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Why do sports teams care about technology? · Technology Now

• MICHAEL BIRD What are your feelings on American football? AUBREY LOVELL American football. You just mean football, right, Michael? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. MICHAEL BIRD have you been to a football game? American football game? AUBREY LOVELL I have. Yes, I've been to college football games. I've been to professional football games. We actually have a team here where I live for the professional league. So yes, we go to the games. We have a great time. How about you? Have you ever been to one in person? MICHAEL BIRD I haven't. I think I've always wanted to go to one because I think there's quite a good show. They often come to London and I have been very tempted on a few occasions to get tickets but I never have. AUBREY LOVELL Yeah, it definitely is an experience. And I've also been to traditional football games in Europe, and it is a totally different vibe. But what's interesting to me, too, is it's not just about the experience of being there. There's so much work that goes on behind the scenes to make this happen. And it's actually really fascinating. MICHAEL BIRD There must be so much technology involved. AUBREY LOVELL Oh definitely. So how do they do it? How does this all come together MICHAEL BIRD Well, I'm glad you asked because today we are talking about the overlap between technology and sport. I’m Michael Bird AUBREY LOVELL I'm Aubrey Lovell And welcome to Technology Now, from HPE MICHAEL BIRD Okay Aubrey, as you said at the top of the show, putting on a game is more than just getting two teams and setting them off against each other, it’s now a global institution. According to the Nielson Company, the 2025 American Football annual championship game reached a peak viewership of over 137 million people . Big number yeah? AUBREY LOVELL Wow. That is! MICHAEL BIRD Now to make a game happen in the first place, the work that goes on behind the scenes is absolutely vast. AI is integrated into training regimes and even used to help scout out new players. AUBREY LOVELL And if teams are using AI to analyze their own players, then we can assume they would use it to analyze the opposition, right? MICHAEL BIRD They absolutely can, and they absolutely do. AI can be used to process vast quantities of data from previous games to identify patterns in opposition play to try and garner an advantage when making big strategic decisions. But the role of tech in a game doesn’t stop there. We’ll find out why later on in the show, from Matt Messick, CIO for the Dallas Cowboys, who are part of Blue Star Operations Services AUBREY LOVELL Well, I have to actually say I have a personal story here. I have met Matt before. We actually did a really cool customer film with the Dallas Cowboys as well as Blue Star Operation Services. And we're actually going to link to that in our show notes so you can watch it. But to me, this is one of the most fascinating technology stories that we have. But before we get to that with Matt, I've been taking a look at how sports and technology have really worked hand in hand over the years. So as you know, Michael, I'm getting my reading glasses on here. It’s time for Technology Then. AUBREY LOVELL so I know this is an episode about sports, but we are going to take a step away from that for a moment, because actually one of the earliest uses of analytics in sport started with a US defense analyst named Charles M. Motley. And in 1954, he noted that football resembled quote, ground combat . And therefore coaches could use the same operations research techniques to improve team performance as army generals. MICHAEL BIRD That sounds very sensible. There's a sense of if you had a big team with a lot of firepower, actually sometimes a team, maybe a smaller team with maybe less firepower, so to speak, actually if you use just clever strategy, you can sometimes win games. AUBREY LOVELL That's true. And you always hear about the playbooks, like how sacred are the playbooks, and you see this in all kinds of movies. So it actually does make a lot of sense. But anywho, five years later, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force showed with empirical data that right-handed batters had a higher average against left-handed pitchers , the opposite was also true, and suggested that managers should substitute batters based on the handedness of the opposition pitchers and this statistical analysis caught on with hobbyists and journalists who would go on to develop new ways to analyze the data coming out of different games over the next two decades, the idea of using stats to help sports teams caught on, leading historian Bill James to develop new formula to analyze games, something he named sabermetrics in the 80s. Now, while this method wouldn't catch on in baseball circles for another decade. While this method wouldn't catch on in baseball circles for another decade with one manager dismissing James by saying, quote, this guy has never played baseball. I don't think he knows very much about it , end quote. However, once sabermetrics became widely used in baseball, it didn't take long for it to make the jump into football too with analytics now being intertwined into every decision made by a team. MICHAEL BIRD But Aubrey, technology isn't just to do with the game itself, it's integral to every part of the sport. From the training and game to stadium, merchandise and even finding future players which if you think about it makes quite a lot of sense. Now to find out more about this I spoke to Matt Messick, CIO for the Dallas Cowboys who are part of Blue Star Operations Services. about the way technology is used outside of games themselves. And we started our discussion talking about the all-important team practice sessions. MATT MESSICK I mean, when they go out to practice, they have wearable sensors all over. I mean, we have some really cool like 5G, you know, edge technology to where when the coaches walk out on the field, you know, they're carrying a tablet and they're getting instant replays of the practices that are happening right then and there, right? And we're getting all those metrics of the players and all of the, basically the details of all of that data. I mean, it goes right back into our analytics team and they're, they're just, I mean, they're looking at what the players, the visual exertion and all this type of stuff. And so the amount of data that's wrapped up in just the practice data, the game data, or what about all the data from the draft side? It's like you hear about, yeah, you've got play that happens on the field and all the practice, but we have... several scouts that are scouring the country and you know quite frankly the world looking for players and logging all of that video logging all that data and then it's rolling into our systems when it's time to pick you know our drafts or whenever we're looking at trading other players or the pro scouting side so at the end of the day it all it all so it's all evolved around data and technology MICHAEL BIRD And are you using video in this? Are you taking video and processing it? Are you using that as part of the data? MATT MESSICK yeah, I mean we're working on a cool project right now with HPE and so it is one of the problems that you have. It's like this player participation during practice and everything has to be logged to what every single player does during practice. Sometimes they're not wearing the right jerseys, sometimes they are. They have the sensor data but if you watch a football practice, it doesn't look like a game day. There's not people standing on sidelines. You've got your 22 people executing a play and then there's just a mob of people standing around them. So we're merging video analytic data, sensor data to give us really accurate readouts of exactly what is happening. But when if you look at the sensor map, there's dots everywhere and you can't tell who is actually in the play or not. But when you merge that with the video and then you bring that together, then you have that to where, and that 's just one little thing. And now that you can start to see of like, looking at, we're investigating new technologies around the video analytics side with HPE just analyzing when somebody's running and they're cutting left and right and maybe they're light on one leg and then we can say, that's not normal for this player. Maybe we don't know what's happening. So that's some of the future in tech. MICHAEL BIRD So, okay, there's the sports team. What else is going on outside of that? MATT MESSICK Well, look, rightly so. When you hear Dallas Cowboys, you should think football. But what a lot of people have no idea is just the diverse amount of businesses that we do. It's a billionaire entrepreneur. And I mean, he made his money and the family did in other ventures. And so when he got the Cowboys, it was, hey, I'm going to keep growing. And guess what? I've got an IT team. And so then it's like different idea. As a story, we have a medical imaging business. Jerry bought the team and he's like, wait, how much is an MRI? He's like, what if I just buy one and start a business and then all my players get it for free and then they're just right across the street? So like it's that type of mentality. And so now you take that past, I mean, we're the only professional sports team that does all merchandising, manufacturing, wholesale distribution. . If it's got a star, I mean, we're shipping. you know, 100 % that's from us, then spun that into just a uniform apparel business that has nothing to do with sports at all. MICHAEL BIRD Presumably you must have a massive IT team to be managing all of those different companies, sports team, apparel, you know, there must be a vast IT team you have to have to be able to manage that. MATT MESSICK Yeah, absolutely. Just massive. quite the opposite. know, that's that is something that I would say is somewhat standard and just, I don't know, the entertainment business of sports is you're going to run lean. And it's it's not it's not easy because we were running. We have the stadium. We have have the Star, which is our 90-acre headquarters. We have a 12,000-seat indoor stadium, retail, entertainment district. So we're doing events at both places all the time. I mean, we're doing concerts and graduations and all kinds of stuff at one building, and at the stadium, we're doing the exact same thing and I mean essentially we're a managed service provider you know for the Jones entities and it's not easy and you can always say yes I need more I need more and I need more headcount but it just doesn't work that way and so you have to get to be creative in ways to like how can we get all of this done and be able to just jump when we're told to jump and just make it happen. MICHAEL BIRD So you must have pretty good insights and analytics to keep track of all of that. There must be quite a few quite a lot of devices, entities, things like that. MATT MESSICK Oh 100%. mean, like, listen, at the end of the day, I mean, like, that's way the world is going, or it's already there. It's how much insight can you get into every little thing because now... Everything seems to be converging in this one moment in time to where it's going to enable us to accelerate very quickly into the future. MICHAEL BIRD So when you say a lean team, how many people are we talking? MATT MESSICK it's still a lot in the professional sports realm, but I want to say right now we're at about 55, 54 employees in the IT department. MICHAEL BIRD For 150 companies. MATT MESSICK Yes, we’re juggling All of them. MICHAEL BIRD Basically two stadiums. That's not lot of people. So you and your team have constantly worked off your feet? MATT MESSICK it's lot, but it's exciting work. I mean, at the end of the day, yes, we've got all the different diverse businesses and different things the fans are interacting with the brand in so many different ways. that's, mean, that is like somewhat of the secret sauce of like, yeah, we were a football team, but people are showing up to a Blue Star or a medical imaging that is cowboy themed. MICHAEL BIRD So with those different Blue Star companies, is the IT sort of integrated or is it all sort separate and siloed? MATT MESSICK So for the most part, it's fairly integrated. You know, because you just never know. Like we had an energy company for several years and then we acquired another IoT business that we kind of bolted on top of it. And that one we knew, we kind of kept that, we supported it just like you would expect, just like I was saying, like a managed service provider, we supported it completely. But we did keep it completely separate. And then we wound up selling it. So that made that transition much easier. But a lot, a lot of this is completely integrated and with lots of micro-segmentation But yeah, we do our best to standardize across everything and all the platforms. MICHAEL BIRD And that tight integration, I would imagine, actually managing that infrastructure easier because it's all sort of, particularly in one or one set of data centers, one set of infrastructure, the same infrastructure, that sort of thing. MATT MESSICK Yeah, absolutely. And you you think about just where we're at today with different chat bots and things so you can build these very simple chat bots from a support standpoint with, know, like, yeah, I could have one, but I can say, hey, if it's coming from this individual person at this business, here's the data set that you're going to be providing responses to on. Like at the end of the day, my job from my team supporting all this, I just, I don't want them to have to overthink who they're answering their phone from or any of that. MICHAEL BIRD So how did you used to manage it before? MATT MESSICK Before? I mean it was difficult. The reason why it was difficult is because it was very hard to project what you were going to be faced with, what you were going to be asked to provide, period. And so we're buying hardware in like three year chunks and then we could be a year in and we've already blown through our storage or we get a completely new request and we don't have the infrastructure. So then actually, I'm having to call up HPE and it was like almost a purely transactional, I need hardware, you're going to deliver the hardware when I pay for it and then there's that time to get it, get it into production and get it out. Now, if you look at it, we're just stepping into that Green Lake world and it was completely different than it is now, five years ago. But now you get those types of requests and you have that flexibility to where you can grow, spin up and move very fast You know, it's, and obviously we went through the pandemic and how much technology grew and became more in your face than it ever was. Yeah, we were just prepared. We had the ability to react fast and made us look good, I guess. MICHAEL BIRD I guess the pandemic was one of those times where particularly for sports teams, you notice they had to use technology to stay relevant with their fans, didn't they? MATT MESSICK Oh, 100%. I mean, and actually, it was a moment that we had had plans and long term plans like digital tickets, right? mean, that's nothing now because everything is digital. But, you know, back then in 2020, we had already started that migration and we had it available, but, we made it optional. It's about 20 % of our fans that said, yeah, that sounds good. a lot of the... traditionalists that wanted this special ticket to frame and all that. I mean, they were fighting it tooth and nail. Pandemic rolls in and boom, we pulled the cord and it was nothing and we didn't even get complaints. so and then that's when we went cashless at the same time was just something that we needed to do, create efficiencies, make lines move faster. It's it's those little things. So like essentially the pandemic is accelerated a lot of stuff. Thank goodness that we were in a position that we were already thinking where we needed to and we had the infrastructure and we were prepared to do that type of thing but we were already prepared for remote work. I back then, I want to say that most of the people that were working from home were just IT folks because, I mean, we're working all the time, so why not? And the rest of the organization wasn't. And so being prepared and already having the infrastructure to scale and move quick, and it was just so seamless. I mean, it was a good time just from the simple fact of, we were showcasing technology in your day-to-day life that people just, I guess, would just take for granted before. MICHAEL BIRD Are you able to tell us about any of the big wins you've had with IT within Bluestar? MATT MESSICK In 2011, we were the, first stadium to provide Wi-Fi for every fan. People don't talk about that. It's that connectivity of, to me, that's some of the biggest wins. like when you walk into our building, I want you to be connected. I don't care how it is, but you need to have that opportunity to share your story, to share your experiences. It's not always and everywhere. You can walk in and… and you get that isolated experience. And to me, that's one of the biggest wins. AUBREY LOVELL I think that was a really great interview. I love what he was saying about, you know, using opportunity to continue to and innovate and get to where you want to be. think there's something to be said about working smart, not hard, or maybe it's working smart and hard because they're already working pretty intensely. you know, leveraging the pandemic and coming out of that saying, OK, these are the things we need to do and using that as an innovation point, I think is really interesting to see how they pivoted and using technology as well. MICHAEL BIRD the part of the conversation I found really interesting just listening back to it was that talk about how the pandemic accelerated change. Because I think actually, if we look at all of our organizations, I think we can look at different elements and see how the pandemic created change that maybe you hadn't planned today, like to do it then, it accelerated things and I just think actually that from a technology perspective is quite fascinating. What I also thought was interesting I was talking about running lean I don't know about you, 55 people to run what sounds like massive organization doing lots of things that aren't necessarily related like medical imaging to football to manufacturing merchandise like it doesn't feel like those are three organizations that would all have obviously like connected IT systems so 55 people doesn't seem like a lot of people AUBREY LOVELL It doesn't and even just being on the ground, talking through that story with them and seeing the teams, it does blow your mind because you're thinking, these types of operations, have hundreds and hundreds of people, but they have gotten so efficient between themselves and with the technology that they can do all of these really, really big, know, innovative, impressive things and be able to scale while also supporting a smaller team, which is really, really cool that they're able to handle all of that. MICHAEL BIRD And it has to be about the data that you get from those systems. just think about the sheer number of devices there must be within that organization. Matt must have some very, very good data, very good analytics and very good reporting. AUBREY LOVELL Oh for sure. And I really love the story around the video analytics for Dallas Cowboys, American football in general. You think about in the past how manual that process was. I mean, you didn't have the technology back then. I can't even imagine how, if you could scope that into years of work, how that completely narrows it down to, 10 years of manual work doing that kind of thing has actually been condensed down to 30 days of work for the processing of all the video data, et cetera MICHAEL BIRD Yeah, fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. MICHAEL BIRD Now, Aubrey, obviously Matt works for the Dallas Cowboys. So I couldn't let him go without asking him about the highs and lows of working for a football team. MATT MESSICK I'm not gonna lie we had a very difficult season last year we didn't do a lot of winning and it brought a lot of I don't know just pain emotion you know but that's the same thing as when you love something and you're that passionate you you're gonna have the highs and you're gonna have the lows and and I do look at it from a unique experience is like what we are delivering and I know we're talking technology but as I said earlier, we're lurking behind the scenes in everything. AUBREY LOVELL Okay. Well, that brings us to the end of technology now for this week. Thank you to our guest, Matt Messick. Thank you so much. It's so good to hear your voice. And of course, to our listeners, thank you so much for joining us. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please do let us know, rate and review wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to get in contact with us, please send us an email to technology now at hpe.com. And don't forget to subscribe so you can listen first every single week. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is hosted by Aubrey Lovell in sunny St. Petersburg Florida and myself Michael Byrd just outside of London the weather in case you're interested is slightly rainy quite windy my washing line fell over in the wind This episode was produced by Harry Lampert and Izzy Clark with production support from Alicia Kempson-Taylor, Beckie Bird, Allison Gaito, Alyssa Mitry and Renee Edwards. And our music was composed by Greg Hooper. AUBREY LOVELL Our social editorial team is Rebecca Wissinger, Judy-Anne Goldman and Jacqueline Green and our social media designers are Alejandra Garcia, and Ambar Maldonado. MICHAEL BIRD Technology Now is a Fresh Air Production for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. (and) we’ll see you next week. Cheers! AUBREY LOVELL Cheers.