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Sports Business Journal: A directive for sports leadership: Innovation as necessity

XV Capital advisory panel member and US consultant, Professor Rick Burton, and his co-author Norm O'Reilly, write about sports leadership and innovation. Rick is the David B. Falk Professor of Sport Management at Syracuse University and Founder/CEO of Burton Marketing Group.
Published on
August 20, 2024

BOTH OF US DO consulting work or advising as a means of staying “fresh” for the classroom and remaining reliably relevant to industry. Working across various verticals, we recently got exposed to the acronym IaaS. Innovation, not infrastructure, as a service. It’s a newish concept and possibly unfamiliar to some Sports Business Journal readers.

The simple premise (at least for sport organizations) is that almost every business needs to deploy technical innovation as a necessity. It’s mandatory.

Funny that. Embracing futuristic thinking used to show up in five-year plans that were never revisited. Over time, this approach migrated to annual planning before moving into quarterly reviews. Before too long, we may see it in weekly staff meetings.

It’s a long way of saying that if you aren’t on top of change, and the disruption rate is ever quickening, your organization falls behind faster. Just ask Kodak, cable television networks, Blockbuster, BlackBerry and Borders.

Still, innovation as a service provision is relatively new.

For years, think tanks, advisers and consultants talked about objectives, strategies, tactics and decisive measures. Later they sold services offering dynamic pathways for fostering creativity, fresh thinking and bold ideas on getting ahead.

But technical innovation?

Most of us will accept that experimenting in real time makes many risk-averse executives gun-shy, and CFOs panic. As someone said to us (probably Stirling Mortlock of XV Capital), “They [business leaders] can’t afford to make a mistake. So, they take fewer chances.”

In sports, the ability to experiment in real time is limited by the standards and rules protecting the on-field product. These controls, governed by leagues or federations, ensure the sport product remains relatively constant (see MLB’s challenge in making simple rule changes, for example).

Said another way, without the ability to change the sport product, getting a league or team’s existing technology changed is hard. To think of adding or substituting engineered infrastructure is:

A. Costly

B. Could fail and influence stock price or public perception

C. Unaffordable at present

D. Unproven and possibly not fan-friendly

E. Something that will face intense internal resistance

The answer to today’s trick question is “all of the above.”

Case in point, one of us recently served on a webinar panel hosted by Endava covering artificial intelligence in fan engagement. The panelists all agreed AI was a topic on every sport practitioner’s tongue. What seemed confronting (and difficult to articulate) was how our industry would deploy AI to benefit our fans.

To be sure, the idea of thinking about revenue-generating innovations (and the delivery of greater fan avidity) is beneficial and clearly goals our industry must achieve. But what is it we must accomplish?

Do our fans want digital butlers (shout out to Nicholas Negroponte and his book “Being Digital”)? Can we give them in-huddle cameras so they know what play is getting called? Do they want advice on their gambling tendencies? What about non-fans who just want to gamble on something fun?

Could a fan link their fantasy team, an esports team and their favorite player all into one application? Could a club’s scouting department accomplish all its work from a digital bunker? Could an NCAA track runner order new shoes designed to absolute custom specifications and have them printed on demand the day of a race?

In a vague way, the consensus of the Endava panelists (which included industry veterans Danny Schayes and Denise Taylor) hovered around the bedrock that avid spectators want more data and products specific to their interests. They want to get closer to the game.

Or is it the opposite? They want us to bring the game closer to them? Sounds good, but which cost-efficient innovation strategies address those initiatives?

Almost as bad, do we really know what future fans will want? And what about the non-fans our industry must convert in the midst of numerous competitive options?

Do team websites and social channels really produce tangible value or are they propaganda platforms for what professional and collegiate teams want their fans to see? Can stadium video boards provide more than points, rebounds and personal fouls?

In the case of social channels, with their prolific user-generated content, how do we innovate on platforms where we don’t (for the most part) control the content?

To draw from a cinematic legend, do you remember the “Field of Dreams” scene

in which Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones’ characters hear the words “Go the distance” and see a message on Fenway Park’s scoreboard about Archibald “Moonlight” Graham? Those two are the only ones with that unusual interest … and therefore the only ones who see/hear it.

Too far-fetched? Sure. But that’s where innovation must take us.

It’s not a great leap to go from ghostly storytelling to intuitive AI. Or from augmented reality (AR) to mixed (MR), virtual (VR) or extended (XR). From facial and voice recognition to cognitive processing and application protocol interfaces (API).

The challenge is harnessing relentless waves of transformative technology and leveraging real value drawn from consultants, agencies or investment partners offering IaaS programs.

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