Today we're speaking with Paul ba Lu, the chief data and
analytics officer of the NFL about the League's use of data,
analytics, and AI to optimize gain performance.
Ensure player, safety improve fan engagement and increase
revenue streams. Our guest co-host is Q Harrison
Terry, the head of growth marketing at the Mark Cuban
companies at the center of the journey always is, can you?
Up organizations, do two things connect with their customers and
our case, our fans better and more intimately.
And then, secondly, can you improve your operations?
And in our case that involves improving the game?
So as I look at the journey that I've been on, it's interesting
that I've gotten to this point. I have a deep love for sports
deep, love for the game. And now, we're at a point where
Sports in particular is focused on using data and analytics, the
science that comes from data and analytics to accomplish those
two goals. So very similar to my journey
and Automotive Of my journey and financial services and Retail
over the last three-plus decades.
Now I get to talk about football, they do something.
So on top of worrying about the technical side of my job, I get
to talk about football. So you think about two wonderful
things going on my passion for data and analytics, my passion
for sports, put the two of them together and my days are quite
interesting and to be honest, a lot of fun, one of the things
that is exciting about that. But also acknowledges where you
bent is In both retail Banking and now even Sports on the
football side. You still have to worry about
the consumer and what ways has the consumer experience, part of
your job changed in and what differs now compared to even the
previous parts of your career. So if you go way back, when
because as Michael knows, I've been at this a long time, we
really struggle to understand who you were and therefore how
to connect with you in ways that are meaningful.
I always like to say, we want to engage with you meaningfully in
Text that is the right conversation with you that you
want to have with us. So decades ago we just struggle
because we didn't have the capabilities to do that.
So we resulted in very coarse things that we did, we surveyed
you, we tested things. Coarsely, we'd send a lot of
things into your mailbox, not, you know, mailbox by the way,
your actual postal code mailbox. Well today our ability to see
and know and engage with you is driven by the fact that we have
the assets from a data standpoint from an analytic
standpoint. Point in an engagement
standpoint, think about marketing technology and all the
changes in the last decade and what the league embraced is.
The fact that we, despite the success of the NFL, with the
world changing in terms of how content is being consumed and
who owns that relationship, we have to get in front of that.
We have to, with the respect in the privilege of our fans, know
them and engage with them in the way they want to be engaged
with. So our largest initiative at the
league from a data and analytic standpoint.
It is our one to one program. And so, very similar to what you
see with retailers or an automotive or in financial
services. We're now focused on doing the
same thing in other sports leagues, are getting there as
well, because if you're going to be successful, you have to
connect and the way fans want to be connected.
And by the way, under the age of 40, they want to be connected
even more differently than just turning on the game every
Sunday. So, that's a big part of the
journey we're on. And what I like about it is it
really shows the power and leverages the power Or what it
data and analytics organization can do, what is the role then of
data and analytics in getting closer to the fans and
addressing. Those customer experience goals
that you were just describing. Our role is a significant one
because in partnership with marketing and partnership with
our clubs or media organization, we're providing the ingredients
to bake the right souffle as I would describe it.
We're responsible for bringing Together of that complete view,
we're actually the first sports League that has aligned with our
clubs to bring all of our data to fan on fans together in a
systematic way. And that's a big step for Forks
because it unlocks our ability to understand tens of millions
of fans systematically and increasingly pretty close to
real time. And then in working with
marketing and media and other channels, we are driving those
insights into the relevant conversations to those
individual pans. And then of course, Measuring
and constantly learning through the feedback loops, that's
extremely important. Because once again, connecting
with fans in a way that makes a difference in their relationship
with us is how you deepen that relationship with us.
We don't take for granted that we are the biggest Sports league
in the United States. And you could argue the biggest
in the world. We understand that going
forward. It's about deepening that
relationship. That's what great companies and
what great organizations do. And you can't do that.
If you don't see a no No, you can talk about how much you love
your customers, but if you can't see and know and then act upon
that information is problematic, so we're focused on everything.
On the data side, systematically all the way from acquisition to
governance usage, everything on the technology side, and then,
of course, the analytics and the insights that get driven through
that ecosystem. So, we're engaging in a way that
makes a difference and it's to the credit of the commissioner
and the credit of our owners they've embraced this because
they understand that the future has more of a direct Consumer
focus and all the fragmentation and media that's out there and
we have to be prepared for it. We have a really interesting
question from Twitter, very important question on this topic
and this is from our Salon Khan and he wants to know how do you
manage the Privacy aspects as you're addressing these?
These customer experience goals Fan Experience goals.
One of the pillars is our data governance organization, and we
have a group Within that, that's responsible for consent, working
with our legal team and the general counsel's of all the
clubs. And we start off with our
philosophy on consent and privacy and that is, we are
going to be transparent. We are going to give our fans
controls to express their preferences if they choose to
do. So and their relationship with
us. And then we're going to make
sure that the privilege of having that data is used in a
way that provides them value that we're not just doing it
till we can carpet bomb Communications to their We're
focused very much on making sure that the communications are
relevant. That's the journey.
We're on 20 years ago. When we started going down the
path of data. Governance issues around privacy
were very limited because we were in the early days of
gathering transactional data assets on individuals.
We're now at the point where it has to be one of the pillars of
the overall strategy. And we're very proud of the fact
that we made it a pillar. One of the four pillars of the
strategy around 121 And every day we spend, Time on it.
And every day, we're making sure we're doing it the right way,
not only in the US, but globally because it's a complex journey.
And by the way, if you don't do this right there are brand
issues as well as compliance issues.
And, of course, the NFL spends a lot of time, focusing on the
brand side of it, Paula, one of the questions I have around that
is centered or in the form of excess ability.
Now, externally, I mean, you, you have your partner's in the
clubs and they know how to, you know, manage the data into I'm
not Listen not so much worried about it from that made but more
so internally you've got a lot of Partners.
You've got a lot of fans and you've got a ton of teams that
you've got to manage. How do you make the data
accessible internally and go about it in a way where it
ensures near real-time visibility.
So people have the right and sites but are doing.
So in a way where you can win with the data, our approach is
not only data governance, which is all about what we're doing
and standardization. And data quality and access
controls and so on. But we're focused in partnership
with marketing on marketing governance, how are we using the
data? How are you orchestrating it?
And then analytic governance, which goes through the
validation processes. So it sounds like a lot of
governance doesn't have to be a government type governance
program, but you have to have those elements in place and
you've got to run this with that degree of discipline that you're
we all believe in this. Theoretically this concept of
democratization of data created. Everybody make it, everybody
make sure everybody has access to it, but at the end of the
day, you have to govern it appropriately.
And that's not why we built. This whole ecosystem involving
our clubs, by the way in that ecosystem, because there's 33
entities at the NFL and you have to be able to orchestrate
coordinate, understand what you're doing, or guess what
happens. You everybody wants to
communicate to everybody all the time, and that uncoordinated
side of it, not only causes compliance issues, but the
bigger risk and All that is that fans, start tuning, you out.
Customers start tuning you out. And that's not what this all
about. This is about deepening the
relationship which by the way, leads you to things such as
sometimes more is not better. The last is better in terms of
your communication and that's all been built into the system.
We're launching in the system we have developed in the last year
or so be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the
Subscribe button at the top of our website so we can send you
our newsletter and notify Of upcoming live shows.
So a lot of your effort then is focused on that Fan Experience.
You, you mentioned there are four pillars.
Can you describe what those are? We support the league on every
initiative player, health, and safety.
Football operations, officiating media operations, media
optimization. So we go across the entire
league and while fan is a big part of what we do, all these
other activities are equally as important because Our commitment
is to help the league achieve its strategic objectives, which
is to make the game better to maintain the Integrity of the
game to make sure that our content is being consumed,
efficiently and effectively. So it is very, very important
that we look at it that way when you think about our structure,
in terms of the fan cited it from a journey standpoint, it
starts with data and clearly all the data management aspects of
that, we then have a pillar around analytics and insights
It's because once you have the ingredients question is what
insights are going to generate and how are you going to
continuously measure and track the robustness?
Then we have the pillar around marketing technology and
marketing governance and orchestration.
And then the last pillar is privacy and consent and the
related enabling capabilities. Because within that bucket, you
also have identity resolution and related capabilities, you
have to have if you're going to do this at scale, because when
you think about the data, Exit. He's that.
We're bringing in. It's pretty hard to govern.
Systematically your relationship with an individual.
If you can't know them. And to know them, you have to
see them and you have to validate that they are them.
Which by the way, is poor grammar, but you get the point
that you go down that path. So think of it is a full
ecosystem, that thing gets wrapped around the needs of the
organization and then you execute off that ecosystem
through your channels and that's related to the data that you
have. So, you It's about like, how the
breath of the data. But one thing I want to
apartment point out in particular with the NFL's, the
depth, like not only do you have pretty well.
Structured information pertaining to the game's main
gauge means that even the fans and the stadiums but you are in
charge of one of the largest media events in the world.
That is the Super Bowl. And as a marketer that is like
one of the most fascinating times because everyone's tunde,
right? And with that.
What data do, I mean, you have to manage the data of the Super
Bowl, right? Like you're one of my rod
correct? Not.
Yeah. So just to be clear.
It is the largest event that one.
Okay, it's the largest I could resist that because you know it
is it is the largest of that 200 million viewers by the way and
the Super Bowl has just concluded.
So just seeing it just wrap your head around that.
No other event gets anywhere. About 20 billion viewers other
than our playoff games and Monday nights and Sunday nights
and so on, it's a it's a wonderful question.
So the breadth and the depth of the data we have is pretty
amazing to tell you the truth. It's one of the situations where
we're Gathering data from what bands are doing in stadiums and
what they're doing with the clubs.
But we also have relationships with the fans permissions, where
we're getting the data from our partners.
In terms of transactional relationships that we have, Have
with those Partners. We also have a data development
organization, that's constantly focused on what new data assets
can we acquire and how can we bring them in?
So we are, we're blessed with actually, the opportunity to
have lots and lots of data from a breadth and depth perspective,
the real challenge we have is like most organizations been
around for a long time. That data was created for a
specific use case and now we're trying to leverage it for other
things to get this holistic picture.
So a big part of our journey has been too.
Can we bring the data together? Can we cleanse it?
Can we standardize it? And we deal with the ability of
properly. Associating it with an
individual. So it's pretty pretty amazing to
think about where we're at. It's also pretty amazing to
think about where we're heading because we're still in the early
phases and with the right permissions in place in the
support from fans, what we're going to be able to build in
terms of our version of a Walled Garden is pretty amazing.
When you think of the tens of millions of fans that we can see
and know because the passion for the sport is so high and with
the right respect for Them, we can build very deep
relationship, so it's great question, but and yes, the Super
Bowl is the largest event. So I just said, maybe the World
Cup every four years you could argue but wherever year just to
be crystal, clear about that point.
The Super Bowl is the one that's a qaq and I are having a good
time. Me as a marketer, you know,
that's the dream, right? You've Won event, 200 million
people, that 200 worldwide, you have pop culture Sports
entertainment, some of the best products, and partners that also
coincide with this. And, you know, the second
dissecting that data and then leveraging it to do it again the
following year and then even sharing that with your partner
to your team's, it's just a that's what's an incredible role
where you're defining really the future of Most organizations
because it's a reality now that most orgs can, if they want to
obtain and build pretty large data sets, but how you maneuver
said data set is like probably the most important thing and
we're learning from you. Yeah.
How do you leverage it? How do you bring it to life?
I like my favorite expression is, how do you bring it to life?
And so I'll give you a good example of this.
We've been developing an alternative way of assessing how
our content. Is being consumed in a
fragmented media world. Not just looking at traditional
measurements of TV, or even digital or streaming, but
comprehensively, how is it being consumed through social media?
How's it being consumed through PR Communications?
How's it being consumed through legalized sports, betting, all
of those things around it, and we had to do that, because of
the fact that if you can get that data and understand the
comprehensiveness of how your content is being really consumed
it, Only shapes where you want to put your emphasis where you
want to place your backs. What am I doing right?
What else can I adjust in terms of by mixed?
And that's been a fascinating Journey for us to go down.
We've now validated and we have those Diagnostics to have
another data set to understand what we see, we call it NFL as a
platform but it's it's really this ability to see how our
content is being consumed and how much time and individuals
spending with us by the way, in the month of January in the u.s.
3 billion hours and Over three billion dollars were spent
consuming NFL content in the United States just in one month,
three billion hours. It's just you don't have a team
that's that large that can ingest 3 billion hours worth of
data. So like talk to us about your
partner's, right? Like I remember just I study
computer science so some of the more fascinating case studies
early on with AWS actually we're with the dfl next-gen was the
platform. Yes.
Okay. So that project in particular,
you all were first movers in a space that you didn't have to
be. Is it because you need help
processing the data or what's the what's the idea there?
You know that it's always this great question of the ability to
buy a, do you rent it? And when you're going through
and the way I describe it is that the right ecosystem.
Now is Lego blocks. So years ago when you were
building The whole data and analytics and insight.
Each block is a whole you get up in the morning and people think
about it is as it used to be a guy have to go to one vendor.
I'd have to go to one partner and you had closed systems and
so on now it's an ecosystem and I approach it from a try to
approach it from a Proto humility, where I get up in the
morning. And I think about this in the
context of I don't have all the answers.
We're not going to build everything in house.
So how can we at the end of the day?
Leverage, our relationships with these great partners and AWS is
a really good example. Great partner, the NFL next-gen
stats is a big enabler for us and football, officiating,
player, health, and safety. So the partnership with AWS is
just a good example of us. Saying if there's a partner that
can fit into the ecosystem and help us do two things, get
smarter faster or fill a technology Gap.
That's how we look at it and it's really the journey we're at
it. For me, going over the last few
decades. I think it's probably one of the
biggest pivot Points. We don't spend enough time on is
that the ability to piece together different parts of the
technology stack. And that ecosystem has been
transformed just in the last decade if we just pause and take
that step back because again, even 2010 ish, we were still wet
it to saying, my stack had to be ax and I was dealing with this
set of vendors. Well, now take a look at anybody
Buddies. Modern stack, it's the
environments in the cloud. The software tools are eclectic.
They're all over the place. My analytic platform can
basically be just about anything, which is what we do
today and all the piece parts are really coming together.
So pretty fascinating. It's a to me.
What you just asked is one of the critically important
questions we as a field have to continue to stretch our thinking
on because you know the day the were being asked to do two
things generate insights. That are more precise and to
take latency out of the equation, that's my version of
Moore's law. By the way, if anybody plays
around with that, I have rights to it.
Because that was a concept. I came up with what any partner
that helps us do that. We're going to be very
interested. We have a very much related
question from again, Our Salon Khan comes back and he wants to
know how do you manage decision-making Based on data as
opposed to gut? Feel when in any industry,
there's a human tendency among the people receiving that data
to, you know, rely on their own experience and intuition as
opposed to trusting that data. So as you're working with
decision-makers inside the league and at teams, how do you,
how do you manage that aspect of it?
It's something you. And I've actually talked about
in the past and that is you have to have an orientation that it's
going to be Art and Science and establish organizations.
And that as you move towards science to just support more and
more decision-making going towards, what we describe as
model-driven, decisioning you have to bring them along through
the Journey, you have to deal with the change management.
The human dimensions of this, the transformational side of
this. It's one of the reasons why
within the field, you see many of us now, having business
transformation functions or we have translators, or we have
engagement managers because if you don't invest the time to do
that, That these organizations are established and people are
established. And the way they make decisions
that old adage that people don't object to change, the objective
being changed, is true in this case and that's an any
established organization. So that's that to me Remains The
Secret Sauce. I'm engaging with the business
partners powering forward in a way where it's beneficial to
them. Bringing them along to the
journey. I can remember when I joined the
league initially the You're pulling me aside and saying
please educate us all the time and he understood that and I
understand it because all the years I've been doing this, if
you look at the early Legacy companies that had very large
investments in data analytics, I had one of the largest when I
was at GM for a decade. We had one of the largest
organizations that we would consider to be a data and
analytics organization. Now, we never got to full
adoption of all the work we were doing because we underestimated
the The need to change and have the change management component
in the equation. There's a couple questions from
Twitter and I want to I want to preface this question with the
just the precursor element. Then it fills and Just Sports in
general, I've changed. I mean MBA is filling this as
well with the unbundling of the Gable package.
Right. You know the regional Sports
networks. They're not making enough money.
They so there's there's there's possible bankruptcies that can
into on that front and that's going to have an impact.
On all of sports but more specifically like in this world
where you're experiencing disruption what are the some of
the shining stars that you're seeing on the horizon.
So first our strategy is to have optionality and optionality
because for anybody to call the ball ten years from now it's
it's an interesting challenge. We've publicly stated multiple
times that we feel very good. We have long-term agreements
with our play Layers. We have long-term agreements
with our distribution channels. That's great.
It gives us time to make investments and prepare for the
Future Part of the Investments and preparing.
For the future is to have optionality and where you go and
how your content is going to be distributed you to do that.
Well though, you still have to make the game better all the
time. You got to connect with fans
because if you own the relationship with the fans and
you're making the game better, then your optionality for how
you distribute is better because who knows what the future holds.
Pause. So you got to get the
fundamentals, right? You have to be prepared for that
for us. We've been experimenting on a
number of fronts. You saw Amazon with Thursday
night football, for instance, had a great first season.
We proved that we could disseminate content through that
channel, which is a page Channel at scale, 10 million viewers
roughly every single week and we had some weeks.
Well, above that, that's where we're at.
And we're continuing to experiment and trying to figure
out where this is going at the same time, what we're making I'm
sure is that we can control as much of our fate is possible in
the way you do. That is make the game great,
which it already is, but make it Greater make it better.
And then make sure you can connect with your fans.
Thus the investment and data and analytics is a critical enabler
to us having that control of our future do as much as we can.
So with that Chris Peterson from Twitter, is asking the following
question as far as disruptions on the horizon for the NFL in
terms of either It's or control of all the data.
How has the explosive growth of sports, betting change things
for you all? It's a factor.
Obviously, it's something that when you look at sports, we had
to get comfortable with because you have to get comfortable with
it because you don't want it to have negative repercussions on
the game. What we've done is we've
continued to focus on striking the right balance, making sure
that it's the Integrity of the game is still there and making
sure that we're complying with how its role Going out.
Obviously it has business impacts because gambling
organizations. They always be organizations are
big advertisers and they're promoting and they're doing all
those things that are there from a data.
Analytic standpoint. We get lots of homework
assignments, around making sure that we're tracking and
understanding that there are no negative implications to me.
I look at it is part of the overall puzzle of how we
maintain the Integrity of the game.
How we helped Tan because it's broader than us maintain the
Integrity of the game or the future, but not a surprise that
the world's there and not surprised that it continues to
grow. And, and it's important to fans.
When we look at the amount of activity, going around legalized
sports betting in football. It's very, very high.
We take a very large share of that in the season,
disproportionate share of the LSB activities between September
and January about three-quarters of it.
And sports are going to football Paul.
We have not spoken at all about the use of data and analytics to
help improve team performance to optimize the team.
The football tell us about that. That seems pretty pretty
foundational. Yeah, it is and again as I said,
when you think about data and analytics in a modern science,
always think about a how am I connecting with my customer?
My fans and then how am I improving my operation?
So in automotive it was about quality and efficiency.
And productivity and throughput in football.
It's about improving the game and proving officiating,
improving performance. So the way I always think of it
is in my side of it, my team is focused around supporting
officiating and officiating analytics, and Rule changes and
we provide a lot of support to player health and safety because
of the work streams, we have there, the club level, they all
now, every Club, all 32 clubs has analytics within their
football part of their organization.
So you think about clubs they have a revenue Ooh, part of
their organization, which they have data and analytics teams,
which work, very closely with us.
And then they have football teams or team members supporting
the football side of their equation.
And you see it, you see it in terms of football strategy, you
see it, in terms of probabilities being used, think
about the, everybody's now amazed at how often teams, go
for it on fourth down. Well, that's driven by
probability analysis. It makes more sense to go for it
on fourth down than it does to punt.
And so when we look back on it years ago, Can always remember a
game between the paths and I think paying was still in
Indianapolis at the time where I'll check win for it on
somewhere around is 35 yard line in the fourth quarter and it was
fourth and not one, it was more like fourth and six or seven and
everybody was just appalled. Why did he go for it?
And of course the reason he went for his, he knew if he gave the
ball back to paintin, the probability of Peyton walking
down the field and scoring was very, very high.
So you can See that in the early days now it's systemically
embedded in all teams and we'll see, more and more analytics and
Technology being leveraged to continue, to improve the quality
of the game, the Integrity of the game, the effectiveness of
officiating, my team doing that for the league.
On a day-to-day basis is we've got lots of things to do every
single day. We're asked to do a lot on that
front and it's actually one of the high points of my week is
just all the things we're working on.
On that front because it's really exciting to see how
technology and data and analytics will continue to drive
this great game and the excitement of the game.
Because to the earlier question, that's how you prepare for an
uncertain future. You excellent.
On the things you can control and you create optionality in
your strategy. And that's what it's all about.
I do want to get into a few things.
The first thing is generative AI, you've got a ton of data
that you're collecting at scale. We're now here where consumers
can participate in the experience of generative.
AI, how is the NFL thinking about it?
Especially in regards to the data that you have it's early
days for us? But whether it's generative AI
or what we're doing with ML type applications, part of it always
comes down to what you see generative, AI being used for in
that is either natural, language processing, type Solutions,
insert call centers or fan engagement or interactions or,
or so on. Or some derivative there.
And I would say a large part of our Focus large part of my team
sits there because that's the Journey of driving hyper and
accurate responsiveness to a consumer.
Having said that, when you think about all the things we're
doing, and let's call it the advanced analytics field, not
just generative AI, but you start looking at things like
computer visioning and related technologies that work, we've
been doing goes all the way from player health and safety support
which we provide support to them and our external Partners on
that front to sponsorship Effectiveness.
We've been doing sort of all sorts of fascinating things to
determine the value of Impressions and exposures and
other things that go along with it and we're all that takes us
is an interesting question because again, it always anchors
back into the things you're trying to resolve.
Can I engage with you more meaningfully, and can I provide
support to our partner and or ourselves?
So what they're doing? Operationally is having the
right outcome so high on our list like everybody else the
opportunities for more advanced analytics the opportunities for
applying the science now at scale and cost effectively is in
front of us going to be an interesting couple of years.
We've got a whole Rd skunkworks team in my shop that's kicking
around applications right now. Elizabeth Shaw from Twitter is
wondering, you know, what are the few ways that you organize
that data? And Think about it at scale,
when we get up in the morning are organizing.
Construct comes down to think of it as Three Rivers.
So there's data around the individual insert fans, but
could be businesses as well. So we're treating businesses is
an individual entity. There's data that specifically
tied to player health and safety, which is a very
important area. Very sensitive area, by the way,
because you've got a governor, you know, not only HIPAA, but we
have the relationship with the PA that we Very closely on and
then you have all the football data which includes things like
NGS. So our governing construct is we
think of it as those three big rivers and then we've got
support for the rest of the organization, whether it's HR or
Finance or so on. But those are the three big
rivers and we take a similar approach with all three of them
in terms of we think of data management as an end and process
it goes from, what's your Source?
What's your ability to ingest? And curate it scale?
What your ability to integrate make it available, Leverage It
and then what's the continuous process of enhancements and then
all the enabling things underneath it.
What is data quality processes or data standardization or in
the case of damn data individual data identity resolution and
consent. That's why we think of it and I
encourage anybody when you think about data and data management,
always anchor back to the business, use cases and needs
and The Logical construct that goes along with it because
usually what you're faced with is you're trying to bring data.
Transactional applications where the data was not designed to
support your broader integrate, use cases.
It was designed for a specific transaction.
So if you think about a CRM application that data is
specifically there to generate an outbound communication.
And now we're saying we're going to use all that data to
integrate into get to this complete view of an individual.
That's the right way to do it when you were talking earlier
about your ecosystem, it seemed that That was also very much
implied. That everything you think about
you, do? You plan is about that scale,
ultimately, for a data and analytics organization.
You ask yourself three questions in my mind, is it repeatable is
it scalable and as a government and then you get into,
obviously, the related things of?
Does it add value to the organization and those sorts of
things? But if you're going to do this,
with Maximum Impact repeatability, Adders and then
going right along with repeat abilities.
Can I scale it? And then the third piece to this
is because of the scale of the impact.
We're now having you have to properly, govern it.
Oh, by the way, you go back three-plus decades ago when I
started, we didn't have any of those concerns because our data
sources were all your day nor established and very structured
situations. They were government statistics
or they do US Census or they were marketing research,
surveys. So the Questions around
scalability or governance were not really questions for us
because we didn't have those issues.
We were dealing with things that were so structured to begin
with. The US Census been around since
1790 and there's actually data from the US Census from 1790
most economic statistics on the US, are out there from 1949 on
and the construct of the data has been preordained for all of
us and oh by the way, the governance of it Is what are you
worried about? The data from You're a labor and
statistics has no restrictions in terms of usage, now you can
misinterpret it, which is a separate issue, but then we get
into the 90s and then suddenly the world changes on its head
because For the First time, we're able to capture
transactional data at scale or observational data at scale, and
then the whole world opens up to us around, can we manage that
data? Can we govern it?
And not surprisingly, it was only in that period of time that
governance really started to take off.
Off both in terms of standardization quality as well
as access controls. So that's a little bit of a
history lesson for everybody, but when you think about it, go
down that path and then you go out the next five to ten years.
And you say what's next? Well, what's next is the next
generation of that is, is an even faster, leap, or bound,
because the ability to make sense of it with limited latency
is the next big Horizon for all of us.
We have a couple of questions from Twitter and I'm going to
Ask you to answer these quite quickly because we're simply
going to run out of time. So the first one again from our
Salon con is it's an interesting one.
Do all teams have the same resources to collect manage and
share their data. No.
So we are see variability by all 32, but all 32 are making
substantial investments in this area and then related to that.
What is your actual Ation ship with the team.
So you work for I was going to say Central HQ, but that's not
right. The team is might have an issue
with that. Rises it a Trade Organization.
So that's probably the right way, but we were closer
relationship with all 32 clubs. There are in essence, our board
of directors, and from a data and analytic standpoint.
It's an incredibly close working relationship.
They leverage us for a set of capabilities and services.
They leverage us to help Drive And then within the fan
environment, we are the organization.
That's brought all the data and analytic capabilities together
that all of them, consume and then another one from Twitter
from Chris Peterson who says how do the multi-use stadiums and
their Data Systems including Wi-Fi and cellular access
points, steer data to the NFL during game.
So I think what he's asking is as the The data is Flowing
around the stadium. How do you guys get it?
Yeah. Actually it's the club's
responsibility at that point in time and then there are specific
data elements that the club share with us all visible and
transparent to the fan and and all properly governed.
So that again that governance is a is a crucial aspect governance
governance governance. If anybody's trying to set up a
data and organization from scratch, I encourage you to
start with data governance. Love it Paul.
Have to do this. You probably are going to expect
it. Your you probably thought you
were in the green and you you're going to get away on Skate.
I'm going to ask you to tell a data story and that data story
is going to be about one big moment that happened this year.
And that was the fact that you had Rihanna as the halftime
performer in the Super Bowl. Did the floor is yours?
I just looking for data story on that.
Well, it's interesting because halftime shows historically have
given us pop in terms of viewership.
We track that very closely, and we track.
Wow, it's giving us pop. So, I've got all the data and
yeah, but she did a great job and we got substantial lift, you
saw the 200 million viewers and, and the tracking that we've
released recently well soon. See, all of that.
As we saw last year, we had about twenty six million
additional viewers. We estimate that came in for the
halftime show on top of 208 million viewers overall.
So we look at all of them. We share it with the companies
that are working with. Some talk about it and see what
insights we have. We spent a lot of time.
Looking at what else we can do to drive more viewership and
more energy and more positivity. So it will all it's all getting
examine reviewed top to bottom, but this year's Super Bowl was
an A+. And the data is confirming that
it was an A+ than just like last year with an A+, wait, an
exciting game and tastic. See, you had weakened the fault
of the following, you heard the previous year, and then you had
Rihanna the following year. The question I have there is
like there was also covid the covid elevate, your data
collection abilities, because it seems like post covid.
You've just nailed it. I would say, post covid and
everything going on with the league, prompted us to make some
additional Investments and data analytics is one of them.
So, if you look at the last couple of years, coming out of
covid, we did a lot of data collection and covid, because we
had 22. Maintain Health, as well as keep
the game going. And that was important for us.
But covid, as well as other things are probably a forcing
factor for us to put more emphasis and the area that I'm
fortunate enough to be responsible for, but there's
other things going on as well. The fragmentation of media and
how content is being consumed. Those are really, really big
forcing functions for us as well because to the credit of the
commissioner and and the senior officers of the league, they are
being forwarded. Word leaning.
And there's a heightened state of let's be prepared for the
future and not just rest in our current success.
So as we finish up, can you talk to us a little bit about where
this future is going? And I'm particularly interested
in this to use an old term multimedia environment that we
live in. So, maybe talk to us about any
aspects of that, it's exciting as you and I have talked about
For my day-to-day job is incredibly eclectic everyday is
interesting because there's something new and exciting and
player health or is a lot going on officiating.
And course, all the fan work, but an area that really piques.
Our interest is the current and future state of how content is
being consumed and why that's important for us is, we want to
understand this better. We want to understand this
better, so we can share with our partners and help them activate
their relationship with us better.
All the partners and sponsors. We want to share it to Make sure
that the things were investing in and putting emphasis on or
driving, so, think about fantasy football, for instance, or all
the things we're doing on social media and then it also gives us
the opportunity to be out in front of where things may pivot
and try to get as much of an early warning on that as
possible. So early days, but very exciting
for us. We feel very fortunate that
we've been able to crack that code a bit.
And and cracking that code, we're spending a lot of time
with ourselves in the Figuring out what we can do with it.
Because, again, big question is, can you bring it to life?
It's great to have the science, the science.
When you're in a business setting has to add value.
Well, one thing before we go, I want to thank you for
leveraging. All of the best technology from
across the world really and bringing that to create a
cohesive experience. I mean, one example that I've
seen just in my few years as a fan is The NFL is one of the few
places where you can get the best out of Amazon.
Google Apple in many more to way too many for me to name and
that's not true. Anywhere else in maybe I do like
that about that info as a techie, it is quite a blessing,
our partners like working with us.
And as we like to say, we like working with them and it's been
an enjoyable, part of my role coming in because of the
technology side of my job and I external technology, Those are
great to work with quick. Question under the wire before
we go from Twitter. Do some people consider
governance as just another form of red tape?
One of the favorite stories I like to say about governance is
my first leader and data governance, which is almost 30
years ago, when I put her in the role.
She spent. She's tell me these stories.
You'll probably spend 100% of my time explaining to people that
I'm not the police. We're really what she was about
was to make We had standards and consistency, and we're using
data appropriately, which actually opens doors for people
to leverage data, the exact opposite.
So, somewhere down the road, maybe we'll change the language
from governance because it does sound like, it's some type of a
police action versus. It's an enablement action.
And if you do it right, it's all about enablement.
And on that note, unfortunately, we're out of time.
I want to say a huge. Thank you to Paul ba Lu from the
National Football League. Thanks, thank you so much, Paul,
for taking your time to be with us today.
You're welcome. Michael is great to see you.
And I also want to say a huge thank you to Q Harrison Terry
for being the co-hosted. A queue is a really interesting
discussion, it was and I'm always excited to be here.
Thank you for having me and Paul has been a pleasure and
everybody. Thank you for watching.
Especially those folks who asks such excellent questions you
guys are such great. Audience.
You guys are very smart intelligent sophisticated.
So always ask those questions. Now before you go, this is
important. Be sure to subscribe to our
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