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Transcript

A New Day at the Races · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Bushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: This episode is a paid partnership with T Mobile for business.
0:26
Speaker 2: I've always loved things that go fast, fast runners, fast cars,
0:30
Speaker 2: you get the picture. So I've been a fan of
0:33
Speaker 2: Formula one racing since about the same time I got
0:35
Speaker 2: interested in running track, which is to say, a very
0:39
Speaker 2: very long time ago. I still have Niki Laudas epic
0:42
Speaker 2: showdowns with James Hunt seared in my memory, not to
0:45
Speaker 2: mention my favorite driver of those years, the great Brazilian
0:49
Speaker 2: Emerson Fittipaldi. So nearly half a century later, when I
0:53
Speaker 2: heard about Formula One's plans for a ginormous racetrack laid
0:58
Speaker 2: out in Las Vegas, of all places, I needed to
1:01
Speaker 2: know more more about how exactly one hosts a race
1:04
Speaker 2: and one of the busiest entertainment centers in the world,
1:07
Speaker 2: let alone a race stretching nearly four more miles in length,
1:10
Speaker 2: accommodating cars that can reach speeds of two hundred and
1:13
Speaker 2: twenty miles per hour. It's an incredible technological challenge coordinating
1:19
Speaker 2: event operations and hundreds of thousands of fans across that
1:23
Speaker 2: massive area, which is already chock full of people. That's
1:27
Speaker 2: why the Las Vegas Grand Prix partnered with T Mobile
1:29
Speaker 2: for business because over the last few years, T Mobile
1:33
Speaker 2: has been helping other sports entities connect teams and fans
1:37
Speaker 2: with technology, particularly five G technology. They used five G
1:42
Speaker 2: technology to bring Major League Baseball fans at the All
1:46
Speaker 2: Star Game an app that showed three D visuals of
1:49
Speaker 2: the field overlaid with stats like ball distance, launch angles,
1:54
Speaker 2: and an interactive strike zone. And they're helping sail GP,
1:59
Speaker 2: a global sailing competition, transmit three hundred thousand data points
2:04
Speaker 2: per second from ships racing at nearly sixty miles per hour.
2:09
Speaker 2: So when T Mobile offered me a chance to record
2:12
Speaker 2: a conversation with members of their leadership team and the
2:15
Speaker 2: Las Vegas Grand Prix Group in Las Vegas during a
2:18
Speaker 2: race week, how could I say now? So I headed
2:22
Speaker 2: out to Las Vegas for a conversation with Calli Field,
2:26
Speaker 2: President of T Mobile Business Group, alf Ewoldson, president of
2:30
Speaker 2: Technology at T Mobile, and Emily Praser, chief commercial officer
2:35
Speaker 2: of the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Coming into the strip
2:38
Speaker 2: that day, my cab drove along the actual racetrack. I
2:42
Speaker 2: kept telling my driver, speed up, speed up. Hello everyone.
2:50
Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Glaubwell. I am the host of
2:52
Speaker 2: the Revision's History podcast. And I am here in Las
2:56
Speaker 2: Vegas with three very interesting people, CALLI Field, the president
3:01
Speaker 2: of tm Mobile Business, alf Ewolson, the president of Tmobile Technology,
3:06
Speaker 2: an Emily Praser, who is the chief commercial officer for
3:10
Speaker 2: the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Which is the reason that
3:13
Speaker 2: we're all here.
3:14
Speaker 1: It is.
3:14
Speaker 2: We are in the Marque nightclub overlooking the course, and
3:20
Speaker 2: we're here to discuss the role that technology can play
3:24
Speaker 2: is playing in transforming not just a fan experience, but
3:28
Speaker 2: also the sport itself. And this is a topic of
3:33
Speaker 2: special interest to me because I was and remain a
3:37
Speaker 2: huge F one fan, and I was just talking to
3:40
Speaker 2: Golf about how as a kid in the seventies I
3:42
Speaker 2: fell in love with James Hunt and Niki Lauda and
3:47
Speaker 2: Emerson for Thepaldi and Jody Schechter, that whole era of
3:51
Speaker 2: F one. But the F one that we're talking about
3:54
Speaker 2: today bears no resemblance to the F one of the seventies.
3:59
Speaker 2: And that's what I want to discuss, is like, what
4:01
Speaker 2: are we changing about this sport, how we're making it better?
4:06
Speaker 2: What role does technology play in in transforming this into
4:11
Speaker 2: a very different kind of experience? But before me I started,
4:14
Speaker 2: I wanted let's start by talking about the old F one,
4:21
Speaker 2: So the F one I grew up with. When we
4:23
Speaker 2: look at that, back at that, what are the things
4:26
Speaker 2: that needed improvement? Why do we have to bring in
4:28
Speaker 2: technology into a sport like this? Who wants to go there?
4:32
Speaker 3: Ah?
4:32
Speaker 1: Well, I start.
4:34
Speaker 4: I grew up with the same experience Malcolm, and watching
4:37
Speaker 4: it on television was probably at that time the probably
4:41
Speaker 4: the best experience was really hard to follow. Cars and
4:46
Speaker 4: drivers were on their own, they made their own decisions,
4:49
Speaker 4: it was all It was all a sports where it
4:53
Speaker 4: came down to the engines and the power and the
4:55
Speaker 4: drivers making all this. But today, with technology, it's transformed dramatically,
5:01
Speaker 4: and I would say what Timbobol is doing here at
5:04
Speaker 4: the Las Vegas Grand Prix is to bring that experience,
5:09
Speaker 4: first of all, a lot more viewers in a completely
5:11
Speaker 4: different way.
5:12
Speaker 2: I just want to dwell on this point for a moment.
5:14
Speaker 2: So the fan experience back then was at a remove.
5:21
Speaker 2: It was relatively opaque, hard to figure out what's going on,
5:26
Speaker 2: and so that necessarily limited the size of the audience.
5:29
Speaker 2: Is that what we were saying, you'd have to be
5:30
Speaker 2: a fan. I I read about F one every month,
5:34
Speaker 2: and I.
5:37
Speaker 1: Think about it a little bit.
5:37
Speaker 3: You know, we used to participate, or fans could enjoy
5:41
Speaker 3: sports sitting around the radio, and then TV brought the
5:45
Speaker 3: ability to visually experience and celebrate and participate. And then
5:51
Speaker 3: if you're not able to be in person at the event.
5:55
Speaker 3: What five G is bringing to the to F one
5:59
Speaker 3: and to Major League Baseball or to even cel GP
6:03
Speaker 3: is accessibility. Democratizes the access for people to feel like
6:09
Speaker 3: they're a part of the event. You can put on
6:11
Speaker 3: an Oculus headset and you can ride the track around
6:14
Speaker 3: which most people don't get the opportunity to do that,
6:17
Speaker 3: and you can get a sense for what speed around
6:20
Speaker 3: each corner is like. And technology allows you to have
6:23
Speaker 3: a very different kind of experience with the sport we will.
6:27
Speaker 2: That's another thing I want to dig in more, but
6:29
Speaker 2: I just want to explain a little bit about the
6:32
Speaker 2: technology itself before we go any further. First question is
6:37
Speaker 2: five years ago, could we have done the exact thing
6:40
Speaker 2: we're doing here Las Vegas? I mean, was the technology
6:44
Speaker 2: there five years ago? No, it wasn't.
6:47
Speaker 4: The generations of mobile technology has developed further and further,
6:51
Speaker 4: and for the fifth generation is really about sensors, low
6:58
Speaker 4: cost visual experience. If you look at the typical smartphone
7:03
Speaker 4: today has cameras that are just extraordinary good. They have
7:09
Speaker 4: processing power that is just amazing in terms of rendering
7:13
Speaker 4: and putting things up for viewage and all that comes
7:17
Speaker 4: with these generations and why it becomes so affordable is
7:20
Speaker 4: because the technology is standardized. So we create this ecosystem
7:25
Speaker 4: of technology that all the phones in the world are
7:27
Speaker 4: using the same standard and that brings down the costs
7:30
Speaker 4: so dramatically so and that's what's really happening. So we're
7:34
Speaker 4: able to put sensors where we could never put them
7:36
Speaker 4: before they were too costly.
7:38
Speaker 3: I'd also say, just if I could add the one
7:41
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of sensors that are around, whether it's
7:43
Speaker 3: for this sporting event or CELGP or for MLB, the
7:47
Speaker 3: amount of data that's coming from those sensors, the way
7:51
Speaker 3: that technology has evolved. What five G allows us to
7:54
Speaker 3: do is take, you know, in CELGP, with hundreds of
7:58
Speaker 3: sensors on boats, three hundred thousand data points that were
8:02
Speaker 3: able to send to the cloud and have real time
8:06
Speaker 3: experiences drivers the leads that are on the boats. They're
8:10
Speaker 3: able to get that data and information has there in
8:13
Speaker 3: the middle of doing sixty nats. We didn't before five
8:17
Speaker 3: g We weren't able to get that kind of data
8:19
Speaker 3: real time. To me, that's one of the exciting things
8:22
Speaker 3: because we now have this speed and the latency where
8:25
Speaker 3: we can actually participate real time.
8:27
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty cool.
8:28
Speaker 2: Emily, has there ever been a Grand Prix event that
8:33
Speaker 2: approaches this Las Vegas One in terms of the kind
8:37
Speaker 2: of technological sophistication.
8:39
Speaker 5: No, I mean back to your original point around the seventies. Obviously,
8:42
Speaker 5: Formula one in the Eccleston era was a technology broadcast
8:45
Speaker 5: and media company. At it's heart, they are their own broadcaster.
8:48
Speaker 5: So we're a very different business to say the NFL
8:51
Speaker 5: or the NBA, where we do all of our own cameras,
8:53
Speaker 5: we do all of our own filming, We have our
8:55
Speaker 5: own if so, everything that you see in Vegas this
8:57
Speaker 5: weekend is actually being filmed locally by the Formula one
9:02
Speaker 5: team is sent back to our offices in Biggin Hill,
9:05
Speaker 5: Kent in London and projected out to our one hundred
9:07
Speaker 5: and seventy broadcast partners globally. So we're already quite technologically
9:11
Speaker 5: advanced with respect to how we operate as a business.
9:14
Speaker 5: So from that point of view to alreadier question around
9:17
Speaker 5: how the sport has evolved. Formula one was bought by
9:20
Speaker 5: Liberty Media in twenty seventeen and the brief was, we
9:23
Speaker 5: want to take this up and notch, we want to
9:25
Speaker 5: take it to the next level. How do we make
9:26
Speaker 5: sure that we create the ultimate fan experience. So when
9:30
Speaker 5: I first moved here about two years ago and started
9:32
Speaker 5: working on some of this stuff, we actually mapped out
9:34
Speaker 5: who our ideal sponsors and partners would be to create
9:36
Speaker 5: that fan experience, and at the top of that list
9:39
Speaker 5: was T Mobile. You know, from a technology standpoint, how
9:43
Speaker 5: do we get them to help us create this experience
9:46
Speaker 5: of which we have fan connected events, And I remember
9:48
Speaker 5: sitting in meetings in London saying, how do we bring
9:51
Speaker 5: all of this together? How do we create an application
9:53
Speaker 5: that's actually functional and good enough to get people around
9:56
Speaker 5: a living and breathing circuit. But with respect to this weekend,
10:00
Speaker 5: it's all been about, you know, selling the benchmark for
10:02
Speaker 5: connectivity access. It's the first time that we've done e
10:06
Speaker 5: ticketing as Formula one, and that is completely possible without
10:09
Speaker 5: a partner like T Mobile. So there's been all of
10:12
Speaker 5: these different elements and then ultimately tapping into the marketing
10:15
Speaker 5: power of a T mobile. Is it related to you know, concerts,
10:19
Speaker 5: fan zones and engaging different audiences. So for us, you know,
10:22
Speaker 5: it's been incredibly important and something that we've needed to
10:25
Speaker 5: be able to be successful in Las Vegas.
10:27
Speaker 2: So let's dig into a little bit. Let's talk about
10:30
Speaker 2: the fan experience. What is what sorts of things are
10:33
Speaker 2: available to the fan watching this race that transformed the
10:37
Speaker 2: experience from them. That's one question. But before he answer
10:40
Speaker 2: that question, tell me what you learned from other sports?
10:45
Speaker 2: What did you bring to this sport from because I
10:47
Speaker 2: know you've done you mentioned baseball and sailing.
10:51
Speaker 3: Well, I'll start just from a fan experience perspective with
10:54
Speaker 3: sale GP. First of all, they did a lot of
10:57
Speaker 3: things about the sport and the race to make it
10:59
Speaker 3: more accessible so they could bring in more fans, and
11:01
Speaker 3: they did that through technology. They did that by bringing
11:05
Speaker 3: the races closer in to the waters edge and then providing,
11:12
Speaker 3: through the hundreds of sensors on each each boat, the
11:15
Speaker 3: fans are able to through the app or or watching
11:18
Speaker 3: the live broadcast, be able to see how the individual
11:22
Speaker 3: athletes are deciding to make a turn or all jump
11:24
Speaker 3: over to the other side of the boat at fifty knots.
11:27
Speaker 2: I mean, I am I seeing what's going on? Yes, oh,
11:31
Speaker 2: I have I have an image of life.
11:34
Speaker 3: Real time, so you can see when the when the
11:38
Speaker 3: captain of the boat decides to make a quick shift
11:41
Speaker 3: and pivot the boat, you can see live from from
11:45
Speaker 3: his or her camera. You can be in the race
11:48
Speaker 3: with the athletes, and that's something that you wouldn't on
11:53
Speaker 3: those types of boats. You would never get to have
11:55
Speaker 3: that experience without that without technology.
11:57
Speaker 2: So I'm interested in the when I said the lessons
12:00
Speaker 2: that you learned from that? So what was what was
12:03
Speaker 2: the reaction of fans? I mean, did you get the
12:06
Speaker 2: expected bump that you you thought technology would bring you?
12:10
Speaker 4: Well?
12:10
Speaker 3: I think sale GP is a great example of bringing
12:15
Speaker 3: in audiences that they're fascinated with the technology, They're fascinated
12:19
Speaker 3: with the speed and the live experience of the race.
12:24
Speaker 3: They start to really like who are these athletes and
12:28
Speaker 3: learn more about them. I mean, it's a pretty incredible
12:31
Speaker 3: league that has come from this investment in technology on
12:35
Speaker 3: the boats. We have customers, business decision makers CTOs CIOs
12:41
Speaker 3: that will come and look at the way that the
12:44
Speaker 3: modems and the routers are installed, the sensors on the
12:48
Speaker 3: boats and find business applications for their own critical infrastructure
12:53
Speaker 3: or their own needs for super low latency if you're
12:56
Speaker 3: CIO of a hospital in healthcare. I mean, there's so
12:58
Speaker 3: many things that they can extrapolate from what we're learning
13:01
Speaker 3: in the live broadcasting, moving the data to the cloud,
13:04
Speaker 3: and how that draws in more and more people. So
13:08
Speaker 3: for broadcasting or even for ways that technologists might think
13:12
Speaker 3: about ways that they need to get data sooner and
13:15
Speaker 3: faster to either their employees or to their technicians, or
13:19
Speaker 3: to their end users or customers overall. So to be
13:23
Speaker 3: a spectator at the MLB, and you know, maybe you
13:27
Speaker 3: get to sit in a box, maybe you're sitting in
13:29
Speaker 3: the stands, but with this technology, you can actually be
13:32
Speaker 3: the batter seeing the ball coming at you. And that's
13:36
Speaker 3: a truly unique experience for customers and fans alike.
13:39
Speaker 4: I'll that's onto that because there's another thing you talk
13:41
Speaker 4: about what we learned, So we see people who wants
13:45
Speaker 4: to be on an onboard camera view or they want
13:48
Speaker 4: to be experiencing and taking part of this and the
13:52
Speaker 4: problem in the past as being capacity. So even during
13:55
Speaker 4: Formula One races all over the world, it's been a
13:59
Speaker 4: difficult part for the operators who are operating these networks
14:02
Speaker 4: to actually be able to.
14:04
Speaker 1: Make it happen. It looks really nice when nobody's there
14:07
Speaker 1: and then you put.
14:08
Speaker 4: So it's one hundred and low, yeah, buggie, but you
14:11
Speaker 4: put one hundred and fifty thousand people there and it
14:13
Speaker 4: looks very different. And just to give the scale of it,
14:16
Speaker 4: like this is a three point eight mile track going
14:19
Speaker 4: through the center of Las Vegas.
14:21
Speaker 1: For the Las Vegas Grand Prix.
14:23
Speaker 4: Cars are going to go two hundred and twenty miles
14:25
Speaker 4: an hour, and we have had to put in massive capacity.
14:29
Speaker 4: And you know, we got about fifty different sites just
14:32
Speaker 4: covering this track and we have speeds now two hundred
14:36
Speaker 4: and three hundred megabits per second on average. We're putting
14:41
Speaker 4: in just this massive capacity that five g gifts compared
14:45
Speaker 4: to forty fourgy couldn't at all, Like it was sort
14:47
Speaker 4: of a forty thirty to forty megatives per second thing,
14:50
Speaker 4: and here we are like ten times more.
14:53
Speaker 5: When we first started looking at what we needed to
14:55
Speaker 5: build this Grand Prix, a connectivity partner was number one
14:59
Speaker 5: on our list because for us, having looked at this
15:01
Speaker 5: through the lens of other races, we realized that being
15:05
Speaker 5: in a living, breathing city like Las Vegas, it was
15:08
Speaker 5: so imperative to sure that people can speak to each other.
15:11
Speaker 5: You know, everybody is coming here, they have fans in
15:13
Speaker 5: different areas. They want to know where people's seats are.
15:15
Speaker 5: I mentioned previously that e ticketing was such a big
15:18
Speaker 5: focus for this event, and so making sure that people
15:21
Speaker 5: can actually get to their seats and access their seats.
15:23
Speaker 5: So we came to T Mobile with the solution and said,
15:26
Speaker 5: we want to create this unbelievable app that means that
15:29
Speaker 5: no different to ways or Google Maps or what have you,
15:32
Speaker 5: that people it whilst the track is hot, so cars
15:35
Speaker 5: are going around the track. You could say, I'm at
15:37
Speaker 5: the bellagio and I need to get to the T
15:40
Speaker 5: Mobile zone in this grandstand, and it creates a live
15:42
Speaker 5: platform of which you know exactly the walking path, and
15:46
Speaker 5: that's just not been done before, not just in a
15:48
Speaker 5: normal circuit, but you know in formula one generally, and
15:51
Speaker 5: when you're here and everything is changing the whole time,
15:54
Speaker 5: the routes change, so you need something live. That means
15:56
Speaker 5: you can literally get from A to B in the
15:58
Speaker 5: shortest possible route.
16:00
Speaker 4: The connectivity challenge for us was really the size of
16:03
Speaker 4: the event and also that we are in the middle
16:06
Speaker 4: of a business early. It's all about you can hear
16:09
Speaker 4: the busy seas, but it's all about doing multiple things
16:14
Speaker 4: here at the same time. One of course, fan experience,
16:17
Speaker 4: t mobiles, customers, everybody who's here experiencing that.
16:21
Speaker 1: But it's also about navigation, finding seats.
16:24
Speaker 4: Being able to purchase items out of points of sale,
16:30
Speaker 4: all of this on one platform.
16:32
Speaker 1: And that's why five year technology is good.
16:34
Speaker 4: It will give you the opportunity to build apps that
16:37
Speaker 4: can connect all kinds of stuff on this five year platform.
16:40
Speaker 4: That's the challenge that we took and that's what we
16:42
Speaker 4: have built here in Las Vegas at this Grand Prix.
16:45
Speaker 3: You know something that was funny that because it's now
16:48
Speaker 3: real time and broadcasts and you're turning on the conversations
16:51
Speaker 3: that they're having. I mean, it's great for fans, they
16:52
Speaker 3: love it, but it's live broadcasts, yes, and so if
16:55
Speaker 3: they're swearing, they penalized, and so there's like this constant
17:03
Speaker 3: to the athlete, like you cannot swear in this live,
17:07
Speaker 3: high intense competition. We know.
17:09
Speaker 5: I just fortunately there's the terminology that people know about,
17:14
Speaker 5: so I think box box has become like a globally
17:16
Speaker 5: recognized term, which box box means pit stop. But it's
17:21
Speaker 5: all part of the again, the strategy discussion of they
17:23
Speaker 5: don't want it to become this whole conversation. So we're
17:26
Speaker 5: here a lot of the time when the drivers are
17:28
Speaker 5: speaking with the team principles, you know, Plan A through
17:30
Speaker 5: to Plan F. Obviously they get to pick each tire
17:34
Speaker 5: compound and they make quite big decisions around that and
17:37
Speaker 5: that's all run through tire blankets and heat technology in
17:40
Speaker 5: the garages. So when you're building a racetrack the way
17:42
Speaker 5: we have, and I don't know if any of you
17:44
Speaker 5: have seen, but we've obviously built this new pit building,
17:47
Speaker 5: we've put in really great technology, obviously really advanced services
17:52
Speaker 5: from T Mobile to help us perform that, and that
17:54
Speaker 5: building will be something that is a multifunctional facility year round.
17:58
Speaker 5: So we've had to be very very flexible. But it
18:00
Speaker 5: all fits back to obviously, how do we make sure
18:02
Speaker 5: that we're getting you know, even setting this up, making
18:05
Speaker 5: sure that the right amount of cable to go up
18:08
Speaker 5: into all the different hospitality suites to make sure that
18:10
Speaker 5: the broadcast links the whole way through the circuit, the
18:13
Speaker 5: fan TV, making sure that what's happening at the t
18:15
Speaker 5: Bobile zone. So I think we've got J Balvin performing
18:18
Speaker 5: on Saturday night is being shown on the big screens
18:20
Speaker 5: in the main grandstand and linking that whole thing together.
18:23
Speaker 5: So again, like I know, we're kind of jumping around,
18:26
Speaker 5: but there is just so much bringing it all together.
18:29
Speaker 5: And again it comes back to making sure that the
18:31
Speaker 5: partnership here is just completely on point to make sure
18:34
Speaker 5: that we've got things all in the right place.
18:35
Speaker 2: So let's just talk about the information that's being transmitted
18:41
Speaker 2: from the car to.
18:45
Speaker 1: The audience.
18:46
Speaker 2: So what am I? What can I? What are those
18:48
Speaker 2: sensors telling a fan about an individual art and beyond the.
18:53
Speaker 5: Track, Again, it really depends on the broadcast. But you'll
18:57
Speaker 5: see that there's time, there's telemetry, there's the distance between
19:01
Speaker 5: each of the different cars. It can come down to
19:04
Speaker 5: a tenth of a second at points as to whether
19:07
Speaker 5: something happens. Is speed data, there's win data.
19:13
Speaker 2: So the idea though, is that the fan watching either
19:16
Speaker 2: at home or here in Las Vegas will have their
19:20
Speaker 2: phone open with the app, and on that app is
19:23
Speaker 2: available a kind of it's almost like your own personal
19:27
Speaker 2: color commentator or something, but it's data. It's it's data
19:31
Speaker 2: commentary essentially on the race it is.
19:33
Speaker 4: And I will just I mean, I'm a big Formula
19:35
Speaker 4: one fan, so I've watched, I watched. I use the
19:37
Speaker 4: app all the time, and what I use it for
19:39
Speaker 4: is to know where all the drivers are. So for example,
19:42
Speaker 4: you get this real time feed where you know exactly
19:44
Speaker 4: where they are if they are overtaking events or something
19:47
Speaker 4: exciting going on, and all that has to be really
19:50
Speaker 4: real time because when you are watching this thing, they
19:53
Speaker 4: pass you very very fast as cards, right, and you
19:57
Speaker 4: have to be interacting with that.
19:59
Speaker 5: And F one F one TV app as well. So
20:02
Speaker 5: that's the event app which Tamobove helped us build. And
20:05
Speaker 5: then we've integrated the F one TV so that to
20:08
Speaker 5: your point, people can say in the groundstands, we don't
20:10
Speaker 5: have to put up as many big screens all around
20:12
Speaker 5: the circuit. So you go through to the F one
20:14
Speaker 5: Las Vegas Grand Prix app presented by T Mobile. You
20:16
Speaker 5: push a button takes you through to F one TV
20:19
Speaker 5: and then you can watch the live race on your phone. Obviously,
20:21
Speaker 5: F one is a very strange consumer watching sport to
20:24
Speaker 5: the extent of which the car goes pass so quickly
20:27
Speaker 5: that you want to see what's happening on the other
20:28
Speaker 5: side of the circuit. So having that ability to see
20:31
Speaker 5: what's going on whilst you're waiting for the car to
20:33
Speaker 5: come background is really important.
20:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me a little let's talk a little bit
20:38
Speaker 2: about We're going to get to the athletes. But I
20:39
Speaker 2: wanted to pause a little bit and ask the two
20:41
Speaker 2: of you, you to T mobilers, why what was motivating
20:48
Speaker 2: Team Mobile to be involved with it? So you've, guys
20:50
Speaker 2: have been involved with a bunch of different sports. I'm
20:55
Speaker 2: guessing in a way that your competitors have not. Am
20:58
Speaker 2: I right about this? Are you guys a sports leader
21:00
Speaker 2: in five G?
21:02
Speaker 4: I think for us, first of all, to be able
21:07
Speaker 4: to build what we believe is not only the United
21:10
Speaker 4: States best five network, actually in the world, the best
21:13
Speaker 4: five G network. It's we are covering about three hundred
21:16
Speaker 4: and thirty million of the US population ninety eight percent
21:19
Speaker 4: with five G. A lot of that is covered what
21:22
Speaker 4: we call these ultracapacity Now it's get a bit technical,
21:25
Speaker 4: but the ultracapacity is where you get ten times fifteen
21:28
Speaker 4: times better, better experience and speeds. We are looking for
21:33
Speaker 4: possibilities for this technology to transform things and transforming what
21:38
Speaker 4: enterprises can do, and there is a massive interest for
21:42
Speaker 4: how can this technology be used. Obviously, sport is a
21:45
Speaker 4: great way to demonstrate that because here we get both
21:48
Speaker 4: the sensor technology that we talked about, we get all
21:51
Speaker 4: the visual experiences that we can create, the evolution of
21:54
Speaker 4: smartphones being supported by completely new new stuff. And the
22:00
Speaker 4: more we engage in these kind of events, the more
22:02
Speaker 4: we also learn ourselves how we need to set the
22:06
Speaker 4: networks up.
22:09
Speaker 3: I mean, because I mean, let's let's be let's be honest.
22:12
Speaker 1: It's fun.
22:13
Speaker 3: It's really cool to be able to bring fans in
22:16
Speaker 3: and to and I said this earlier, but to like
22:20
Speaker 3: democratize the experience for people who may not have access
22:24
Speaker 3: or don't have whatever the limitation is, whether it's physical
22:28
Speaker 3: limitations or whether it's financial limitations, but to be able
22:31
Speaker 3: to bring people in and create community and excitement and
22:34
Speaker 3: entertainment around sporting events that people love, where there's heroes
22:38
Speaker 3: and losers and winners. I mean, it's it's fun. From
22:41
Speaker 3: a technology standpoint, what I find is CTO CIOs are saying, look,
22:46
Speaker 3: I've got major cost transformation that I need to go through.
22:50
Speaker 3: I've got moving all of my data to the cloud.
22:53
Speaker 3: And what's going to help me in my process of
22:55
Speaker 3: digital transformation? And five G is the technology that solves
23:00
Speaker 3: the cost and the data issues that are facing CIOs
23:04
Speaker 3: and CTOs, whether it's sports or whether it's any other
23:07
Speaker 3: vertical throughout industry. Being able to designate particular bands of
23:13
Speaker 3: spectrum for particular experiences. We're the only one in the
23:16
Speaker 3: US right now today that's able to do that. So
23:18
Speaker 3: it means that this is an area where we can
23:21
Speaker 3: come and play and deliver a live, real today experience,
23:25
Speaker 3: not a theoretical one in the future. So I think
23:28
Speaker 3: that puts us in a place where with the partners
23:32
Speaker 3: like like Las Vegas Grand Prix, we're ready now and
23:36
Speaker 3: we can make this experience come to life.
23:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. You know that's funny because I was
23:40
Speaker 2: watching not that long ago. I was watching a golf
23:44
Speaker 2: match and there was a rain delay, and they had
23:48
Speaker 2: that thing where they had those little risk monitors on
23:53
Speaker 2: the golfers and they were trans they were transmitting the
23:57
Speaker 2: data in real time to the TV audience. And Rory
24:00
Speaker 2: McIlroy is just practicing his drives the tea, waiting for
24:05
Speaker 2: the range layer to be over, and they're tracking his
24:07
Speaker 2: heart rate and it is whatever it normally and then
24:09
Speaker 2: suddenly it's spikes and you all of a sudden, I
24:12
Speaker 2: had this insight into the athleteses, Like even Rory McElroy
24:17
Speaker 2: has this surge of like something adrenaline, excitement, tension when
24:22
Speaker 2: he's hitting a practice drive off the tee. Like, I
24:26
Speaker 2: had that insight in this stuff. Really can it's giving
24:29
Speaker 2: us It's not, it's adding a whole new dimension to
24:33
Speaker 2: the to the fan experience. It's like a whole all
24:36
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I have insight into his inner psychology,
24:39
Speaker 2: inner psychology.
24:40
Speaker 1: In that moment.
24:41
Speaker 3: Think about your your runner. Think about if I have
24:45
Speaker 3: access to your Strava app. I'm assuming Strata.
24:48
Speaker 2: My Strava's public.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, so think of what I.
24:51
Speaker 3: Can know about how you perform on hills or particular
24:55
Speaker 3: race runs. I mean, connectivity has allowed us to know
25:00
Speaker 3: and form community and even compete if we're not professional
25:05
Speaker 3: athletes in a way that we didn't get to before.
25:08
Speaker 3: What Faijib bring to it, and what we hope is
25:11
Speaker 3: that in those times where you want live data and
25:13
Speaker 3: interaction like you just described watching Rory, that we can
25:18
Speaker 3: make that even more exciting and accessible for people.
25:22
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more from Las Vegas. We're back.
25:34
Speaker 2: Let's switch gears and talk a little bit about what
25:37
Speaker 2: this means for the for the drivers and their team specifically,
25:43
Speaker 2: so not the fan experience, but how does this kind
25:46
Speaker 2: of five G connectivity change what the teams themselves are doing.
25:51
Speaker 2: What are the opportunities here?
25:53
Speaker 4: It is really about that latency and giving information that
25:57
Speaker 4: any sports has never really have access to before. It's
26:00
Speaker 4: just going to push the boundaries on performance and being
26:03
Speaker 4: able to do things that people have not been able
26:06
Speaker 4: to do before. We love it because it demons.
26:09
Speaker 2: Give me, give me a for example of how a
26:12
Speaker 2: bit of data might push a boundary of performance. To
26:15
Speaker 2: use a sailing example, I could collect every bit of
26:18
Speaker 2: data about the performance of my boat, the win, the
26:20
Speaker 2: speed of the real time.
26:22
Speaker 3: So the coach for the team actually is on the shore,
26:25
Speaker 3: and then the captain receives instructions from the coach, so
26:29
Speaker 3: they'll take a number of I mean it's just a
26:32
Speaker 3: complex amount of data, whether it's win speed, or whether
26:34
Speaker 3: it's where the other boat is situated, or something that
26:36
Speaker 3: they know in particular about the team. Hey, this team
26:39
Speaker 3: really struggles whenever you're at fifty knots and you've got
26:43
Speaker 3: to do a quick turn. So we're going to give
26:45
Speaker 3: them the data that they need in order to you know,
26:49
Speaker 3: not overcare.
26:50
Speaker 1: I have done the moment.
26:51
Speaker 2: I've done an analysis beforehand of my competitors based on
26:55
Speaker 2: data collected in right of my competitors' tendency strengths, weaknesses,
27:00
Speaker 2: and then I'm feeding that data back into the stream
27:03
Speaker 2: that's coming in real time and helping.
27:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're just learning how AI.
27:07
Speaker 3: We're just learning how AI can help us get better
27:09
Speaker 3: and better at taking I mean, three hundred thousand data
27:12
Speaker 3: points is a lot for even if you're the most
27:15
Speaker 3: dedicated coach and team to go through. But we're just
27:18
Speaker 3: learning like how to how to use AI to be
27:20
Speaker 3: able to give you the very best kind of critical
27:24
Speaker 3: data points for instruction and for coaching. We're doing the
27:27
Speaker 3: same with with PJ of America, so they're working with
27:31
Speaker 3: T Mobile to take all of the data about the
27:34
Speaker 3: mechanisms of of of a golfer and using AI in
27:38
Speaker 3: the practice facility, in the in the studio to give
27:45
Speaker 3: them much better understanding about how you perform while you're
27:49
Speaker 3: actually competing, how you perform in your practices where there's differences.
27:52
Speaker 2: Get to pick another sport that would benefit as much
27:56
Speaker 2: or or even more from being souped up with five
28:01
Speaker 2: with T mobile five g what would be your where
28:04
Speaker 2: would you go next? Like wave a magic wand which
28:08
Speaker 2: one do you want it?
28:09
Speaker 1: Well, we we do a lot.
28:11
Speaker 4: I think the coolest ones is where we actually have
28:14
Speaker 4: a larger area, a coverage thing going and and and
28:21
Speaker 4: and Cali mentioned the golf, for example, is a good experience.
28:27
Speaker 2: A marathon is a great example of.
28:30
Speaker 1: Because a large area.
28:31
Speaker 2: And the TV experience is so subpar. You can only
28:36
Speaker 2: ever in the New York Marathon, the two women were locked.
28:41
Speaker 2: They were flat out even with eight hurred meters to go,
28:45
Speaker 2: and they cut away to show the man who was
28:48
Speaker 2: like two miles in the finish and had two minutes
28:51
Speaker 2: up on his competitor, And I was every running fan
28:54
Speaker 2: in the world just said, what are you? But that's
28:57
Speaker 2: what they have only one Yeah, they have opportunity and
29:01
Speaker 2: with what you what we needed was an app which
29:03
Speaker 2: allowed us to move around and see who we wanted
29:05
Speaker 2: to see.
29:06
Speaker 1: And that's right.
29:07
Speaker 2: Could anyone could you clear a situation if you have
29:11
Speaker 2: ten thousand winners in the field where if they wanted to,
29:14
Speaker 2: every athlete could have a little have census so their
29:17
Speaker 2: family could watch them throughout the entire race on it.
29:19
Speaker 4: Yeah, with five UK you could do that. Yeah, this
29:23
Speaker 4: massive capacity, what are you doing?
29:24
Speaker 1: What do you.
29:27
Speaker 2: How huge is this?
29:28
Speaker 4: It is gonna it's going to change. It's going to
29:31
Speaker 4: change a lot of sports events. And I believe and
29:34
Speaker 4: Kelly said very well about the democratization. It's really going
29:38
Speaker 4: to happen through events that are not only super super events,
29:43
Speaker 4: but even smaller like local events are going to change.
29:46
Speaker 2: Yeah. I watched a friend's kid run across country the
29:50
Speaker 2: other day with a drone. The school cross country meet
29:54
Speaker 2: had a drone just followed. It wasn't I mean, it
29:56
Speaker 2: wasn't the best school event. I mean it was a
29:59
Speaker 2: school event.
30:01
Speaker 3: There's a company out of Tel Aviv that has a
30:05
Speaker 3: sort of plug in play solution for parents to be
30:08
Speaker 3: able to set up through sixty cameras at their kids
30:12
Speaker 3: sporting events and then gives them also so the connectivity
30:18
Speaker 3: and the data to be able to get the capture
30:20
Speaker 3: the whole event and then gives them the ability to
30:23
Speaker 3: kind of build their own broadcast, build their own production
30:27
Speaker 3: of what that sporting event looks like, and then they
30:29
Speaker 3: can they can create their own video and then they
30:32
Speaker 3: can send it to friends and family or to college recruiters.
30:36
Speaker 3: You know, obviously they can't get to all the games
30:38
Speaker 3: or if you're from a small town, you've got the
30:39
Speaker 3: superstar kid.
30:41
Speaker 1: And I thought that was pretty cool.
30:42
Speaker 2: Is this an excuse so that parents never have to
30:44
Speaker 2: go to games again? You could? This could this will?
30:48
Speaker 2: This will improve American productivity by life?
30:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:53
Speaker 2: It On that note, I think we should. That's a
30:59
Speaker 2: great way to end. But this has been really fun
31:03
Speaker 2: and incredibly illuminating, and it's just I think it's so
31:08
Speaker 2: exciting to say about how you know, we're present at
31:11
Speaker 2: the creation here in Las Vegas. This is the dawn
31:13
Speaker 2: of a completely new era in the in the fan experience.
31:21
Speaker 2: Thank you all so much.
31:22
Speaker 1: Thank you.
31:25
Speaker 2: One more thing. Before I left, they surprised me with
31:28
Speaker 2: a sneak peek of the racetrack on the Oculus VR headset.
31:32
Speaker 2: It's a three hundred and sixty degree immersive view of
31:35
Speaker 2: the Las Vegas Grand Prix Street circuit that fans will
31:39
Speaker 2: be able to see on the app. This footage is
31:42
Speaker 2: filmed in eight K using five G connected cameras. It's
31:48
Speaker 2: incredibly realistic to be in the driver's seat as the
31:52
Speaker 2: car goes around the circuit. All right, I'm putting this on.
31:55
Speaker 2: Hold on, hold on, okay, it's just starting up. Oh
32:01
Speaker 2: my goodness, we're gona have to turn. So we're we're
32:07
Speaker 2: we're behind the pace car at the moment. Oh my god,
32:10
Speaker 2: I can look down. I'm looking down at his head.
32:13
Speaker 2: The drivers.
32:16
Speaker 3: Good.
32:17
Speaker 2: It's so weird.
32:20
Speaker 4: And we backhauled that whole experience and it was it
32:23
Speaker 4: was produced on a vehicle that was moving on the track,
32:27
Speaker 4: and then we took it out over the five D network.
32:32
Speaker 2: Left unchecked. I'm just going to watch this forever. How much?
32:35
Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to give up really shortly. But
32:38
Speaker 2: this is D. That was my first ever. I've never
32:42
Speaker 2: done that, Oh really done that before. First time for everything.
32:49
Speaker 2: This episode was made in partnership with T Mobile for
32:53
Speaker 2: Business and iHeartMedia. Special thanks to Kelly Field, president of
32:58
Speaker 2: T Mobile Business Group. Off Evelson, president of Technology at
33:02
Speaker 2: T Mobile, Emily Praser, chief Commercial Officer of the Las
33:06
Speaker 2: Vegas Grand Prix, and the entire production crew at iHeartMedia.
33:10
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Ben adaff Haffrey and Tally Emlin,
33:15
Speaker 2: editing by Sarah Nix, engineering by Nina Lawrence, and mastering
33:20
Speaker 2: by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special
33:25
Speaker 2: thanks to Kira Posey. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.