Latest / The ROAR Podcast / The Compounding Effect: Start Times, Districts, and the AI Land Grab
Transcript
- Brice Clinton: Welcome to the Roar Podcast. I'm Bryce Clinton. Adam Grossman: I'm Adam Grossman. Caroline: And I'm Caroline Balvardi. Brice Clinton: It's good to see you all. how's everybody been? Adam Grossman: Doing well. How are you? Brice Clinton: Things have been good. we've gotten things rolling. Been some great episodes as of late, obviously, with changing the branding and all of the great stuff that's going on, having Caroline as a host. It's been really cool to see some of the episodes that you two have put together, some great interviews that we were talking before we started recording about Adam's most recent episode with George Berrios, which was excellent. Some of the great work that Caroline's done of late. it's been really cool to see the evolution of the podcast Adam Grossman: it's been great to have Caroline on. highly recommend the episode with ⁓ the Lindestry Everett, who obviously now I'm on a first name basis with, having spoken to him or so. ⁓ But I think he was really excellent and think it was a really good summary of where the podcast is going, right? We're looking at things outside of sports, looking at how ⁓ business leaders who are in sports, but also looking at topics that are we'll call a lot of like a better term sports adjacent. I Caroline did her and Everett did a really good job of highlighting some of those topics and the community topics that ⁓ Caroline has her career on and still continues to work on at search. Brice Clinton: It's one of the things that's to me the most actually around what we've done with these episodes of late is the community aspect of it, talking about how especially sports mixed use developments and all that's been built around those. People don't necessarily always think of the community aspect of them. And they really are, the mall has gone the way of the dodo and there's many places that we don't gather anymore. But these can really be interesting gathering places. And Carolyn, you've done an amazing job of talking about that community throughout those interviews. Caroline: Thank you. I love to hear all that and really appreciate it because that's why I joined this work and bringing that closer and just on the community impact side and of course sports is always, rooted in community and a big part of community, but how do you get it on a more concrete level and talking about and when we talk about mixed use sports entertainment districts getting into a little bit more of the detail of what does that actually mean and there's always, lots of opinions and the way that these affect people And I think adding that lens, but I also loved the lend district, was super excited to have Everett on and talking through it from the business sense too and helping different types of stakeholders understand because there's so many people involved from the use side and also across sports. There's just so many different types of work too. And so I think that's cool that we're expanding. Obviously data is super important and that's a big focus of the podcast. but adding these other elements to how does that tie into all these different ways that you can work in sports and all those different elements and all the different stakeholders involved. Yes, very excited to be with you guys and I'm learning how to be a podcaster. Brice Clinton: ⁓ there's no manual, that's for sure. Adam and I took some lumps at the beginning and I feel like I'm maybe taking lumps still, but you guys have done a great job with those interviews and those episodes have been really great as of late. we have more really interesting ones to come. But as of late there's a lot of things, from a sports business perspective that the three of us have been talking about and ⁓ that are going on right now that maybe outside some of the episodes. One of those that came up recently is an article that Adam wrote that came out today. That struck a nerve with me, around the start time tweaking. And the reason bring that up is and I live in this world where we have small children ⁓ the time of things is really impactful in two One, you can't take your kids late you gotta work around maps or you gotta figure out how you watch those things late. But, Adam, you have a much larger case in this article, much more interesting But I just thought about it through that parent lens. you talked about some of the thesis and it's moving up the first pitch earlier is ⁓ a way more than tweaking that time. So can you talk about what that really meant and what you really got into with that article? Adam Grossman: Yeah, so the article is really based off some reporting from Sports Business Journal, which was talking about exactly what you mentioned that there's multiple major league baseball teams that have pushed their start times to before seven o'clock. So, six forty, six forty five. that's been something I actually've talked about in our Northwestern class. part of the way we use a sample decision tree model, which is a way to break ⁓ decisions into different branches. It's a commonly used thing actually in in machine learning now and predictive analytics is decision tree modeling. But one of the sample decision trees I use is the start time of games. And historically I said, well we're never going to change the start time of games. That's why I'm using it as a sample as a if you could do this, this is what it would look like. And now teams are moving in that direction. So historically teams have started games after seven o'clock in whatever time zone they're in because that's when work was over, thought was it would be easier for people to watch the game, go to games if they could do it after work. a watching the games perspective, one of the interesting things that was pointed out in a comment that was made by TK Gore, who at one point was a guest lecturer with me in my classes at Northwestern, is that streaming has become asynchronous and that it's more likely if streaming is happening earlier in the day, people are less likely to cut off streaming. So even from a media perspective that people are watching games all the time, they're watching it in chunks. It's not necessarily a requirement for them to become on after seven o'clock. And then from an in-game, in venue perspective, the idea of starting games later actually makes it easier for families to get there. One, it's because even families coming from the suburbs, and one of the things we talked about in the article is that increasingly families aren't looking at start times, they're looking at end times and what time they can leave the stadium, what time they can get their kids to bed. And if you can start the game earlier, you can stay longer. it makes it more likely that people will go in the first place and more likely that they'll spend money. And increasingly higher amounts of money on food, beverages, promotions, merchandise, in addition to ticket sales. So it opens up in-game revenues as well. it's an interesting idea, it's a that I think more sports teams will explore. It's obviously struck a nerve with me as somebody who gets up now, relatively early, as both of you have heard me complain about before. And so anything that can move the start times earlier is good with. Brice Clinton: Up at five twenty today, not by my own accord, but it's Adam Grossman: I was up earlier than that, so ⁓ but see this is this this is the kind of old man complaining that people come to this podcast. Brice Clinton: I know, right? we're the get off my loan people these days. I think it's the counterintuitive part though that I pulled out of that article. It is kind of counterintuitive that you say, Hey, let's start earlier and suburban families are gonna be able to make it. You look at it here, I'm a suburban family in Indianapolis. It takes us a half hour to get downtown. If we get out early. You think, ⁓ but we have that traffic and we're gonna get there. But actually, I kind of agree with it because the nature of work being more malleable in a lot of ways now, especially post-pandemic times, summertime here with kids off of school, easier to get there. And you're absolutely right. The first question that my wife will ask is, when's it gonna be over? And not because she's looking for the end part It's then we gotta get everybody home, gotta get them to bed, prepared for the next day. And it does become important. I think that it will lead to a lot. more not only attendance, but the knock-on effects of that as well. Adam Grossman: Yeah, and it it'll be interesting to get ⁓ Caroline, your perspective. Hey, you're a little bit younger than us obviously different stage of your life, we won't say your age, obviously, it's more I think interesting about that is, one of the things that Major League Baseball in particular has done is instituted the pitch clock and has been well applauded for instituting the pitch clock to shorten game times. Brice Clinton: Mm-hmm. Adam Grossman: and if you combine that with an earlier start time, it does make everything more family-friendly, family oriented, and that can have knock on effects for the reasons that we've talked about. to be clear, obviously the only fans of sports teams are not necessarily parents or either multifamily parent households, single family parent households. they're not the only fans, or suburban households versus urban households. There's a lot of factors to c to consider. But I think that, moving it up. in start time is good holistically, but obviously that I ⁓ you I come from one perspective, I think it'd be interesting to hear Carolina's perspective if that would impact her likelihood of going to a game. Caroline: Yeah, I I mean one from a personal perspective I currently don't have kids, so I have my nieces and I think of, the timing of course, yeah, I think timing is really important from the kids' side. But for me when I think of it from my perspective, the accessibility part, it comes to mind too of there's complaints about people not being able to access the live experience, the actual game, that's also an interesting lens to think about. The other piece of it, me coming into this space, directly working in sports, the whole business of sports I think is fascinating too, to tie game time to revenue, I know that's probably a simplistic point, but how tweaks like that impact Adam the whole data platform, obviously there's so much data tied to all that where you can see that, but it's not personally something I wouldn't have thought of how much that can change revenue how that affects who the audience and the demographics of who's attending, which obviously are very important and have such a huge impact. so I think that angle of is really interesting ⁓ and how data can tell you what times are best and not and who attends at at these times and not. Adam Grossman: Yeah, and I one of the things that the original sports business journal article flagged is exactly what you're saying. It seems like a relatively small change, but it does have a huge potential revenue impact. dive into it even more depth than than the article that I wrote, but it's exactly right. I mean you don't always think about it in terms of what are the compounding effects of making changes. I'm absolutely like data from both a demographic, persona and behavioral perspective is something we do at Roar and integrating all those data sets to help drive decision making is helpful. But Even relatively we're not talking about changing the game by two hours. We're talking about like twenty minutes or thirty minutes. But that can make a big difference between a family, deciding to go or not to go to a game, ⁓ depending on if their ability to see it. So it's thinking about those compounding effects is exactly what the business of sports and sports decision makers are thinking about all the time. I think it's kudos to also major league baseball. Again, more recently in particular, these ideas of rule changes, time changes. They're not just thinking them for pace of play necessarily also they are thinking about the revenue, fan engagement, audience impact. And that's something whether it's in the classes that we teach or in the content we're creating or something we're thinking about even from a real estate perspective is what are the compounding effects of these decisions? How can they permeate throughout multiple different, variables or thoughts or things that you have consider as somebody who's working in or adjacent to sports? Brice Clinton: I I Caroline: the alignment around how you coordinate from the media side and all of the content I I can only imagine, the puzzle piecing of all of that too of when you do make those changes. But there's so many different factors involved. So how you put all that together is interesting with balancing between media but also, what's the other revenue generation that from adjusting the signal that Brice Clinton: earlier first pitch, you mentioned the media part from a viewers at home perspective. But the earlier first pitch, and I think Adam alluded to this It opens up a whole ⁓ part, a different perspective that you can have from engaging with not only the ⁓ but everything around the venue itself when you have more time to to come and do those things or you have more freedom. I think it unlocks some level of whether it's higher revenue, higher engagement for people in that district that's around the venue, not just the venue itself. Adam Grossman: this goes back somewhat of our thesis of Surge as a business and John's thesis of this disposable time and ⁓ what are ways to future proof business models, particularly sports business model, as things become more technologically driven. ⁓ John who's the CEO and founder and chairman of Surge, his thesis, which I think is accurate, is that people are going to have more time and they also are gonna want And we've talked about this previously in in some of the earlier podcasts, human connection, right? So they want to go participate in live events, they want to make human connection. John's not the only one. There's a lot of other sports decision leaders who are betting h heavily on the live experience. Ari Emanuel and everything he's doing is probably another great example of that. But the idea of, if you want fans to have these types of live experiences, and then from our perspective, from a mixed use develop development, it's not gonna be fans, it'll be fans, residents, tourists, visitors, community members, even sponsors or partners, all these different audiences, the earlier you can engage with them, the more likely you are to to maximize revenue generation, the more likely you are to create these levels of audience engagement. And then from a Surge perspective, the more likely people are gonna want to live, workshop, and play in these environments. The sports anchor, I mean Surge stands for sports and entertainment real estate global holdings. But you need the sports and entertainment anchor. And one of the things you mentioned, obviously, about malls. I'm not sure I 100% agree with that malls are dead. Actually, things like malls are maybe a little bit a comeback, actually. ⁓ not not all malls, but some malls. but that's the whole thesis, We have anchor tenants that are driving foot traffic. And I do think increasingly there could be the opportunity of a two-way traffic pattern where the mixed use development, the real estate, the residential, the commercial, the food and beverage. Brice Clinton: Are they? Adam Grossman: the community, all the different types of real estate assets that surround venue will help drive venue traffic to the venue and vice versa. ⁓ that traffic will come from sports and entertainment anchored. And that's really has to work at the right time, right? If these things are happening in isolation or segregation, it's not gonna work as well as if they're all working together in concert. And earlier start times means is more likely that you come home from work and the game is starting. if it's an earlier start time, if you live and work in that district. So actually moving up the start time makes a district more likely to be successful as well. I didn't talk about that in the article, but that's something that I think is an interesting knock on effect and something to consider as we're considering building out these districts. Brice Clinton: And I think that's a really good point of you come home from work and you live in these districts, regardless of if you're going to the game or not, there's something going on. There's people around, there's stuff happening. And regardless of the phase of life that you're in, if you're, in those good old days when we were younger of just, ⁓ I'm coming home from work. There's a a baseball game going on. I'm just gonna go to this bar and watch this baseball game, or even you pick your kids up from school and you wanna get them running around and outside. ⁓ There's things do. I think it really Adam Grossman: Yeah. But you're not taking your kids to a bar? What's what's going on? I don't understand. Brice Clinton: You know, not a lot of the time, especially here in Indiana. little more lenient in some other places, but no. I am happy to hear that malls are making a comeback in some way. I there's great mall here that we actually go to a lot, but it's mostly because my kids just like riding the escalator. But ⁓ I that was because this place wasn't very cool and malls everywhere else were were totally dead. But I think that you make a good point around there is a good comparison of the anchor tenants in those places. And I miss them all Adam Grossman: Yeah. I ⁓ my wife and I yeah, we're talking about this earlier, right? Right. We usually just spend a lot of time at malls when we were kids, so it's good that when you can come back. Go ahead, Carol, I didn't catch up. Caroline: it's actually interesting some of the newer sports districts as they're looking f at sites of former malls and how that lends itself because you have this big, you know, swath of where you can just have this next generation of experiential and I do think the district environment kind of Bryce, what you were saying. going to the game earlier watching from a bar, but even that becomes even more elevated now in the district 'cause it's not just your average bar. a lot of them have, depending on the climate, the indoor outdoor experience and the way that stadiums and arenas are now, ⁓ you can see into them more and feel like more ingrained, in the game experience, even if you're not physically in the stadium or arena. And so I think that's interesting to see as more of these districts are coming online to just the full scope of what you can experience and feel like you're part of when you're in that district. it's exciting to see more of these coming online and and how they'll continue to evolve. Brice Clinton: It is and it's cool to see, the community aspect of it too. Like you talked about earlier and what you've done in a lot of these podcasts, the people that you've interviewed, it is a fun way to build the community components not have to derive it, from something external or built in a different way. I don't why they drifted so late. do we know why games drifted past seven o'clock in the first place? And Adam Grossman: Yeah. I mean part of that is the meteorites, right? There was an expectation that people could watch the games until they got home. even like you said, it was harder to get to games, so if you went home and ate dinner and the idea is that it would take you a while to get to the games as well. and then a lot of games are on national television, so having them later in the day would, make it easier for different parts of the country to see. again, obviously times have changed, right? Things change, this is in part the ⁓ an interesting confluence of the decline of the regional sports network. and obviously that opens up this opportunity for potentially to balance out streaming. obviously a lot of MLB teams in particular have been adopters of streaming, particularly with the decline of ⁓ Main Sports Group and FanDuel TV and everything that happened there. But from ⁓ chaos comes some amount of opportunity, right? As everything ⁓ all these leagues trying to figure out what their local television rights are going to be, does allow for opportunities to experiment with things like earlier start types. And to Caroline's point, you it it's hard to coordinate. Exactly. It is hard to coordinate. And you have to balance historically, these local media rights deals were a huge component of revenue. They still are, but there are other revenue streams that are coming in, whether from the national deals, baseball's potentially moving towards a national aggregating all the local rights to do a national package, which will be interesting to see if the earlier start times hold given that when that comes into to play. But that's part of the changing dynamics do allow for new opportunities to experiment. And this is one of those ways. And again, to baseball's credit, they've been very much on the forefront, ⁓ recently, which has historically definitely not been the case, but over the past several years they have been willing to lean into rule changes. And I think they've largely, but not entirely, but largely been successful at leaning into these rule changes and have gotten the game to a better place. Brice Clinton: No. I think so too. NBA could take a cue from that. I think the start time time was last night was eight forty and the game didn't start last time. ⁓ I know. Yes. ⁓ Caroline: I was gonna say yeah, last night. Adam Grossman: Yeah, but that's that's part of a national yeah, like you can't some of that you can't you know. But like on a regular season basis, and also you're gonna get attendance at those games. obviously the Knicks is an exception. that's clearly one of the biggest tickets, put aside your point of view of our current president. But that was clearly a very important game for New York. But in general, playoff games have higher attendance and they charge more and you make a substantial more amount of revenue. Yes, ideally for people like us earlier would be better, but you have to think about the whole country obviously and globally as well. Brice Clinton: the interesting part of that too, they ⁓ the MBA, there's some the media component as it. They have different things that slide in from a media perspective and lots of engaging things they do for the people that are sitting at home. And so there's plenty of stuff in that see. ⁓ I think baseball's done a great job. I spoke at a conference at Northwestern on Friday, Sports Performance Conference, and even the strength and conditioning folks were talking about how the pitch clock the pace of play in baseball has improved only the engagement fans, but injury as well, because people are more alert, moving more quickly. ⁓ I've only been to a few baseball games since ⁓ the clock was instituted and ABS and it's a better experience. Adam Grossman: Yeah, and it's ⁓ goes to Caroline's point again. but it's the pitch clock actually did also I talked about this in previous newsletter as well, that T Mobile was a longtime partner and they've been able to activate around this and this has become in terms of ⁓ partnership assets, one of the most valuable assets in baseball is becoming the partner for balls and strikes or ABS. And again, you wouldn't necessarily think that obviously that that wasn't necessarily the original intention, but it does have these revenue effects, right? It makes the game shorter. fans also believe that obviously the the calls are right. They clearly were able to adapt from other sports, but it created these revenue compounding effects that just one change can have all of these different impacts from media, partnership, ticket sales, overall fan experience. And that was something that was being considered and baseball tested out ABS in the minor leagues. They've obviously seen it, tennis probably being the most prominent example of using those types of, automatic line calls. And there still are some kinks to work out, but largely it's been very successful. And again, another secondary effect, both for player health and safety, right? If your better players are playing longer, less likely to get injured, that also has revenue compounding effects is and you know, people in in ways that we've talked about previously, but obviously people want to see their favorite players, their star players, and they're more likely to come to the games if their favorite players are playing and buy their jerseys and watch them on television, watch them on streaming platforms. So there's all these compounding effects. So the Caroline thesis halts again about all these different effects that happen. We gotta get this branded in some way, you know. The book of Caroline, yeah. Brice Clinton: Yeah, seriously. Caroline: It actually I should have known this ⁓ but I was wondering this recently 'cause was going to a minor league game, so the pitch clock they were testing it out more in the minor league. I wasn't sure actually with minor league baseball how they use that because when we talk about mixed use districts, there's so many mixed use districts now that they're ⁓ trying to do around minor leagues too. So it's interesting to see yeah, what what Brice Clinton: Yeah. Caroline: type of impact it may have in that way from the minor league level too. But I don't know the ⁓ ABS leg if that is also minor leagues now not or not. Adam Grossman: we can sure less architect check does a re fact check herself, but in general major league baseball starts from the lowest level of minor leagues and then works its way up. So by the time it then goes to double A, triple A, and then by that time then it goes into major league baseball. I'm not sure if it was one season at every level, but roughly it was something like one season at every level, if not multiple seasons at every level. to test it out. But yeah, it's all forms of baseball as At least that's my understanding of it. and you're right about the mixed use development. It goes to what we're talking about earlier, right? If it can impacts impact the space of play, make it more likely for people to come, make it more likely for people want to live workshop play in those areas because they want to go to the games, the games are shorter, It can have that secondary impact. Brice Clinton: the minor league thing, like you were saying, is a really interesting place for something like that because they're very family friendly and they're fun And I think ⁓ i ⁓ the engagement you can create from a community perspective around minor baseball and minor league parks is really high. Caroline: just apply it to all these other leagues and emerging leagues or minor leagues in some of the secondary, tertiary markets and just drawing more the traffic intensity and you know, the level play. Obviously, if it's a minor league is not necessarily at the level of the pro league. So you're not necessarily going to watch for the sport as much as sometimes the entertainment pieces and all of that. So thinking through the lens of how this applies out to some of the minor leagues and emerging leagues is very interesting to think about too. Brice Clinton: have an interesting question for the two of you as you cascade that down, the public high school here where we live had built a they have a thirty million dollar natatory. There's actually a Olympic world record broken by a high school girl here l this winter at the pool, but they also just built a twenty-five million dollar indoor football practice facility and around that there's apartments and it's almost like you're seeing it cascade down even to a high school level in some ways, which I think is really interesting. But I don't know if that actually works and this probably isn't the time to adjudicate it. But that makes you like there is definitely more ⁓ to it because does create a whole lot around that sports community. Caroline: from the ⁓ of business development hat that I wear Surge, I constantly tracking projects out there and what people are working on. Does it make sense for Surge get involved or not? And there are tons of projects where it's it is definitely cascading down, the youth level is so interesting. Because youth sports obviously is just growing and growing and ⁓ parents are having spend weekends with their kids at wherever site wherever that may be. it could be close to where they live or very far. but what do you do for the whole weekend? Your kids games, are interspersed throughout that. And so now there are a lot more projects that we hear of that are around youth sports facilities. and youth sports complexes and is building, the nicer hotels and retail and restaurants to entertain the parents. but also, have some of the entertainment for the kids in between the games. And so I would say for sure, that is a growing space. And this whole entire spectrum from youth sports through high school through college is definitely a huge space now as they're figuring out how to be able to generate more revenue to pay players and attract them to their schools. but the thing you have to think about is in these markets though, just making sure that it is the right mix of uses because, if it's a college practice facility and there's apartments, just make sure there's enough of the connection and are people sitting and watching ⁓ football practice and then going to be going out I don't know if it works in that way. So just thinking about how do all the pieces and components go together in the mixed use, but everyone is definitely trying to maximize and think about the real estate around all these facilities and venues. Adam Grossman: Yeah, ⁓ a couple of things I would add is one is youth sports can be potentially more in not more interesting, but there's a lot of public private partnership dollars because obviously that's important to the communities and important to the not to keep bringing up parents, but parents and families in in those communities. So that's interesting. Yeah, one of the challenges and Caroline was alluding to it right now, is our goal is to activate something three hundred sixty five days a year, with youth sports and youth sports tournaments, can you really do that? It's a similar thing on the collegiate. level. Colleges have a built-in advantage, at least that there can be some forms of student housing. ⁓ but even then, on the scale and scope that we typically talk about at Surge, is that enough to support everything else that but like sadly the way Caroline described, the the retail, if you're gonna have office space, but retail in particular, ⁓ from a retail and food and beverage and hotel perspective, is there enough foot traffic or enough demand? some of those use sports I think make sense for those communities. It makes sense to attract it depends on the project, obviously, from a surge perspective or from any, ⁓ developer or underwriting perspective. It's just figuring out right way to make that work ⁓ from an economics perspective when you're talking like something on the professional scale, right? There's obviously more events. There's more people who are interested in those events and and there's more people who potentially would travel in from different locations to come to those events. And making sure that all pencils out from a financial perspective is obviously one of the challenges, from a youth sports and collegiate sports perspective. Brice Clinton: Yeah, and you mentioned and Caroline talked about this a little bit, one of the ways to Really understand that's the data behind it. Obviously something that Surge does with Roar and the platform that you have continued to build. there's another article that you wrote recently about business back partnerships ⁓ in the sports AI land grab. I think that parlays well into what we've been talking about here. maybe you can reframe how I I thought of this, but to as a whole, what you're talking about here is it shifts the the whole AI sponsorship wave, right? So these companies aren't buying reach per se. So if they're not buying that reach, what are they really buying Adam Grossman: Yeah, there are good reasons for ⁓ AI platforms to buy reach and brand You know, Harvey has done that recently, particularly with multiple partnerships. Harvey is an AI native legal platform, so helping with, among other things, document review, evidence collection, and helping lawyers do legal work. not knows what Harvey is, so that's can be helpful. That being said, that has been a use case that emerging technologies have used for a long time in terms of leveraging sports to build brand awareness. So it historically, and by historically, I mean, like five years ago, crypto companies used a similar kind of now prediction markets, sports betting, AI platforms, they've all used a version of that to to hopefully do a land grab and create awareness and try to do customer acquisition. and there's a definitely a place for that. And building brand awareness is definitely an important part of top of funnel sponsorships and partnerships. What's more interesting, at least from a long-term sustainability and potentially from an overall value creation from a partnership, is these opportunities to use sports as a platform to actually showcase your technology to say we are actively using this AI platform, and here's how we're using it, I I talked about both in this article and a previous article about using the track as a test bed, but the idea of sports because they're so visible, because they're so stressful, and because they're where you actually have to use technology and the technology has to work because it's so visible, that becomes a really good proof point to show why you as an enterprise decision maker or an individual person who's considering using an AI platform. If it works for a sports team and it works in these high leverage situations, it can work for me in my business or my personal situation. And really showing the integration of the business A drives direct revenue. The sports team has to use the platform, they have to make the purchase, so that helps drive direct revenue. But B, it also becomes a much more visible use case that can become a springboard for more effective B2B marketing, at least from a revenue generation and audience targeting perspective. So think the idea sports does create these platforms. I previously outside of these articles wrote about Verizon and its NFL deal and showing how 5G connectivity within NFL stadiums became a real big platform for Verizon to showcase its 5G technology, particularly to individual customers and consumers, but more to businesses. And the fact that these teams were using the 5G technology and using it successfully showed that the network can handle the scale of an NFL game, it can potentially handle handle the scale from a business or personal perspective. So ⁓ those become really interesting opportunities to showcase the technology. Brice Clinton: Yeah, and think in the article it's interesting, you made the point that the leverage runs both ways, a property deploying the AI internally becomes more attractive to the best funded buyers in the market. So unpacked that. what is the business back move there? Adam Grossman: Yeah, I mean it's a little bit of what I said. this is very common in other industries as like ⁓ banking and becoming a banking partner. A lot of banking partners will become sponsors or partners of sports teams so that they can secure the ownership or the athletes or, senior executives banking, right? And that becomes a lucrative way for them to secure the banking, for mixed use developments in particular, is increasingly there's a lot of or ownership transition or ownership sales. there's a lot of times that banks will become partners and for the opportunity to potentially represent the team from a sale or from a mixed use development or to be the commercial or real estate lender because that's a very lucrative line of business that typically far exceeds what the partnership fees are. I mean this is a common investment banking more generally is that free work or some amount of work is done ahead of time ⁓ as a a way to to secure the long term relationship. In this case it's a different in that you can actually showcase your business while you're getting these business back opportunities, which is unique to sports and sports media entertainment more broadly. Brice Clinton: And I was gonna build on that Caroline, from the whole district perspective, I Adam kinda alluded to it, there's some things that are there from a community and a sponsorship perspective is that roll into that. Caroline: love how Adam historically five years ago, the way things evolve and people like me who are not the AI brain. I think are still catching up with how sponsor logos on hockey rinks don't realize those aren't actually Adam Grossman: Yeah. Caroline: on the ice and so even that stuff I don't even think that general population is realizing that these things are happening and so just the way the sponsorship is evolving is ⁓ happening fast and I don't think people are realizing you unless you're you know deeply working in that space in sports Adam, the article of ⁓ becoming so integrated, like what you just described is makes so much sense of showing your product, showcasing your product as you are the sponsor. And even, the lendistry episode with Everett, that's how they're a financial institution, mission driven, but they're small businesses. And so it makes so much sense. It's integrating, there's just so much brand alignment too. So it makes a lot of sense for everyone and from the revenue side and from the brand side So it seems like win win win. and it seems like technology is enabling that even But it seems like a smart way to ⁓ leverage your brand in that way. ⁓ Adam Grossman: think that's real that's a really good point. I I mentioned this to you when I was in San Francisco last week. I was I think it's the one on one, but I was driving the one on one and there's like an ad for an AI platform every a hundred feet. in San Francisco, they're clearly seeing that. In the rest of the country, ⁓ the rest of the world, maybe not. And if you're not steeped as much as potentially I am or ⁓ people I work with or obviously in San Francisco or the Bay Area or Silicon Valley, Most people never heard of Harvey. most people have never heard of these companies before. And you can do billboards, you can advertise in other places, you can advertise at ad networks, social media platforms, Google, but sports does command a lot of top of funnel attention and it's really important to do that. The only small pushback I'd say to Caroline is there is actually a risk for these sports teams. historically companies that have pursue this strategy may not exist as companies sometime very quickly after they pursue these strategies. there's a lot of companies that raise a lot of money either from institutional capital, particularly venture capital. And it's a good use of dollars to promote the businesses, but sometimes obviously the businesses, because they're not traditional businesses and they're in, a rapidly evolving technology field, particularly artificial intelligence, there is, a possibility there's an enterprise risk there, right? That they're leveraging the brand credibility of sports teams when they no longer exist. There's numerous examples of this happening where sports venues were called the name of a company that, either went bankrupt, Enron being the most famous example of Enron Field and went bankrupt. But there's a lot of other companies that have pursued naming rights deals and jersey patch deals and big sports sponsorships that don't work out. So I'd say there is some risk on the sports side, on the sports property athlete side, there are some risks there, but in general from a purely business perspective outside of this enterprise, ⁓ risk the company would go out of business. think. That's the whole point, right? particularly if you're an unknown company, but even a company like Oracle, it's called Oracle Red Bull Racing, and Oracle uses Red Bull as a platform. yes, they're using the signage and logo exposure elements, but more to show that their infrastructure, their technology and their platforms can help power, historically except for last year and the year before, a very successful, F one team. even until last year had the, drivers champion. So that just showed if Oracle works with its team and they're able to use it in a sport that really is technology driven and ⁓ milliseconds make a different in that sport, so it can it can work for your business as well. Brice Clinton: And it kind of logical place we're talking about, smart desk and the things that you're building from a Roar perspective. I don't know how much this applies directly but what does turning model into actual workflows look like, can things be turned into things that are tangible that Caroline can act on or that it can help to build those things? And how does it do that? Adam Grossman: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good a very good question of how sports makes artificial intelligence seems pretty far out there and it's constantly evolving and it's constantly developing and it seems like for some people it's taking over the world, for some people it's, still some time away from taking over the world. But part of what we're doing with Smart DOS, Roar and Surge more broadly is trying to make all these things actionable, right? So using sports as a platform to make AI more actionable. For us, we've natively built out Smart DOS or Smart District as a service with AI workflows, AI technology, agentic workflows, the idea for systems to talk to one another using something called MCP server. So essentially if you're familiar with Claude or ChatGPT and you want to connect my email or I want to connect my calendar. There's a little thing called a connector typically or some version of that that allows you to connect to these different platforms. And we can do that within SmartDOS as well. But one of the things I've in part built my career on is trying to combine numbers and narratives, right? And AI allows you to really do that at speed and scale. It can take a lot of data, it can visualize it, it can help people understand what's going on. There's some irony here is that We're trying to eliminate the black box when a lot of AI is a black box at at this moment and how AI's come up with the insight. But as much as possible, we try to eliminate the black box that comes from technology and these platforms and say, here's exactly where it's c going on, here's where the data is sourced for, here's other things that are most important to your business across multiple different revenue streams, including real estate. Here's how and why ⁓ decisions should be made, leveraging the data. we had a conversation with one of our clients yesterday, and one of the things he really liked was we can move from assumptions to if should our assumptions be backed by data, because we just didn't know before we thought from our experiences. And there's a lot of value in our experience, but we just want to make sure our experience is backed by the data. And AI in our use case is can we combine experience and data? And can we make that so if you have the best of both worlds, you can make the best decisions and data becomes a a critical component to make that happen. Brice Clinton: Yeah, it's not a zero sum game in the sense that that intuition and the understanding that they have is really good, but so's the data. And you combine them and you get some really good outcomes. Adam Grossman: Yeah. Actually. Yeah, and actually that's one of the misconceptions of Moneyball to a certain degree. So Moneyball is kind of yeah, with the way that this and even the Roar podcast and before that, the Revenue Above Replacement podcast was based off ideas made famous by Moneyball. what's not as well known is that the A's actually invested more into scouting as they invested more into Moneyball, right? Because they actually knew what they wanted to look for. So if you knew what you were wanted to look for, you want to find the people who can help you find the things that you're wanting to look for. Brice Clinton: ⁓ live. Adam Grossman: And that's something we talk to our clients all the time, is it is the technology allows you to arm the people with more information. If you combine people and technology together, particularly people who know what they're doing, with the technology that allows them to do what they're doing more effectively, that's the best use case for the technology right now. Caroline: ⁓ as you talked about how it's kind of lay people understanding being able to interpret that easily because when you have data overload like what does it all mean and the narrative that Adam mentioned and so I will say from ⁓ our tool I find that extremely easy to navigate because on my side from marketing comms work that I do there are so many digital tools that I have used and my colleagues and I will be like, okay, some of these tools were created by people who are tech experts, but not for, the marketing person ⁓ to be able to eat like the user interface all that. And so I do think a critical piece 'cause there's always tools out there that are being created by brainiac people, but the general public like me who ⁓ needs to know how to, easily interact with Adam Grossman: Yeah. Caroline: the information and the data and make the decisions from it easily. And when you talk about, from the CEO level, they just don't have time. So it's making sure it's accessible, from people being able to just easily navigate. So anyway, I just wanna throw that out there too. ⁓ Adam Grossman: said this we'll made this joke multiple times on this podcast, but Flowery will get you everywhere. Hopefully if you take nothing else from our podcast, that's what you should learn. But that is exactly from a smart DOS perspective, our objective as and is to make it actionable for senior decision makers. And you have to know what things mean and why we purpose built this for sports. entertainment real estate is so those decision makers can leverage the technology and make better decisions. So that's one of our core objectives with the Smart DOS platform. Brice Clinton: And what we've seen and the work that you two have done. in the interviews recently in the episodes we've had is you're seeing how some of those things are actionable from some of those folks. And I that's only going to continue to spend forward. I we have some great interviews coming up that Adam and Caroline both have scheduled and an evolving conversation. As you mentioned, Caroline, it's got to be actionable, got to be able to be used, but again the underlying data has to be good and it continues to compound upon itself. And so we'll have lots of great episodes coming up in the weeks and we'll talk more and more about these things as they continue to evolve. But I think it's great to be able to catch up with the two of you and and talk about some of these things. There's so many other Ways we could go, but I appreciate the time It's great to see you guys. And I know that we have some some good ones coming up, so we have plenty to look forward to. Adam Grossman: Yeah, we really do have some really great episodes coming up with covering topics that are near and dear to our heart, whether it's real estate, mixed use development, women's sports, those are all things. Obviously I'm the one who should be talking about women's sports, but the women's sports of of this group. But yeah, we have a lot of really interesting guests coming up and I'm really excited for these episodes. Brice Clinton: Absolutely. Well thank you both and back again next week for some more great interviews.