The roar of the crowd, the last-minute goal, the synergy among teammates and fans. These are some of the things that likely will never be replaced by AI. But some of Ottawa\u2019s professional sports teams are increasingly using the technology to facilitate operations, while maintaining the human touch.\u00a0 In the east end, the Ottawa Titans [\u2026]<\/p>\n
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The roar of the crowd, the last-minute goal, the synergy among teammates and fans. These are some of the things that likely will never be replaced by AI. But some of Ottawa\u2019s professional sports teams are increasingly using the technology to facilitate operations, while maintaining the human touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the east end, the Ottawa Titans had 51 regular season home games this year and, according to general manager Martin Boyce, his front office has had its hands full, from marketing and member outreach to partnerships and game-day operations.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where AI has been a great help with specific tasks, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to automating (sending) emails, not writing them, it\u2019s very valuable. Whether that\u2019s a survey post-game or a welcome to your first Titans game, all of those things are things that take time. They can be done with automation and done effectively without compromising the message or importance of the human element,\u201d he told OBJ.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the team doesn\u2019t have a strict policy on which software to use, Boyce said his front office typically uses ChatGPT and Claude for email send automation as well as marketing data analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many tickets is a person buying? What kind of package do they have? It\u2019s to create groups of the most optimal people that should hear our message and analyzing data in terms of ticket sale trends, purchasing trends, food and beverage trends, merchandise trends,\u201d he said, adding that the Titans would never use AI to generate marketing material or personal messages to fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Plus, the minor league baseball team needs to be conscious of how it\u2019s spending its dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to see a very obvious ROI on (tools we use) and that\u2019s why the automation of sending emails and analyzing data is good and easy to evaluate because you see (the returns) right away \u2026 We\u2019ll explore it more, but we\u2019re a minor league sport, so we don\u2019t have the resources to go and develop all of these things that are custom to what we do. I\u2019m sure Major League Baseball has plenty of AI tools that evaluate the players,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the front office is not developing bespoke tools for analyzing athletes, Boyce said it has worked with a team at Carleton University\u2019s technology innovation management program to develop business-focused automations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the sport (side) would be interesting because \u2026 it could be a difference-maker. In sports, you\u2019re always talking about marginal gains. How can you be just 0.5 per cent better? I\u2019m sure, in the future, a lot more of those things will happen and maybe there\u2019ll be a company in Ottawa that would be a perfect fit to develop something,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over at TD Place Stadium, Morgan Young, chief marketing officer for Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa, said the city\u2019s professional men\u2019s soccer team is utilizing AI to enhance the fan experience. She also said the team\u2019s front office is using the AI functions within programs and services they already use to optimize operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to find marketing tools now that don\u2019t have AI embedded within it. So for us on the marketing side, every tool that we\u2019re using has AI capabilities. Things like MailChimp, our email marketing system. It\u2019s good from an audience segmentation perspective, understanding fan behaviours \u2026 We also use a tool called BlinkFire, which has been incredibly valuable for our partnership and sponsorship measurements,\u201d she said, adding that data collected inform future partnership strategies.<\/p>\n
Sports and other forms of live entertainment will always be a people-first business, Young said, but using AI has helped her team enhance the fan experience through better research.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur supporters, our fans, come for the atmosphere, the sense of community and the connections they have with the club and with the city. When you look at that, technology and AI can\u2019t replace that, should never try to and simply won\u2019t be able to. So the value of AI for us is more so focused on what happens behind the scenes. It\u2019s helping us accelerate research, build better data-driven decision-making so that our people spend less time focused on repetitive day-to-day tasks and start using the information (AI) collects to build better experiences for our fans,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, Young said Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa is cautious of adapting new tools without proper research. \u201cIt really comes down to governance and responsibility. Given the fact that we have international ownership, we have access to very sensitive data that we need to be careful with. As these tools evolve, I think it\u2019s up to us to protect that information. We need to maintain human oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a lean front office, Young said the greatest advantage that AI provides is \u201clevelling the playing field.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t feel like we need to be the biggest club in the city to operate efficiently and intelligently. We\u2019re recognizing that if we\u2019re thoughtful about the way we use these tools, our team can accomplish work that would have previously required much more resources, more individuals,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Ottawa BlackJacks basketball team is still figuring out its approach to AI, said Jason Winters, the team\u2019s president.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re definitely growing in that space. From an operations side, (we use it for) communicating with fans. We\u2019re taking a hard look at how to mass communicate with fans to ensure that the proper information gets to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a marketing standpoint, Alex Forbes, brand and creative brand manager at the BlackJacks, said he\u2019s leveraging what AI can provide, rather than completely relying on it to get things done.<\/p>\n
Forbes said the team is using ChatGPT and Codex to help ideation for marketing campaigns, while also thinking of ways to stay visible to fans, present and future, on AI platforms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people are using ChatGPT and other AI tools to actually replace Google search. AI is changing our approach to things. On our website, (we\u2019re) making sure that it\u2019s SEO-friendly, that Google is picking it up, but it\u2019s also thinking, is it AI-friendly? … How do we get the Ottawa BlackJacks within those queries?\u201d Forbes said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The team is working on building an AI agent to help with ticketing queries, Winters said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the issues we ran into last year, like all parties, is working with Ticketmaster. A lot of people have a Ticketmaster account, but \u2026 a lot of people don\u2019t necessarily understand how to use the Ticketmaster app to direct them to their tickets. So we\u2019re working at creating an AI bot hotline where (the bot) will walk them through how it works,\u201d he said, adding that the team hopes to launch the hotline next season.<\/p>\n
The real value of automation for the BlackJacks, Winters said, is creating a repeatable experience for fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you go to a franchise, for example a McDonald\u2019s or a Kelseys, you get the same food, the same recipe every time \u2026 Obviously, the game is played out by the athletes, so we cannot change that, but if we knew that a customer would have the same, perfect experience for them to get their tickets, parking, get into the venue, get concessions if they so desire \u2026 that\u2019s the level we want to get to,\u201d Winters explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While AI helps to empower small teams such as the BlackJacks, Winters said he doesn\u2019t want AI to replace employees or prevent capable people from finding a role, because, as Forbes puts it, what people love about sports is the human element.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cProfessional sports \u2026 it\u2019s one of the last things that I feel is authentic. Once the game starts, what happens is out of your control. I think that\u2019s the excitement, that\u2019s what brings the emotions into play, that human connection to the players. So using AI as part of your brand, relying on it too heavily to communicate with your fans, it takes away from that authenticity,\u201d Forbes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The roar of the crowd, the last-minute goal, the synergy among teammates and fans. These are some of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-873751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}