Name: CHANGING THE GAME: HOW TECHNOLOGY IS REVOLUTIONIZING SPORTS OPERATIONS
Uploaded: 2025-06-10
Duration: 13 min 24 s

For sports franchises built on storied legacies, embracing innovation is a total game-changer— and Gillian Zucker is going long on reimagining the future of sports. We'll hear from this powerhouse president about the winning strategies for leveraging technology in sports  operations, including pioneering initiatives like the tech-enhanced fan journey at the Intuit Dome, home of the LA Clippers–two crown jewels in Steve Ballmer’s Halo portfolio. As stadiums evolve into dynamic, experience-driven destinations, this conversation will explore how v isionary leadership is shaping what comes next. 

CHANGING THE GAME: HOW TECHNOLOGY IS REVOLUTIONIZING SPORTS OPERATIONS

Conferences

Hello, everyone. All right, so I am dying to know how many of you, uh, prefer to watch a sports game in person versus, uh, on your couch, on your TV. So, show of hands, who prefers it in person? OK, alright, uh, on your couch? All right, all right, it sounds like in person is, is the dominant way to go, which we have the expert here, Gillian, who you've been to over 100 stadiums, is that right, Gillian, in your research for Intuit Dome? Yeah, we just, uh, this past summer, opened the new Intuit Dome, the new home of the LA Clippers. In Los Angeles and as part of that process over the course of 7 years, I visited any facility that I possibly could, some of them sporting facilities, some of them other types of entertainment events. What do you think is the number one thing that makes someone want to come into a stadium versus stay at home, lay on the couch? I think we're in the experiential economy. It's so important to people now to have experiences where they can connect, and I think a lot of that just has to do with how much time we spend looking at our phones and engage with screens. And so when you have an opportunity to do something that sort of forces your head up and forces you to engage with those around you and it's something that's really enjoyable, you want more of it. Yeah, that makes sense now. I don't envy your position because. You have quite the intimidating boss, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Talk to me about how you got him to build into a dome, because didn't he come in with the idea that we already have a stadium. I'm buying this team because it's everything's done for me pretty much. Yes, very famously during my job interview with him, I had had some experience in building facilities and I began to tell him about that experience so that eventually. when he wanted to build a new facility for the Clippers, I would be ready to help him to do that, and he stopped me. He said, Stop, stop right there. We are never building a new arena. He's like, This is why I bought this team. It's the best part about the whole thing. I don't have to worry about this. We have somebody else. They manage all of this for us. We don't have to worry about the cleaning the place. We don't have to worry about the capital that's associated with it. This is, this is the best thing about this team. And then a few weeks went by and then maybe a couple more and at that point he said, you know, here's the thing that I didn't realize is you don't have your own home. We shared our arena with another NBA team. We also shared it with a hockey team and a lot of concerts. And so as a result of that there wasn't branding. There weren't the things that make it feel like it has a personality that's associated with your franchise. He was like, we lose home court advantage and we have to fix this. So let's go find a piece of property, and we did. Amazing story. Now you tell me that you've embedded data into every part of Intuit Dome, you know, from shaping staffing plans, from seat assignments, menus once famously overruling Steve Ballmer on a menu placement. Tell us about that and how you integrate this tech into your stadium. You know, I think everybody wishes that they could know everything about their customers. Like, imagine if you could know everything about your customers. And so when we started thinking about Intuit, when you think about a typical Uh, arena experience where you come to a concert or you come to a game, you come in and you may come with let's say 4 people and you have all 4 tickets on your phone. So we would know who you are, but we would not know who those other 3 people are because when you get to the gate, you just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. So we essentially know 25% of the people who are coming in, and that's roughly true pretty much across the industry. So in our minds, we said, look, imagine if you could know everyone. So one of the things that we set out. In a dome was to make sure that people understood you have to have your own ticket on your own device when you come into the building, and that enables us to customize the experience. Well, we had to give people something in exchange for that friction that we gave them up front. And so what we said was that if you do that, you can put your phone in your pocket and you will never need it in this facility. It becomes your ticket, it becomes your wallet. It becomes your entry to clubs. It becomes your pass. It also you know, your reward system so we can reward you for behaviors during the game because we know who you are. Can you give me an example of that? Like what's the reward someone would get? Yeah, so one of the things that we have is this really amazing technology that we found that allows us to measure decibel levels down to a single seat. So when we first discovered the technology, it could do that down to about 25 seats, and we met the CEO and we said, Hey, could you get this down to a single seat in 2.5 years when we open? And he said, Yes, I can do it. And he did. And so that allows us to know how loudly each fan is cheering, and we can reward them for that behavior. So every game at the end of the game we actually reward the very loudest fan in the arena and we know exactly who they are and they win things like an autographed James Harden jersey and other fantastic things. And during the playoffs we utilized it. We had a pivotal game 6. We were playing it into a dome. It was must win against the Denver Nuggets and what we had learned through this information was not only who our loudest people were, That cheering's contagious that when you cheer you give the people around you permission to be loud as well. And so we invited the loudest fans and we had them bring a guest so that they can encourage that throughout the arena and help us with home court advantage. So interesting. So can you, you can tell in real time who is actually screaming the loudest. Yes, we can. We don't know what they're saying, but we do know how loud, right? That was my next question. And then how does that relate to, and I don't know if people have heard of the Wall, which is tell us what the wall is. And how that works with the tech you have and maybe you even have some props. I do. I have a couple of problems. So it's important to keep in mind that the whole idea of this building was was to create home court advantage but also to delight people, to bring them kind of more than they would expect, and Intuit Dome has a real personality. It's quite a unique place to see a game. So on one end of the arena is an architectural marvel. It's basically the steepest grandstand code allows, but it's also very comfortable. It has a lot of leg room. It starts in row 1, goes up to row 50. On 4500 people strong and we only let Clippers fans sit there. So you cannot sit there if you're wearing an opposing team jersey, if you're cheering for the other team, we kick you out. And in the middle of it is a standing supporter section that you have to basically audition to come to. But we've made those seats really, really affordable. It's $999 for a season ticket. The trick is your seat gets assigned when you show up. So if you show up early, you're going to sit down low, and if you show up late, we oversell it, so you might be standing and then they come to us and they ask us for all kinds of props. They come up with crazy ideas. I brought a couple of them. Our mascot is Chuck the Condor. Their job is to keep the opposing team from making their free throws. So the time when the opposing team is shooting, they do things like this, and we have this direction, pretty good, and they also all have these. This is our loud cup. This is actually intended to reduce lines at concessions. So bottomless drinks, you have your own cup on one side you sip, and on the other side you chair. Love that sound. OK, I'll come to the audience for a question in a second, but Gillian, I have to ask, you know, with all this, it seems like consumers are putting a lot of trust into you to safeguard their data, all these things, measuring their sounds. How do you ensure that their data is treated with respect and how do you alleviate concerns that people might have about it? were really worried about it, you know, I remember in the beginning how much research we did about this, and what we learned was when you go to people and you ask, how do you feel about facial recognition, they say adamantly opposed to it. I want to have nothing to do with it. And then we say, how do you feel about clear? And they're like, I love clear. And they're like, how do you feel about your iPhone and the ID that you use with your face to open your iPhone? People are like, it's amazing. So what we learned is that there are certain technologies that they really trust and so we went to them. We didn't have any we're a basketball team, we don't build tech. So we went to people who do do this who safeguard people's information that they're comfortable with and we utilize that. Any questions out here in the audience? OK, well, I have another and this is based on uh my own personal background and bias. So I feel like, you know, a lot of legacy sports fans, uh, my dad, a Mets season ticket holder being one of them since the 80s, are really resistant to new tech and, and to changes. They like the old school way it's done. How do you balance that need for tradition when you're dealing with sports also with new technology? Well, I think it's two things. Number one, it's entirely voluntary. So you don't want to do it, you're not comfortable with it, you don't have to. We have other. Mechanisms, but what we found was that a certain number of people would sign up for game face ID before the game, and then we would find that that number would increase by 15 to 20% by the time they left the arena. So what you really need to do is provide them with something that's so incredible, that's so advantageous to their experience that they say, I definitely want this, you know, our concept was, can we eliminate lines? Like, imagine going to a sporting event and not having to wait in line for your hot dog. Yes, it's possible. Come into a dome and you can experience it yourself. How? How do you do that? Well, in a lot of different ways. I mean, one through technology and secondly through architecture. So you know Steve spent so much time talking about the restrooms, and I remember we were saying, oh, we can use technology to kind of indicate where the shortest lines might be to send people to the right place, and he just denied that on its premise. He was like, no, you know this can be solved by just having more. So we did some pedestrian modeling. We had 50% of the people in a single section get up at the same time. Go to the restroom, go to a concession stand. Could we get them back in their seat before the end of the quarter break? And if we could, we had enough restrooms, and if we couldn't, then we kept adding more. So we have over 3100 different fixtures for people. So if you come into a dome, you're not waiting in line for the bathroom. You tell Madison Square Garden. because I'm constantly line again you have a lot of luxuries with a new facility that you don't necessarily have with one that's been very fair. Uh, what is the biggest tech investment that you've made that you don't think hasn't that hasn't paid off yet, I would say, or one that that really flopped that you're really excited about. Um, we have one that actually I'm really excited about, but I don't think it's, it's progressed to the level that we want, but we have a board that's in the facility that when you come in, it actually um specifically greets you. So when I look up at that board, it will say Hi Gillian, welcome to Intuit Dome. You're sitting in and it'll have my section row and seat number and it'll tell me where the. This concession stand is to my seat or it'll tell me something interesting about the game or concert that's coming up. If you were coming in and you were standing right next to me, you would see your name and your seat location, and over 100 people can look at that same board at the same time and all see something different. So it's pretty amazing and it is one of these, you know, we said we weren't going to have any tech for tech's sake in the building. Like we only wanted things that actually enhanced your experience, and this one what we found it does is it it it's exciting enough that it gets people to engage with our face ID so it's helped us to achieve, you know, more buy-in for that. But I think um at the same time at some point when um the detail on it gets better we'll be able to do much more with it and I'm looking forward to that day. One last call for questions. OK, I have one for you. All of this tech sounds really cool but also very expensive at the same time. So what metrics or KPIs do you use to measure the real return on investment for these types of innovations, both in terms of fan engagements and also growth of your business? Steve was pretty clear when we built the building. He, he wanted it to be this incredible experience for fans. I mean, it was built for. Basketball fans, um, but he also wanted to not be dumb about the investment and what he kept saying was like I look at index funds. I need to get the same return on the building as I get on index funds and anything that you can do within that ROI is good by me. So that was basically our metric as we looked at these things and there were a lot of different technologies that we saw that were very expensive that we had to pass on because we couldn't do that and deliver the kind of. ROI, but there were other things, and you know you have to be choosy. What are the things that are going to have the biggest impact? It's, I think it's interesting at the end of the day that some of the things that have had the biggest impact in that building are definitely not the most expensive. Interesting. All right, last question for you. You've kind of just alluded to this. What are some of the craziest tech pitches or ideas that you've gotten that either you didn't consider or or the ones that you did and now they're in there. Yeah, I mean, we had an awful lot around holograms, you know, so there were a lot of different companies that came to us that said they could make holograms of our players or different ways that people could interact with them, and those are wonderful, but they tend to be the kind of thing that people have that interaction once, but by the time they see it multiple times, it's something that people grow weary of. So we were always looking for technologies that would be things that would continue. like excite people. We found all sorts of interactive games that were really popular. I think the things that we try on our Halo boards, so we have this giant two-sided Halo scoreboard, the largest video screen of its kind in any indoor facility. It's a full acre of LED and with this board we're able to do a whole bunch of things like provide a lot of. Statistical information and other opportunities to entertain, but one of the things that we really wanted to do was figure out a way that players could kind of jump out at the board at the fans, and it almost feels like they can reach out and touch you. And so we spent a lot of time focused on that and we're finally able to achieve it midway through the season. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for your time, Elaine. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.