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The Super Bowl is one of the largest sporting entertainment events on the planet, bringing more than one hundred million viewers and a billion income.
But for NFL teams and sports entertainment in general, there is a long way to the championship because the franchises aim to build the brand, to cultivate a fandom and to maximize income.
One of the ways to get there is AI.
Technology is not unrelated to the world of sports entertainment. Providing for the modern era of the generative AI – from 2017 – the big sellers like IBM already discussed how AI would disrupt sports entertainment networks. NFL itself uses AI to improve players safety with a Digital athlete System developed in partnership with AWS. The NFL also uses AWS to create Gen AI applications using the Amazon Memorydb database.
For individual teams, both in the NFL and in the sports entertainment landscape, there are other options to implement General AI. Such an option, launched today, comes from Raisea technology supplier led by Al Guido, which is also the president of the 49ers of San Francisco NFL football team.
The new data performance and IA platform on the company’s performance and information (EPIC) information combines consumers’ information, ticket management and real estate analysis to help sports and entertainment organizations To better engage with fans. The platform helps organizations have targeted commitment efforts to better understand potential customer characters. This information helps determine the stadium seats, ticket pricing and fans’ retention. The platform has already been used by more than 25 organizations, including Tennessee Titans.
Elevate has been active since 2018, but now with the advent of the AI generation, the company is able to do much more with the data.
“Building Epic has strengthened a fundamental truth that we have seen and validated with our customers since we are in operation – the data is as powerful as the decisions it allows,” said Guido, Chairman and CEO of Elevat, in Venturebeat. “In sports, the challenge is not only to capture this data, but to exploit it to generate real and usable intelligence that improves fans’ commitment, income strategies and operational efficiency.”
Data challenges in the construction of an AI-STIVE engagement system
Elevate already has data for around 220 million people in its system. The company collects first party data through its customer work and relations. This includes data on fans’ behavior, ticket sales, sponsorships and other property -related information. Also raise licenses and buy third -party data sets to further enrich user profiles.
Guido noted that many organizations collect what seems to be endless amounts of data, but they find it difficult to unify and take advantage of it. Epic was designed to fill this gap.
To fully benefit from the Modern AI generation, the data must be in a vector database format, supports Elevate. The IOC Jim Caruso explained to VentureBeat that his company underwent an intensive process not only to vectorize the data, but to ensure that it is the right data to help clarify commercial decisions.
There is no shortage of data base suppliers and technologies that claim to facilitate vectorization data. In reality, Caruso stressed that the vectorization process is not as simple as to light a switch. As part of the EPIC construction, they reassess all the data and how they could work together to provide the best ideas. The real vectorization process involved testing different approaches and treatment pipelines to find the right balance between precision and performance.
Currently, Elevate uses Amazon Sagemaker to operate its vectorization.
How Anthopic Claude, Xgboost and the foundation of Amazon helps to fuel ideas for Epic
Caruso explained that the epic system provides a wide range of applications powered by AI, pricing tickets to the development of consumption perspectives. Elevate uses a combination of different technologies to build these tools.
At the heart is the anthropogenic model Claude Haiku 3.5 Big Language Model (LLM), which was refined on Elevate data. Claude provides the interface to ask questions and obtain information based on different characters.
For example, a character could be a place operator who wishes to determine the best way to configure premium seats in a place. This operator will have to understand who would be interested in these seats and how they should be marketed in different groups.
Elevate went beyond the identification of large demographic segments, such as suburban millennials. Instead, they created a series of distinct characters with a range of attributes, including finances, purchasing preferences, entertainment choices and the commitment of social networks. The key objective is to provide very concrete and detailed personalities that allow organizations to make specific commercial decisions.
The system also uses the XGBOOST library (Gradient Gradient Library) with open source (ML) via Amazon Sagemaker to specifically help digital data for ticket pricing. XGBOOST is a supervised ML algorithm that uses decision -making trees to make predictions. Caruso explained that his team had converted historical data, as well as real -time data, in 55 different features. These include the details of the event, details of the stocks and recent sales information. All were then introduced into the XGBOOST algorithm.
The competitive landscape of AI through sports entertainment
Guido said that in the NFL and beyond, the initial response to Epic was positive.
Many properties are confronted with similar challenges: fragmented data sources, the evolution of fans’ expectations and the need for a more intelligent and more effective income generation. Guido also clearly recognizes that the competitive landscape of this type of technology is developing. There are traditional customer relations suppliers (CRM) and analysis suppliers, such as Salesforce, but in its opinion, they often do not have the industry intelligence that Epic brings to sports and entertainment live.
“What distinguishes Epic is its deep integration with sports realities,” said Guido.
How the ideas fueled by AI lead to a real impact for the Titans of Tennessee
Among the first users of Epic, there are the Tennessee of the NFL Titans. The team works with Elevate because it develops a new stadium of $ 2.1 billion that would open in 2027.
As part of the commitment, Elevate helped direct sponsorship sales for the new stadium. The company has drawn up a roadmap for strategic partnership income, a specific marketing strategy for category and set annual sales objectives thanks to the launch of the stadium.
With Epic, the Titans were able to build detailed characters so that the fans shed light on targeted marketing strategies, from messaging to premium seats and reception offers. Although the new stadium is still several years before the opening, the Titans have already exceeded the sales objectives for premium seats, with data and information powered by AI as a foundation.
It is not only for the NFL; Collegial athletics also benefits from ideas fueled by AI
Although there is a lot of money in the NFL, there are also a lot of opportunities (as well as many challenges) at other levels of sports entertainment, including colleges.
“University’s sports departments are undergoing a deep digital transformation, and data is at the IT center,” said Tom Moreland, commercial director of the University of Illinois, in Venturebeat. “One of the biggest lessons we have learned is that technology alone is not the solution – the strategy comes first.”
Moreland explained that her school prioritized the way she collects, interprets and applies data to improve the experiences of her coaches, student-athletes and fans.
So far, the epic platform has provided the University of Illinois Athletics the crucial ideas based on the data necessary to improve football and the male basketball ticket office, as well as an annual donations model . Moreland said that the epic analysis had provided information that enabled school to go beyond the assumptions and make strategic and informed decisions. In the end, he noted, Epic allowed his department to create a more engaging and lasting model for fans and loyal donors.
“The sports departments that take the time to invest in the quality, structure and application of data will be those that will really benefit from any new technology,” said Moreland.
