{"id":519186,"date":"2026-03-05T00:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519186\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T00:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:37:08","slug":"rightshelpers-journey-from-internal-tool-to-sports-ready-product","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/519186\/","title":{"rendered":"RightsHelper\u2019s journey from internal tool to sports-ready product"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week, RightsHelper launched as a ticketing\/operations solution<\/a> from TWG Global, the holding company led by chairman Mark Walter and co-chairman Thomas Tull. Walter has seen his ownership in sports grow into a worldwide portfolio that includes the Dodgers, Lakers, Sparks, Chelsea FC and the PWHL. <\/p>\n

The tech journey for RightsHelper stemmed from the Dodgers\u2019 2018 decision to move away from brokers and develop a path to more ticketing revenue. Royce Cohen<\/a>, the Dodgers SVP\/business strategy, said the organization found itself navigating the build-vs.-buy intersection, and after pursuing all avenues (even acquiring an existing platform), the Dodgers decided to go with the creative route. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of the factors that led us to the name RightsHelper,\u201d Cohen told me. \u201cBuilt by rights holders for rights holders.\u201d <\/p>\n

True to that form, Cohen is a baseball lifer, starting as a Giants intern and pivoting to an MLB league office role in 2011 as the first hire of the league\u2019s fledgling ticketing analytics division. It was a small powerhouse group that consisted of Cohen, Ryan Gustafson<\/a> and Corey Ruff. Gustafson is now the president and CEO of Ilitch Sports + Entertainment, and Ruff is SVP\/strategy and analytics and chief of staff for the Bears. (This is an example of perhaps my favorite thing about the sports industry: People who worked early on together who all went on to hold big positions later.)<\/p>\n

That initial deployment became Demand Analytics, which grew out of the Dodgers and found clients throughout the league (more than 10 MLB teams used it) and a handful of others in different leagues. Demand Analytics focused on pricing insights and forecasting. <\/p>\n

RightsHelper is a turbo-charged version of this, bringing sales forecasting, dynamic pricing, and modeling. Packaging these functions in one place enabled operators to determine how a bobblehead promotion may impact attendance and the money connected to it, how to staff different parts of the stadium, and if entry lanes need adjusting on game day. <\/p>\n

More capabilities are coming to RightsHelper, with a priority on injecting more efficiency with the help of TWG AI. Cohen can see a boost coming for inventory management \u2014 something that is tedious, but especially for the Dodgers with 81 home games and the largest MLB stadium (capacity is approximately 56,000). Cohen hopes that AI can also shorten the onboarding process for future clients who deploy RightsHelper\u2019s software. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo just start with the basic calibration of a platform,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cRight now, it takes us probably eight weeks as our onboarding timeline for full-on deployment. I don\u2019t know if AI is going to condense that down to a week or two, but that\u2019s the goal, right?\u201d <\/p>\n

A final thought<\/p>\n

There are so many diversified portfolios in sports now, either spanning a few U.S. leagues or, like Walter\u2019s, stretching across the globe. I\u2019ve noticed more work toward and interest in bespoke\/self-built solutions popping up to enhance the continuity across the full organizational spectrum. <\/p>\n

I brought this thought up to Cohen, who agreed, going as far as to say that recently he scanned through a deck on the top 20 multi-property sports teams, and almost all of them had at least one other business outside of a sports team\/sports portfolio. <\/p>\n

That could be media, consulting, recruiting, sales, etc. Technology is poised to become a growing factor in all of that. \u201cI do anticipate that to continue,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cIt\u2019s a trend, not just an anomaly, not a blip.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week, RightsHelper launched as a ticketing\/operations solution from TWG Global, the holding company led by chairman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-519186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}