I live in Texas, Rockets aren’t my team, but I just happened to be there at the time. But I was able to get a tour of the facility with TerraData, actually. And the Intuit Dome’s CIO joined us. And so. I was able to see so many cool things. Starting with the facial recognition for entry and purchases, they call that Game Face ID. And then there was all these Hi-Fi powered autonomous checkout stores, which I wrote about that early 2023 when they were just getting started. And so that was fun to see the progress of that. But TerraData has, the number of points around the stadium where they’re gathering data about the fan, the user experience, and taking that digital experience to the physical experience. So being able to recognize where you are. So you have to download the Intuit app. And then it knows where you are throughout the stadium. It knows if you walked into a store. It actually knows if you picked up a jersey and then you didn’t purchase it. So that gives them the opportunity to do things like offer you a discount on that jersey if they see that you’ve gone back and looked at that jersey several times.

Robert Kramer: Wow.

Melody Brue: There’s some really cool fan experience things where they have microphones and speakers all around the seats above the seats. And they listen for the decibels of the fans screaming. So they know who the mega fans are. They know how to target those fans because they know who bought the ticket or they know who’s in the seat. So typically, at an event, you may not know who’s in that seat, you know who bought the ticket, but you don’t actually know who came in, because I may have five tickets on my app, scan them all, and bring in those five people.

But the way that they do it with the Intuit Dome app, each person scans, they register through the app, they scan their ticket, so you know who’s sitting in every seat. So they’re really able to target an experience to that user. They have games. Each seat is like has this remote that you can play games or you interact with the huge, massive Jumbotron. So there’s just all these data points that are feeding in from Teradata that allow them to customize this experience to the fans. Also, get tons of data on buying behavior, how people interact throughout the stadium, preferences, things like that, that really, not just inform, obviously, the fan experience, but really help retailers for their stocking, and for how they present merchandise, how they interact with, at what times they’re busier, all of these things. It’s really…

Robert Kramer: Wow.

Melody Brue: … it’s a pretty amazing experience. And the other thing I liked about the Intuit Dome, which was not technology, was that they allow, there’s this whole outdoor area similar to what we saw at Petco Park. There’s this whole outdoor area that you don’t actually have to have a ticket for. Where kids come, and they have basketball courts, and kids are playing out there. And so it’s a real, this community event that, it is like a park. They really make it, you still have to go through security to get in, but you don’t have to actually have a ticket to get into that part of it. So they make it a really safe and fun environment for people just to come and be part of the game, whether you have a ticket or not. So I thought that was cool.

Robert Kramer: It’s a new stadium, though, I believe it opened up last year.

Melody Brue: Yeah.

Robert Kramer: So it’s got to be pretty state-of-the-art with technology and some of the-\.

Melody Brue: It is.

Robert Kramer: Yeah.

Melody Brue: It’s very state-of-the-art. So much so that when I first looked around I was like, “That’s a lot of stuff that could break.” Having every seat have its own little, like a controller for a video game, that gets parked in the seat, but it’s on a lavaliere, so that there’s a lot of things that could break. But it really makes the fan experience interesting. They also have LED lights at each seat, so they can do these really incredible light shows throughout the whole stadium. They’ve really thought of everything with building this out.

Robert Kramer: And I’m sure they’re using data and AI to the fan experience through the NBA app. And I believe the company that we’re in discussions with and we were friendly with is Teradata using their Advantage cloud to store a lot of this cloud analytics for the team. And the arena, as well, for data.

Melody Brue: Mm-hmm. They’re also using Cisco for all of the connectivity…

Robert Kramer: Okay.

Melody Brue: … in the stadium. And that was actually, that’s such a major thing, right? When you’re in a stadium and you can’t even get on Wi-Fi, or get on, use your phone. I didn’t have any problems at all, the entire time.

Robert Kramer: That’s great. Well, the weekend, there’s a lot going on with sports and the technology of it. And I believe, from my perspective, that a lot of this, what’s going on in sports technology goes on with manufacturing, goes on with retail. It’s the same type of data and how you use it to improve your operations, or improve your supply chain, improving your CRM, or your customer experience. So I believe the data is probably the key to everything. So for this all to work properly Major League Baseball, the Masters, Intuit Dome, they all have to have their data in order first to get the correct information that they’re trying to provide all the people involved.

Melody Brue: Yeah, and it’s the data, it’s the technology, it’s all of it. That’s why, we’ve said this before, these sports sponsorships are no longer just sponsorships. They’re really a way to showcase technology. And in a way that is consumable. It is like people understand it. It’s a very digestible kind of mechanism for people just to go and see. Like, “Oh, this technology, it’s way cooler than seeing it in some manufacturing plant,” Right? You could take somebody to see a widget being made, or you could take them to see a basketball game, they might see the same technology, but it’s actually, it’s way more relatable. And it’s a lot more fun.

Robert Kramer: Absolutely. Well, it shows you, just one last thing I want to say. It shows you that modernizing your sport is a critical thing, just like modernizing your manufacturing facility, because you can see the outcome of the fan experience that is happening with all these sports. And the outcome for the manufacturers is the same. And if you don’t do it, the teams that don’t put this in their stadiums, or give it to their fans, they’re probably losing, whether they’re all doing it. But if they’re not doing it, they’re probably losing credibility with the fans. It’s the same with the manufacturing company, with their growth. It’s a competitive advantage to have this.

Melody Brue: Yeah. And certainly losing revenue opportunities, right?

Robert Kramer: Yes.

Melody Brue: We didn’t talk a whole lot about I iFi but these stores that allow you just to walk in, grab something and go, because they’ve already identified who you are, you’ve already registered your payment, all of these things. Amazon has, there’s actually these just walk out stores and airports. And there’s actually one in the, it used to be Minute Maid Park and now it’s called something else, but in Houston, where I’ll be tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. So maybe I’ll get some video from that and share it.

Robert Kramer: Great.

Melody Brue: But those are revenue opportunities, too, because nobody wants to wait in line when you’re in the middle of an inning, and you got to get back to your seat, and watch. So it’s really important for all of those things. So, with that, I hope you have a really happy birthday.

Robert Kramer: Thank you.

Melody Brue: This was our special birthday edition of Game Time Tech.

Robert Kramer: Thank you.

Melody Brue: Thank you to everybody who has joined us. If there’s anything that you want to hear next time, drop us a comment. If you like what you saw, hit that subscribe button. And we will see you next time. Thanks so much for joining us.

Robert Kramer: Thank you.