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Inside Fenway Park: How the Boston Red Sox Use Technology, AI, and Analytics to Power Athletes and the Fan Experience

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In this episode of the Beyond the Firewall podcast, Powered by HUB Tech, we sit down with Randy George, Senior Vice President of Technology for the Boston Red Sox, for a behind-the-scenes look at how technology is transforming one of the most iconic franchises in sports.

Fenway Park may be baseball’s most historic stadium, but behind the scenes, it operates like a modern digital enterprise. Randy shares how the Red Sox use data analytics, high-speed connectivity, edge computing, and AI-driven insights to support everything from player preparation and performance to stadium operations and fan engagement.

We explore how today’s athletes benefit from advanced performance tracking, high-resolution video analysis, and biomechanics data, while still balancing analytics with the instincts and traditions that make baseball unique.

Inside Fenway itself, the technology infrastructure is massive: hundreds of Wi-Fi access points, thousands of connected devices, and real-time systems that power everything from MLB replay feeds to in-stadium services. Randy explains why low-latency edge computing is essential on game day and how teams ensure the reliability and security of the network that keeps everything running.

The conversation also dives into the fan experience. From seamless connectivity and mobile apps to AI-driven insights from tens of thousands of fan surveys each year, the Red Sox are using technology to create a more personalized and frictionless experience for every visitor to Fenway Park.

Finally, we look ahead to the future of sports technology, including biometrics, smart stadiums, real-time analytics, and the evolving role of AI in athletics and fan engagement.

If you love sports, technology, data, or the business behind major league teams, this episode offers a fascinating look at how innovation is shaping the modern game, both on the field and behind the scenes.



The Beyond the Firewall podcast features discussions with technology leaders and practitioners who provide valuable insights into today’s IT and business challenges. 

Follow the podcast to stay updated on new episodes, and watch full episodes and video highlights on YouTube. 

To learn more about HUB Tech and the services that support IT modernization, visit the HUB Tech website at https://hubtech.com/.

Announcement

Adam Shaffer - Host

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Beyond the Firewall Podcast, powered by HUB Tech. I'm your host, Adam Shaffer, and today we're stepping into a world where technology, performance, and passion collide with professional sports. Technology has changed nearly every aspect of our lives, but few industries have seen a transformation quite like professional athletics. Technology is redefining the way athletes train, compete, and connect with fans. Joining me today are two incredible guests who live at the intersection of sports and technology. First, we have Randy George, senior vice president of technology for the Boston Red Sox, where he spent more than two decades leading innovation and infrastructure at one of the most iconic franchises in professional sports. From orchestrating Fenway Park's full stadium Wi-Fi to advanced digital transformation across operations, Randy knows firsthand how technology and changing the game is changing the game on and off the field. Second, we have Chris Daggett, director of managed services and security at HubTech, who helps organizations, including those in sports and entertainment, secure and modernize their technology environments. Together we'll explore how technology is revolutionizing the world of professional athletics. Welcome to the podcast by Chris and Randy. Awesome. Thanks, Adam.

Randy George

Thanks for having me.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Thank you, Adam. I'm very excited about this one because I I've been a baseball fan since I'm a kid, and um getting to talk to anyone near baseball is exciting for me. But although most of the folks that work with us are located in New England, I am originally from New York. And and Randy, I I don't want to just like start off in that way, but I've been a Met fan all my life, and and um I grew up when 86 uh Mets were playing Boston. And oh, you had to bring that up. Yeah, no, and it was tough for me because I would go to Boston, I would go to Boston and the cab drivers would throw me out of the cabs, like it was horrible.

Randy George

Yeah, well, thankfully we've done our share of winning since then, Adam. So we we don't hate Mets fans or Yankee fans for that matter.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Thank you. I feel a lot better, and so we can get on with it. And and and for anybody out in the audience, I I don't mean to offend, I'm just you're born into a sports team usually, like it's like a generational thing, and so it's passed down and passed down, and so I was a Mets fan. Apologies to all that aren't Mets fans. So, anyway, Randy, I I tried to introduce you and I was kind of brief, but maybe you could give us a little bit more background on you, but I know you've done it all, so maybe just uh a bit more about you and into the meat of your of what you do and who you are.

Randy George

Yeah, sure. Well, I joined

Randy’s Journey From Moneyball To Now

Randy George

the team back in 2002, if you can believe it. It's hard for me to believe that I've almost been with the club for 25 years. Um, it's been an incredible ride. And it's um, and I was my first job here. I was actually hired by the late Larry Lucino, who was our former CFO uh CEO, and Theo Epstein, our former general manager, who by all accounts should be a Hall of Fame general manager one day. Um and my first job here, I had the coolest job, at least I thought it was at the time, was that my job was to come in here and modernize all of our baseball systems. Right. And so, and if you if you recall, back in sort of around that time frame, that was sort of like the golden era of money ball, you know, and and many sports properties, including us, particularly in baseball, were really evolving to a data-driven sort of enterprise at the time, right? So, like, you know, very before that, you know, like scouting and player development is very much sort of like gut feel, you know, and and there's still, of course, a lot of that. We have to rely on scouts and player development folks and great coaches to develop our players, you know, and and make decisions based on what they're seeing on the field with their eyeballs and experience. You know, but this this sport, maybe more than others, and definitely back then had really started the evolution to modernizing our systems, you know, thinking more strategically about how we incorporate data into decision making. And so, so I spent the first few years of my career at the Red Sox really sort of fully integrated within baseball operations, even though I was kind of an IT employee. I lived within baseball ops, you know, and I learned so much about the game during that time. You know, and then later on, as the business grew a little bit and as our needs for you know systems and development and data sort of grew within baseball, I sort of moved over to the business side. You know, I'm still a service provider and you know, a little bit of a strategic thinker for our baseball operations group to this day. We work very closely with one another. Um, but we have a lot of software engineers, data scientists. It is very, it's a much bigger ecosystem of people and tools and talent that we have integrated within baseball. You know, and so my journey is kind of spans like from joining the club when it was very small, maybe 50 full-time employees, where I was basically the only technologist within baseball at the time, to a world today where we're very much an advanced data-driven organization that relies on technology for almost everything that we do. And we have a lot of people in the baseball ops organization sort of doing what I did back in the day as just a single person.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Yeah, no, so that's a great segue to like so you started kind of in the money ball era. I mean, I remember that was like awesome. And and and of all the sports, I mean, I'm sure every sport will you know has their stats and it's really important, but baseball might have and probably does have more stats. And you know, these broadcasters just whip it out, but yeah, more stats than anything I've ever seen before.

How Data And Video Changed Training

Adam Shaffer - Host

And and so from that 2002 when you started to now, how has technology changed how athletes train and perform? Like, like leveraging those statistics.

Randy George

Yeah, I mean, it it's it's changed a lot, as you can imagine. You know, I mean, there really was no technology back then, right? So, like, you know, a lot of you know, think about just like looking at video and preparing for the next opponent. I mean, you know, we were popping in VHS tapes, you know, on a TV in the clubhouse and like delivering, like cutting up content for our players to consume to prepare for the next opponent. You know, now, like, holy cow, I mean, uh, we have such modern technologies and tools in place. Everything's cloud-facing, mobile native. Um, you know, we have very high resolution, high-quality video at available for our players at their fingertips. Right. And so, so it's it's totally different the way that players and even our front office helps our coaching staff prepare the players for their next opponent. You know, and so so it's there's there's there's there's a lot of data, you know, as you noted, Adam, in this business. You know, the challenge is how do we how do we allow players to just play the game? You know, like, you know, when when the first pitch is sort of thrown, you know, there has to be an element of the game that is sort of like reactionary, you know, like you like anything else in life, you have to prepare for what it what it is you're about to sort of go into. Um, but you know, we do think a lot about you know the information that we deliver to our players, how it is that they digest and consume it and make it actionable for the game that they're about to play that day. You know, so there's a lot we're putting on these guys.

Adam Shaffer - Host

That that's I mean, uh amazing. And and so you talked about video, we'll come back to that because I got a whole bunch of questions on on video because for me, watching a game on television um is is better sometimes than being there, although I there's nothing more exciting being at the stadium, the angles and what you can see. But let's come back to that. Um and and let's ask Chris kind of a question about you know, so with all this technology, um you know, what what's kind of the backbone behind all these systems? Like is it networks, sensors, like give us the stack, like what does it look like?

Chris Daggett

So you know, the stack really at its core is it's similar to any other business. Um, however, you know, there are some other things that you know Randy would need to take into consideration. You know, it's um, you know, to echo some of the things that that he mentioned, you know, we're seeing in the sports arena, you know, an explosion of data volume. Um, you know, things require high speed and securing um, you know, the information is super important. And, you know, back in the day, you know, scouts and analysts and everything would, you know, leverage film and leverage your instincts to kind of drive some of the some of the real-time analytics. Um, you know, now it's just, you know, damn wearables and things like that. And now, you know, the the Red Sox, along with other major league baseball teams, uh just in general, now resemble, you know, mission critical enterprises. You know, it's the foundational pieces are, you know, the infrastructure, the security, the uptime. Um, you know, those are you know, mission critical things that that need to happen. You know, uptime is super important. Um, you know, especially on game day. You know, it's these, you know, the the fans, you don't want any disruptions, you know, the fans, they you know, any kind of technology blip on the radar, you know, that that's what keeps Randy up at night. You know, it's you know, game day. It's he's uh you know, he's got to account for any little pivot, you know, that that happens. So and things need to be resolved quick. So yeah.

Randy George

Yeah.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So so you know, um AI obviously is the big buzzword now, and we're all using it somehow, some way, and everything we do. And in fact, I'm sure that we're using it for AI in the videos too. But um, I

The Stadium Tech Stack And Uptime

Adam Shaffer - Host

just I remember, I I I swear, I wish I could remember the name of the movie, but where there was a a woman pitcher, and the stats person or the person watching the stats knew that if they threw one more pitch, they were gonna injure their arm and they and and then she did, and she did break it. I can't, and I I wish I could, it was a great uh baseball movie. But I mean, how how how how are coaching decisions and other decisions being made that affect players to prevent injury or to to realize they haven't gone enough or they've gone too much? How does that work?

Randy George

Yeah, well, we have one particular platform here at the Club Adam called Kinetrax. It's a biomechanical platform, you know, and like if you were here at the park, you know, I would show you kind of like an array of 25 cameras that we have scattered around the perimeter of the ballpark, taking very high resolution, high frame rate, and biomechanical video of all of our players. And the whole objective of that platform is to break down minor nuances in a player's mechanics that lead to good or bad outcomes, to detect fatigue, to detect poor mechanics that could lead to injury, you know, to your point. Right. And so, so like the way that we look at that data, it's not really sort of like AI driven. You know, we have baseball scientists who are running models against this raw biomechanical video, looking for those little sort of like hidden nuggets that help us coach a player to use the best possible mechanics to achieve the best possible outcomes. Right. So, like that's just one sort of example of how we're using sort of a piece of baseball technology, you know, to kind of get ahead of potential injury to a player and how we manage them, right? So, like we know like as the game goes on, pitchers get fatigued, their arm slot drops a little bit, their velocity drops a little bit, they might lose a little bit of command. We can almost deck precursors to that, right? So, like, you know, imagine a world where like, you know, we have all this video on every player, and we can detect these these minor nuances and changes in behavior based on where they are within the game, right? So, like that allows us to course manage that player at any moment, you know, as the season goes on. Right. So there's other technologies that we use to like manage a player's health and prevent injury and all of that stuff, but like that's one glaring example of a more modern technology that most clubs are incorporating nowadays. That's that's a real difference maker.

Adam Shaffer - Host

And I my guess is they're using it for other sports, not just baseball. Yeah, obviously.

Randy George

Yeah, it's it it's it's used in other sports. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and incidentally, Hawkeye, you know, you may be you may have heard of them. They're they're they're the platform that powers the new automated balls and strike system, our instant replay system. They recently acquired Kinetrax. So, you know, they were whereas they were two competing platforms, you know, they they sort of had their each they're they had their strengths and weaknesses as as as service providers. Um now they're sort of coming together, you know, in a single platform that's gonna be that's gonna power so many different things for MLD.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So so do the players um do they get blown away by all this data? Do they listen to what you're saying? Do they try to figure it out, or is somebody like trying to coach them along the way?

Randy George

Yeah, I I truthfully haven't asked players that direct question, Adam, you know, but like secondhand, you know, I can tell you that, you know, it depends on the player, right? So, you know, like when JD Martinez was here, for example, like he was Uber into like tech and capturing every camera angle he could to break down, you know, sort of his balance and mechanics as a hitter, you know, and there are other players who are very much like you know, gut feel guys, right? And so like they almost don't want to consume too much information because now they're overthinking their approach, right? And that causes other problems, right? So, like, you know, it's so it's really up to our front office and our coaching staff to gauge the player's ability to consume information um and use that in within the game, you know, to to manage their approach to the game, right?

Adam Shaffer - Host

So it really is dependent on the player. Yeah, no, I wonder, I don't, I don't think I'd want to see myself. I I I I get like from every angle, I would get really I don't like to look at myself anyway, so I don't deal with that. But but you know, Chris, you mentioned speed before, and the speed is so important. Uh are the teams and and you know, or most teams using cloud computing and edge computing, like how like or they have on-premise servers, like how does it work?

Chris Daggett

So um, you know, it it all depends on what what they're looking to achieve. Um, you know, the at the end of the day, the the name of the game is you know, you want to make sure that you know latency, network latency is at a at a minimal or none at all. So um, you know, I'm sure Randy and and other professional sports teams, they leverage edge computing to cut down that latency, um, you know, for quicker responsiveness. Um, you know, on the back end, you need to ensure that you know the network is going to accommodate all of the bandwidth required because it is a huge spike um on the network when you know when it is game day. I mean, if you think about it, you have all of these uh mobile devices, IoT, you know, everything's hitting the network, right? And you know the the data needs to stay local and in an effort to get that served up quickly. Uh there are some use cases where you know the the cloud stuff you know would would be more appropriate as far as where the data resides, but that would be in um you know a situation where the latency really isn't in play or scrutinized as much. But you know, it's it's important to ensure that the network's quick, you know, there's no blitz, because if you think about it, right, if you're broadcasting a sports event, any any slowness is is going to be you know known right away, you know, from the viewers. And you know, it's all about the you know that experience for the for the people viewing the game over the TV, you know, and things like that. So yeah, the responsiveness of you know, the you know, the network local in the stadium, right? So you know, there's also 5G that comes into play, you know, that's another another piece. So, you know, that there's absolutely a lot to it, but the name of the game is it's all about speed.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So stay with that. I mean, the fan experience for a minute there. And

Biomechanics, Injury Risk, And Hawkeye

Adam Shaffer - Host

you know, it obviously being connected, smart stadiums, that's kind of the new normal. But but what are the technologies that people are using? Is it is it just mobile phones and 5G? Like what is the technology for using?

Randy George

Yeah, well, I mean, we have thousands of connected devices here, Adam. You know, I mean, think about like, you know, from the moment you get here, you know, you're going through a digital ticketing turnstile. So we have access control around the perimeter of the gates. You know, we have video surveillance everywhere, we have point of sale technology in play. You know, we uh you you mentioned uh you know wireless communications. So like we have we have 700 access points within Fenway Park, you know, to deliver a modern digital experience to our fans, you know, who are coming to the park for a game. You know, there's tons of back office technology that runs every line of business within the stadium. You know, we have the whole video productions apparatus, you know, all the content that you see on the scoreboard and all the audio and 1,500 TVs around the park. I mean, I could go on and on. There's like thousands and thousands of network-connected devices, you know. Like, you know, I don't necessarily consider them IoT, but like anything that like is on the network, you know, for me is a device that needs to be secured, managed, properly monitored, and maintained. You know, so there's a fairly broad ecosystem of technologies that we glue together here to deliver the experience that we do.

Adam Shaffer - Host

And and you know, I guess I should know this, but I don't get out that often anymore. But um, you know, like when I go to the library, I use their Wi-Fi and I, you know, log in, but it's a pretty simple login. When you go to the stadium, do you have to log in or is it just you're you're connected?

Randy George

You're on this is like a philosophical thing. This is more of like a me thing. You know, like you know, when we launched Wi-Fi, um, God, I want to say the first iteration of whole stadium Wi-Fi was probably in that 2011-ish timeframe. We did have kind of like a proper guest access portal in front of our Wi-Fi system. Um, and you know, what we found was because we were asking our customers to sort of self-identify themselves to get on the Wi-Fi, the take rate for the Wi-Fi was very low. You know, we were expecting like we spent millions of dollars on this incredible new stadium Wi-Fi system. And you know, that was at a time where like we didn't have 5G, right? So like there wasn't incredibly fast, ubiquitous, you know, broadly available cellular service everywhere in the stadium. So like Wi-Fi was sort of what you needed to stay connected. And we were surprised when we only saw a few thousand people jump on. You know, we quickly kind of realized that you know the reason that they weren't jumping on is because we were just putting friction in front of that experience. Right. And so like ultimately, yeah. And so like we're not we're not trying to monetize our Wi-Fi environment. This is an expected service. This is a service we need to deliver to our fans because we know we spent lots of money building engaging digital experiences for our customers in the form of the App Bad app and the MLB ballpark app. You know, fast forward to say we're 100% digital, ticketing, cashless, you know, so like connectivity is essential to delivering those services. That wasn't necessarily so much the case back then, but you know, we we want it we want to remove as much of the friction as possible from the experience here at Fenway Park. And for me, getting a guest access portal out of the way of a fan that's just trying to get connected is like a very easy, low-hanging free way to do that.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Well, thank you for doing that. I love it. I'm gonna come there and download all my videos. This is cool. Yeah, please do. Yeah, yeah. I'll test it, I'll test it out. And so let's let's talk about like video and how that works. But I'll tell you a story, and and again, obviously, you saw from the 86 Mets I'm kind of old, but um if you remember the incident in New York where Sully Sullenberger landed the paint the plane in the Hudson River and saved all the people and had this, you know, he had the seagull strike and he landed there. That day I was invited into mlb.com's building and they gave me a tour and they showed me this incredible setup they had there. And that was like years ago, I'm sure it's a lot better. But they were they were saying like they make the calls, they videotape everything, but but is it happening on premise at Fenway or are they doing it? Like, how how does the video work in all the angles? Are they making the calls or is somebody of Fenway making the calls?

Randy George

Yeah, well, they get a feed, right? So like the instant replay center is in New York, Adam. So like if a play is challenged, you know, fast forwarding today where against a replay, you know, like that that call is made out of that sort of like war room that you see on the broadcast from time to time with all the different monitors of every game going on nationally, you know. But those feeds, those cameras are obviously here, you know, so like they're being delivered, you know, to kind of like a head end and then ultimately sent, you know, via very high-speed internet back to MLB for the instant replay center. You know, that video also finds its way to the MLB network, you know, because we're doing a lot of like post-production and in-game production, you know, for every team around the league. You know, so like we have we have very fast internet pipes coming in and out of our venues, you know, for all sorts of things, you know. But like MLB, you know, thankfully for me, um, you know, MLB sits on top of our businesses, you know, as sort of a governing body. And so they manage instant replay, they manage the automated balls and strike system, like they manage our websites, the entire digital experience. And so A lot of those services are delivered over MLB's Rails. And so they're on the hook technically to make sure that those systems stay up, that they're performing well, that they're doing what they need

Cloud Versus Edge On Game Day

Randy George

to do. You know, so like my job day game is hard. It would be infinitely harder if I had to manage all of those kind of like game critical services that we do today.

Adam Shaffer - Host

But are they are they telling you where to set up the angles to for the video, or is that something you do or a collaborative? They're doing it.

Randy George

Yeah. So they're and this is like a standard footprint and template that they have at them. And every stadium is different, right? So like you have to locate cameras, you know, in different situations, like different places, so you can get good good camera angles of home plate in the pictures mound and first and third base and like the foul lines. Um so we do have a standard template, you know, for where we locate cameras. Sometimes that deviates a little bit, and the Hawkeye system can compensate for that. But yeah, we we don't tell MLB where to place their cameras, they do all of that work for us.

Adam Shaffer - Host

That's uh amazing. I mean, I don't know, have you been there? It's a pretty cool place. It's amazing.

Randy George

They think I'm bad about the plane crash, but yeah, and that but that business that building has moved since then. So you were there at a time where MLB.com was separate from Major League Baseball. Now it's kind of like all one company merged together. So that replay center has moved to the new corporate headquarters in in downtown Manhattan.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Um so do you have you have like um I don't know, do you want to call them IT or or creative folks like that are using systems? Who's doing the animations and and like the the drawings on the board? Is that something that is happening again at Fenway or is that somewhere off-site?

Randy George

Yeah, well, if you're talking about kind of like the Hawkeye system, sort of like, you know, call it like the automated balls and strike system where you see like a quadrant, the location of the pitch, like all of that is sort of owned by MLB. The Hawkeye system is creating those visuals and sending it to our scoreboard folks who have technology integrated to scoreboard so that that visual just sort of finds its way onto the board. You know, all of the in-game animations and creative feel like that's all done in-house by our video productions folks. And there's a whole bunch of employees sitting in a little bit of a war room, you know, above like just adjacent to our press box at Fenway behind home plate, you know, who are managing the in-game experience and sending content to the scoreboard.

Adam Shaffer - Host

I'm trying, you know, you just brought up the scoreboard. I mean, so you obviously have some big display that's up there, and I mean that that's massive. But I kind of remember maybe I'm wrong, but don't you have like that very antique, old-fashioned looking scoreboard? Not anymore. Yeah.

Randy George

I mean, most of our scoreboards are fairly modern, you know. So it's um, yeah, we have a lot of, I mean, this is a museum here, right? I mean, this is the oldest park in Major League Baseball, you know. So, like, if you were to walk through the concourse, you would see lots of, you know, old display technologies, artwork, you know, but like within the seating bowl of the stadium, you know, we've we've modernized the look and feel of our scoreboard and display technology, you know, so it's it could always be better, but it's definitely it's not what your your father would have remembered if he was here for a ball game in the 80s.

Adam Shaffer - Host

I I remember the they would like hand put the I don't know, maybe um. Oh, yeah, well, or yeah.

Randy George

So out out in the Green Monster, you know, we do have a manual scoreboard. So there's a guy inside the Green Monster.

Adam Shaffer - Host

That's what I thought. That's what I thought.

Randy George

Yeah, okay. Yeah, I didn't know what you're referring to. Yeah.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So we still know it reminds me of like the natural, you know, like you know, like there was this like guy in there flipping the thing.

Randy George

Oh, we still have that guy. That's actually a very popular job, if you can believe it,

Building The Connected Fan Experience

Randy George

being the guy who, you know, it turns a one to a two behind the scoreboard.

Adam Shaffer - Host

I want that job. Of course it's a great job. I I wanted to be a ball boy. Who who wouldn't want to do this stuff? Yeah, so so so Chris, I mean, this is now enterprise technology at its finest. Like, this is like some fortune company. I mean, it explain explain that a bit more. Like how how do you how do you like think about sports and entertainment venues like Fenway Park and what's the protocols? Like how how does it and I don't know if I'm asking that correct question right, but how how how do you how do you kind of think about um a Fenway Park and other National League uh stadiums?

Chris Daggett

So and are you referring to in regards to how you know we're gonna secure it or yeah, how you're gonna secure it, how you're gonna manage it?

Adam Shaffer - Host

Like how do you how you know how how do you get your fingers around all this?

Chris Daggett

Okay. So essentially the the security approach is very similar to to any other company, right? You know, you need the identity and access controls in place. You need to ensure that your you know your data is encrypted, network segmentation is super important, you know, for your your IoT devices and other other things you want to segment out. And you need to ensure that you do have you know monitoring and detective controls in place. Um in addition to that, right, uh governance absolutely is a big key piece of this, right? You know, as far as access, retention, and audit bit auditability of data. Um you know, sports teams these days increasingly resemble you know financial institutions and data protection needs. So, you know, as Randy's um you know technology uh outcomes evolve, you know, they're really turning into you know the blueprint of a financial institution. Um, minus uh I would imagine that they don't you know have the the scrutiny, you know, for the for some of the auditing that a that a banking institution would have. But you know, and you know, it's I'm sure the Red Sox and every other, you know, organization out there have tons of dashboards to monitor, and they're always looking at alerts and and things like that. So, you know, it's very similar to how a how a normal IT uh operation uh would run.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Okay. Let let's stay with the fans for a second and we talk about the fan experience and and so how and this is for both you guys. I don't I don't know how it works, but how how are AI and analytics helping teams personalize the fan journey for the people that are going to the game? Like um or do you do you speak to them based on some kind of a cookie that you know what they're interested in? Or um how how does it work? I mean, I'm I'm I'm talking a little bit roundabout, but what what how how do you personalize your experience?

Randy George

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, it we're kind of early stages, Adam, from an AI point of view, you know, as it relates to the fan experience. You know, so like I mean, I'll give you a couple of things that we're working on right now. So like we're trying to leverage AI and build natural language interfaces on top of our fan survey data, right? So this is sort of like low-hanging fruit, too, but like, you know, we we collect 30,000 surveys from our fans every year. It's very difficult to properly measure sentiment analysis, to categorize the nature of that feedback, to send it downstream to the folks here at Fenway Park who are responsible for that area, you know, whether or not a fan had a concern about their experience with like parking or ticketing or concessions or security. You know, and so we're leaning into AI to help us glean insights into the fan feedback we're getting via surveys, right? So, like, you know, our our customers won't necessarily know that we're doing that, you know, but what it's what it's doing that they're not aware of is is helping us more effectively service their concerns, get back to them faster, address the positive or negative experience that they had here at Fenway Park. You know, and so and you know, and and we're using it for a number of other things, you know, not necessarily fan facing. You know, we do have within the digital experience, you know, kind of like chatbots, you know, I mean, every business who has sort of like a customer service or call center function, you know, is integrating chatbot technology, you know, increasingly that's AI driven. You know, so so we're not, you know, we're we're we're planning on, you know, modernizing our call center, taking advantage of AI to help our fans just get a quick answer to a question that they have. You know, right now it's not, you know, if you call at you know five o'clock or six o'clock and we're playing at seven, not easy to get a person on the phone. You know, it's like there's a lot more of our customers than there are of us to take those phone calls, you know. So, but like we have it the equivalent of that digital experience by a chap on the MLB ballpark app. If someone has a quick question and they can get a quick answer, and that's kind of an AI-driven experience, you know. But we're trying to not automate away our interactions with fans, right? So if we want to be very careful about how we introduce AI and put it in front of customers, it really needs to be a quality experience. It needs to work, you know, it needs to not be a step backwards, right? So, like we're being very thoughtful and intentional about where we mix in AI, especially when it comes to the fan experience.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Does it help you? I I mean, because I like to eat the hot dogs, but does it help you figure out how to shorten the lines? Because there's usually like a surge in between innings. I I don't know, are you using it for any of the concessions?

Randy George

No, not really. You know, it's like it's tricky, Adam, because it's like, you know, even I don't think AI would tell us anything earth-shattering about the way that fans move within the concourse and at concession stands that our eyeballs don't tell us. Right. And so, like, and we have video surveillance cameras everywhere. I do think, you know, and we've looked into in the past, you know, buying sort of like these wait time intelligence cameras where you draw a zone around a concession stand to see how people move within it and measure

Replay, Broadcast, And Camera Standards

Randy George

the the pace and rate at which people move through those concession stands. And you know, like the challenge is like it's not we're not really necessarily learning anything we don't know, right? Like, you know, it's like in between innings, like we know the concourses are crowded. We can't make more space here at Fenway. You know, so like it's very it's there's sort of diminishing returns a little bit in certain use cases where like leveraging AI and analytics to describe a problem that you already know you have, and where you know there's not an easy solution to engineer, you know, is is hard. You know, in other cases, like game on, right? Like, you know, fan behavior and ticketing information and like you know, what moves the needle for like ticket sales and session sales and season ticket holder renewals, like there's lots of like data sources we can integrate and leverage AI on top of that and machine learning tools to more intelligently understand fan behavior, you know, but like within the stadium, it it's it's tricky because there's not a whole lot we can do, even if AI spit out some incredibly insightful thing we weren't aware of. You know, it's not it's not an easy problem, it's not an easy tool to solve the type of problem we're talking about.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Okay. And so Chris, it's game day. It's happening. People are coming into the park, they're getting their souvenirs, they're sitting down, getting their beers. What's the biggest IT challenge on game day? I didn't mean to just throw that hot fastball at you, but what can you tell me?

Chris Daggett

Just availability. You know, that's um that's the the huge piece of it. You know, it's the uptime is so so important, you know, and again, you know, getting back to the network latency, you know, things need to be up, they need to be speedy. That those are the two pretty you know core core components. Um, at least in my in my opinion, um, you know, Randy may have some additional uh things that he stresses about. Um, but you know, that's as a as somebody that's not in um Randy's position, you know, as as the consumer of the technology, that would be my um, you know, that's how I feel.

Adam Shaffer - Host

But how do you prep? I mean, are you testing it before the game? Are you like you running some kind of speed test or anything like that?

Chris Daggett

Well, I'm sure there are some on ongoing data analytics that are happening um, you know, from game to game, and they can adjust um you know, settings or loads, load balance and things differently, you know, uh things of that nature. Um but Randy, I didn't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry.

Randy George

No, no, no, it's all good. I mean, I was just gonna say, like, you know, we're constantly proactively, you know, performance monitoring our systems here. You know, I mean, obviously, like the network is the foundation of every service that we deliver here, right? So like the wired network, making sure that we have those redundancies built in, that we're monitoring things, that we're managing uplinks and looking for issues on the network that could lead to performance challenges. You know, same thing on the wireless network. We're constantly monitoring. We have a whole sort of like you know, network operations center here with like where and we're visualizing the real-time status of the network, wired and wireless. You know, so we have people here every game, you know, caretaking those systems to make sure that those services that need to be delivered are being delivered. You know, so so it's you know, and again, like, you know, there's there is a bifurcation between the back office mission critical business and baseball systems that we need to maintain for for the Red Sox versus the ones MLB needs to deliver for the on-field experience and the broadcast experience, you know, and so we have lots of constituents here. We have the Red Sox, we have MLB, we have our concessionaire, you know, we have a merchandising partner, and we have our regional sports network. You know, so there's lots of people here, you know, who have different missions, different network infrastructures, parallel network infrastructures to deliver their respective services.

Adam Shaffer - Host

That that's cool. And so I know when I go to my game, my my Wi-Fi is gonna be working, and the that that uh scoreboard is gonna be working, and I'm I'm excited, and I can interact on my phone. Cool, thank God. Um so so so um if you had to predict the next major tech breakthrough, and this is to both you guys in in professional sports, what would it be?

Randy George

I'll throw one out that's um yeah, I don't know if it's a big thing, Adam. Um, you know, I biometrics is a is a big

Security, Segmentation, And Governance

Randy George

deal now in the league. Um, you know, both you know, behind the scenes, you know, just as in terms of like an authentication provider, a multi-factor solution. Um, but also for the fan experience, right? So like there, we there there's a new platform within MLB called GoAhead, and there's two components to that. There's go ahead entry, go ahead pay. The whole premise of that is using biometrics to substitute for your ticket and for your credit card, right? So I think one of the things that you'll notice in MLB stadiums, and you know, if you're if you visited you know San Francisco, Philly, Houston, you know, let late last year, you probably saw these systems. But you know, I I would envision at Fenway over the next few years, you know, people are going to walk through the gates as naturally as they would if there were no impediment to walking into Fenway. You know, they're also going to be paying you know with biometrics. So you're not gonna have to pull out your credit card anymore. You're gonna walk up to a point of sale terminal. If you're registered with the go-ahead platform, you're just gonna pay with a facial scam. So it's Apple Pay for biometrics, right? So I think that's the one big thing.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So it's like it's like clear?

Randy George

It it's clear-ish, yeah, exactly. So there's an access control element and there's a commerce element to it. Right. So that's that's one thing you're gonna see in in in major venues.

Adam Shaffer - Host

You know what I do hate though, when I go to Disney, I hate going to Disney, don't make sure. But when I go, you have to put your finger on the mouse head and it's gotta turn green. And sometimes it just doesn't work. But is that biometrics or is that like old old style biometrics?

Randy George

Yeah, well, yeah, we're we're gonna be using facial instead of you know fingerprint. You know, better. It sure is. I know there's a little bit of a creep out factor though for our customers, you know, for retin. So I don't think that will get there, you know.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So no, I mean I use clear all the time. It's it's never, I mean, it's always on, like it always knows it's me. So that seems to work.

Randy George

Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, and it's not like getting through the uh clear line at the airport isn't always faster. I've I I've observed. You know, so like yeah, yeah. So in our case, you know, if you're registered with the platform, you're truly just gonna walk through the gates like there's nothing in your way. You know, so that's the experience we're going for. Yeah, again, get it gets back to like removing the friction from the fan experience. You know, like we're asking a lot of our customers, especially in Boston, it's not easy to get here. So when you're here, it should be easy.

Adam Shaffer - Host

I wonder what the soccer world cup is gonna do. But this is gonna be a mob scene at these stadiums. I mean, I hope you have some of this stuff. I know, I feel bad. It's gonna be unpatient, impatient people.

Randy George

Oh, I know, yeah, yeah. Just a football game on a normal day in Foxboro is a challenge. Imagine the World Cup.

Chris Daggett

Yeah, and Randy, what are your thoughts on um biometrics and AI in regards to safety and security, you know, with the campus?

Randy George

It's a timely, yeah, it's a timely conversation, Chris. You know, I don't think any of the four major sports teams are using AI currently for you know facial recognition on the security front. You know, there's there's data privacy concerns, obviously. Right. You know, so you know, so I think like in a perfect world, you know, like we should have awareness. You know, it's like if someone was on our ban list, for example, there's a few people on the permanent ban list. You know, I would love to have a world where like we load all of those facial profiles into our surveillance platform. And this isn't like AI, right? This is basic sort of like video surveillance capabilities that exist everywhere. Um, it's just not necessarily something that we're doing today, right? Like, so you can imagine a world where like you know, suspicious behavior that we're pulling in from a camera feed, you know, could have an AI overlay to it where like this is unusual. Right. So like an AI model picks that out and and lets us know about that. You know, so like our our surveillance platform providers aren't able to do that currently, but there are bolt-ons that you could layer on top of a video surveillance platform that would do let you do that. Right. So it's something I'm definitely thinking about. You know, we're navigating sort of like this really, you know, interesting regulatory landscape that exists in this state, you know, and others. You know, it's not as hard in other states, you know, but it's um it's not impossible, right? So like I just think no one's really sort of like done it yet. So but it it is definitely coming, I think.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Is Chris's family uh banned? No, just me.

Randy George

No.

Chris Daggett

Randy let me in the doors once, and then he's like, Definitely, definitely.

Randy George

Yeah, you're on the white list.

Adam Shaffer - Host

That's that's great. And so it seems like it seems like sports and and obviously the the Red Sox are way ahead of the the curve, but if other businesses looked at what you're doing, what is something that they they might pick up from what you

Personalization, Surveys, And AI Limits

Adam Shaffer - Host

guys do that they can apply to other industries that would help them with real-time data? I guess it's retailers, but I don't know.

Randy George

Yeah, I think interesting question, Adam. You know, I mean, like, I mean, we're customer set obsessed here, right? So, like, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, what what I would probably discuss with whoever it is that wanted to chat about our approach, you know, is sort of like, you know, the way that we implement sort of like data warehousing, the way that we sort of like, you know, build a 360-degree view of the fan, you know, based on their interactions with us, you know, that we can harvest, you know, based on the their engagement with us across a bunch of different channels, right? So like we do have a fairly sophisticated data warehousing capability. Um, and so that that helps us improve the fan experience. You know, it helps us, you know, measure and identify opportunities to target customers who might not otherwise come to a game. Like, you know, we're very good now, by the way, these like theme nights. You know, it's like all the rage now in MLB. We've won awards year after year about, yeah, and it and like those ideas, you know, come from some of the attributes and behaviors that we've been able to capture about fan behavior. And it influences the way that we approach our customers for opportunities to come to the park when they might not otherwise come. Right. So, like that's not as much of a kind of like in your face, like here's how we do things at Fenway, you know, within you know, the like inside the concourse or on the field of play. It's more behind the scenes our approach to sort of like you know, managing our customer data and and monetizing it and measuring our success.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So theme nights are huge.

Randy George

That's a big thing. Theme nights are massive, yeah. And like I'll tell you, like it's February, like as you know, up here in Boston, it's still kind of cold, right? So, like, you know, we're competing against the NBA, we're still, you know, the hockey season is is ripper orange. We have three major sports going at that time, you know. So, like getting butts and seats in April, not easy to do. If you were to have a Star Wars theme night, the people will come. Like, we know that to be true, you know. So, like we try and get creative for those times of the year where it's not like the Yankees on a weekend in the summer, we know we're gonna sell out, you know, we don't need to give stuff away to get people here, they will come. You know, in April it's it's harder, right? So, like we try and get creative.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So, who is the marketing genius that came up with the baseball bat night where they they gave 50,000 weapons to all the drunken people at the stadium? I think they stopped it after the first one, but oh my goodness gracious. Yeah, I don't know. You you don't have that out.

Randy George

I don't, yeah. I I yeah, we've got those bats kicking around everywhere. We never thought to use them as weapons, but I I could see how they could be used that way.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Well, in New York, it was a big deal. If by by the sixth or seventh inning, it was trouble. So um yeah. So so I mean, and my guess also is that baseball is more popular now than it was, like it's it was always popular when I was a kid, but the speed of the game is picked up, so I think people are much more interested in it than ever before.

Randy George

So yeah, the pace of play, you know, and the pitch clock, Adam, has been like a game changer. You know, that's always been the biggest challenge. You know, like you know, if you're a family of five and you know, like you're stuck here till two in the morning because like it's a 19 inning game, like I mean, you can't come to Fenway, you just can't do it. You know, so like the pace of play, you know, it's I mean it's for the TV experience too, it's equally as important. You know, like people can't be, especially on East Coast, like, you know, be stuck watching a game till, you know, eleven thirty at night. You know, so these games are all, you know, like almost universally like two and a half hours now. You know, whereas before they could go, you know, now we have this whole new rule with the ghost runner and extra innings, you know, man on second automatically and extra innings. So like there's a lot of there's a lot of changes that we made that would kind of like your grandpa might turn over in his grave if he saw what baseball looks like now. But like as as both a fan and someone who's mindful of the fan experience and like the game is slow, right? So, like, you know, children nowadays, like it's it's hard to get them to sit here in the park for three hours and watch a baseball game, right? So, like, we need to do what we can to modernize the game, make it more interesting, and speed it up.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Talk to the Brits and get them to do that to cricket because that is a topic. So so so Chris, what am I not asking that's great? This we're gonna start wrapping things up in a in a minute or so. So what what cool stuff am I not asking that we're allowed to ask?

Chris Daggett

No, I mean, I I think you covered everything, Adam. You know, it's um you know, again, it's it's all about availability. Um, it's that's that's the key factor. That the the transparency of the technology to the to the fan base. Um, you know, that to have technology there that enables all this functionality and all these cool things and have it not even be noticed by the fan, I think is is uh a key takeaway.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Um yeah, so so so Randy, if Chris and I come down there, will you show us Hawkeye Hawkeye?

Randy George

Of course. Yeah, we'll give you a backlot tour. It's pretty mind blowing to see it work. So and it's it you know, talk about an edge computing paradise, like that is that.

Chris Daggett

Yeah, I would love to get that.

Randy George

Yeah, that's not a service that we could cloud enable, you know, like we need to process ungodly amounts of high resolution iframe or video here at the park. Yeah, visualize it immediately, put it on the scoreboard, send it to New York.

Chris Daggett

And that's where that edge computing comes into play, you know, in that particular use case, you know.

Randy George

Yeah.

Adam Shaffer - Host

So so with that, um, any final thoughts from you, Randy, and then we're gonna wrap things up here.

Randy George

No, I don't think so. I mean, thank you for the opportunity to chat with you guys. I mean, I could chat with you all day long, you know, about all of the stuff. I know we had lots of questions that we couldn't get to. Happy to do a part two if you think it's worthwhile. But um you know, thank you for having me.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Yeah, when you win the uh the pennant, we'll uh we'll be back. Let's write it back. Absolutely. Yep, hold me to it. So, with that, I mean, I I know you don't want a ton of uh torturous email, but like how how could people, if they wanted to, like are you on LinkedIn? Could people DM you?

Randy George

Yeah, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, absolutely. Yeah, anyone who wants to learn a little bit more about what we discussed today, feel free to find me there. And yeah, I'm happy to um chat with you.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Awesome. Chris, any final thoughts?

Chris Daggett

No, I mean it I I think this was such a great session, Randy. Um, thank you so much for joining us. Um, you know, I I learned a lot, and you know, it's you really have a unique um technology environment in play over there. You know, I I I didn't mean to be dismissive about all right, you know, it's basically, you know, just like any other company, you know, there are some things that are very unique to your environment that other companies are just not dealing with, right? Yeah. Um, but you know, at the very core, very similar in nature, you know, you have servers, you have network, you know, right, you need to secure the data, you know, all that fun stuff. So yes, um, but yeah, it's uh, you know, like Adam, you know, growing up on this stuff and just seeing the the evolution of the technology is uh pretty amazing, you know. It's whether you know you're at you know Fenway or at Gillette or or whatever, you know, you guys are just doing some amazing things. So yeah, it's uh appreciate it. Yeah, it's fun to be on the room.

Adam Shaffer - Host

Randy, I want to be your assistant or the guy that flips this for one of those two, but uh you have an awesome gig. You it's you know, you you have a passion for the mission, which is like amazing. And so thanks again for being on the show. And I just wanted to do a shout out to Acronis. Um, Acronis is uh helps us um support the show and sponsors us a bit. And so thank you, Acronis. Uh thanks for your help. And with that, let's wrap it up.

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Adam Shaffer

Host
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Chris Daggett

Co-host
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Randy George

Guest