[Music] [Jen Zick] So we are going to get this party started. I am Jen Zick, and I lead Sports and Live Entertainment Industry Strategy. So I'd like to welcome John Rinehart, President of Business Operations for the Sacramento Kings to the stage. He is wrapping up his 25th season with the team and also Wyatt Hicks, VP of Digital for NASCAR who's just entered his 13th season with NASCAR. So thank you, guys.
And thank you for these videos. I feel like I could watch sizzle videos all day long. They just pump me up for life. And it just reminds me in sports, we're so lucky. We have some of the best content, and Shantanu, this morning during the Keynote, said that AI is going to open the content floodgates. So I'm just really excited for what the industry is going to produce. So just to set the stage for a minute because not everybody in the room is in sports, we've been really lucky. We've seen tremendous growth in the sports industry the past several years. Because of this growth, we've seen an increase in investment. We've seen a lot of private equity investment. We've seen a lot of more sponsorship activations and sponsorship is right up there just behind media rights, which we'll talk about in terms of driving revenue for sports. But that said, it hasn't been without its challenges. And it's exciting that we get to hear today from Wyatt and John about how they've solved challenges for their respective organizations. So, John, I'd like to start with you, and let's talk about the in-person experience because in sports, in-person experience is still very much the anchor for a super fandom. There's just really no replacement, I think, for being there live, and you're at one of the top venues in the nation, the Golden 1 Center. So I'd love to hear from you how you removed some of the friction for attending an in-person event because it takes effort to get off your couch and drive and buy the ticket. So how have you made it easy for those fans? [John Rinehart] Yeah. Thank you. And thanks everyone for being here. It's a pleasure to be here. For us, it really started with Vivek when he bought the team. His main goal was to remove that friction because we all know with today's world, you can sit on a nice comfortable couch in your living room with a huge TV with your food in your own refrigerator. And it's very comfortable and it's easy to get up and buy a ticket, go to an arena, find parking, find out where to enter the arena, find out how to meet your friends, where to meet them, when to go get food, how do you go eat it in your seat. There's a lot of friction that could happen in that time. So from day one, Vivek had a friend in Silicon Valley named David Kelley who had a company called IDEO. And Steve Jobs used to send his team to David Kelley to figure out how to solve problems for the organization. So David asked Vivek, "Well, you're here. What do you want me to solve?" And Vivek's answer was, "I want you to try to remove the friction out of my customer experience." So we ideated over several days with David and really came down to all of the different touchpoints that you have when you're coming to a game. Again, when you're watching the TV and you decide you want to buy the ticket, how easy is it for you to buy that ticket? When you get in your car and you park, how easy is it for you to park? When you enter the arena, do you know where you're going? When you want to buy your food, do you know what you want? We use technology really to remove all of that friction. So we've created a real-time fan engagement platform that allows us to integrate with our fans experience and allows us to remove a lot of that friction. We invested heavily in the infrastructure of the arena, where we have what we call the remote control of the arena. It's one room inside the arena that has every single touchpoint that you would have all the way out to the traffic lights. So with that we have direct access the police on the streets and we can tell them while we're looking, "Hey, you need to hold the light on this street a little longer because it's backing up." Because you want to make sure people can get into their seats as fast as possible. So using that technology, trying to customize the experience for that fan was really the main way that we tried to remove the friction in that experience. Yeah. And you also have that awesome hotel connected, right by the venue, which-- People can just come to the game, stay overnight, enjoy everything that Downtown Sacramento has to offer. Yeah. It's so great on so many levels. Thank you for that.
So the reality, though, is that the majority of fans will never make it to an in-person game. They'll never step foot in the arena or step foot on the track. I mean, we're talking millions of fans around the world who may just not have that opportunity. But with distributed media rights, it's becoming increasingly difficult for fans to figure out ways to watch even with stack subscriptions and access on your mobile and internet everywhere. It's just frustrating sometimes to figure out how to watch the game. I don't know if anybody in this room has had that experience, just trying to figure out how to watch your favorite team or league. And so, Wyatt, I want to talk to you about this one because NASCAR just entered the first year of the new seven-year media rights deal that includes several different distribution partners. So how are you addressing this challenge, which is arguably one of the biggest in sports to make sure it's easy to be a fan? [Wyatt Hicks] Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting problem to have, when you just even take rights out of it. Just think about the media landscape today. I mean, whether you're a cable subscriber, a satellite subscriber, even over the air, right? Like, you probably still have, as Jen said, like, a stack of streaming platforms, right? The streaming players have become significant in the sports world today. So it's a good thing because they're bringing new eyeballs to our sport, right? I mean, we're reaching new audiences through what they have to offer. They go about it a different way. And so it makes rights negotiations interesting, and you start cutting up your schedule in ways that you probably never thought about. But then you're left with a problem of, "Okay, well, we've disrupted the traditional viewing of a sport, and how do you make sure you tell everyone where to find what they've been watching for 5, 10, 15, 20 years?" So year one of a deal that we have this year. So thinking things like just getting all of the listings, right? Basic stuff. Blocking, tackling on our schedule page, informing people, here's what the grid looks like throughout the whole season. So they understand from a comprehensive standpoint across the entire NASCAR schedule, where things are going to break and divide up. We had an interesting-- We already started this for this year, but traditionally, if a rights holder had a specific event within NASCAR, they would own the entire weekend. So anytime cars hit track, some level of Fox or NBC on one of their platforms would have that content. Well, now we have practice and qualifying on prime, and then the cup race goes to a traditional broadcast outlet. So we're thinking about it in different ways of what if fans are already engaging with us on NASCAR owned and operated platforms, there was probably a day and time where we would never want to send someone off platform, right? Think about the brands you work for. If they're coming to you, why would you make them leave? But now we're thinking about it. The fans are probably want to know or maybe are confused about where to go. So we're using our platforms to drive into where the coverage is, if that's what the user wants to do. We've already been putting intercepts up or telling people that, "Hey, coverage is live on Prime right now." And we're seeing upwards of 20, 20-some percent of those digital users who are sitting on a practice or qualifying leader board bounce into the Prime coverage.
And then we're just going about it with content of the getting the drivers behind it, promoting where the coverage is at any given point in time, and creating explainers and just doing anything we can to get it in front of fans so they know exactly where to go. Yeah. That makes sense. Proactive communication. And I think the industry has done a really good job of knowing who those in-person fans are, right? We've made a lot of progress there over in recent years, but knowing who those at-home fans are is even more important now so that you can communicate all of those ways to watch with them and be in that constant dialogue. I actually think it's a good use case for agentic, someone just maybe standing in the kitchen and having a conversation, asking how I could watch the game, and having all of that be serviceable in an easier way. So thank you for sharing that. Back to the in-person experience. John, once you get fans through the gates at the Golden 1 Center, how are you leveraging data and technology to make sure they have the best time ever and they're coming back? Yeah. It really starts with the premise that we use, which is the experience around the game is actually bigger than the game itself. And it's contrary to say because the product on the court is so great, but the experience that people have, they know what they're going to get when they're watching the court. What's going to make or break if they come back is what was that all like? So we use a real-time fan engagement platform called LAVA, along with some of the Adobe products that we're now integrating into in order to curate that experience for the fan on a one-to-one basis. And it's done in real-time. So it all starts, like you said, is really knowing that fan before they actually get to the arena and buy the ticket. It's curating that relationship with them when they're watching your broadcast or when they're listening to your broadcast or they're on your Instagram page, knowing which players that they frequently watch video clips of, all of those things go into creating a single fan profile. Taking that fan profile and then curating the experience for that fan once they get to the arena really starts then at that point with the ticket. And no matter what ticketing system you use, you going to use that as the identifier. Okay, now I know that Jen is in the building and she's getting ready to watch the game. So now I'm going to use her profile to figure out, "Well, what is she like?" And it might be your birthday or something, and I'll be able to push an offer to you or not really an offer, but a gift to you to say, "Hey, Jen. Welcome to Golden 1 Center. Happy birthday on us. Have a hot dog and a beer." And using our technology, that'll instantly go to your phone. You'll be able to go to the concession stand and just tap it as if you were paying for something and get it for free right there on the spot. Similarly, it could be, "Hey, we know what section you're sitting in, so we want to make sure that we have people there to greet you." So I have on my phone the LAVA app. And if I put in certain VIPs that I want to know when they come in, as soon as they scan their ticket, I get a notification on my phone that says, "Hey, so and so just got to the arena. Go meet them." So I'll go to the entrance where they came in and I'll go meet them and greet them. So just utilizing that technology, to do something that everybody has. Like, we all have our phones in our hand and or in our pocket at all times these days. So that is the primary way of communicating through the technology and curating that fan experience. So we want to do it from everything on where they're going to park, how they're going to enter the building, where they're going to go sit, what they're going to do after. So you talked about the hotel. We'll push offers out after the game. So if the Kings win, we control the retail space that surrounds the arena and the hotel. So if the Kings win, we'll push out an offer to say, "Hey, it's $5 drinks at Sauce after a big Kings win." So people will leave the arena, they'll go to Sauce, and they'll start continuing to engage with us in other of our products that are outside of the game. So it goes back to, again, the sometimes that experience is bigger than the actual game itself.
I'll take a free glass of wine on my birthday over the hot dog and beer. We have to win.
But just staying on that topic because I know you do a lot of measurement and ROI, and you track food and beverage sales, and you know what pushing out these offers does on the business side. I mean, of course, we want to show fans a good time, but we also need to make money. So before we leave this topic, can you maybe share a few stats or ROI metrics that you've seen? Yeah. For us, the ROI is around engagement. So we measure various different things in engagement. It could be season ticket or renewal rate. It could be fan engagement scores. The league does surveys after every game and you get a fan engagement score.
It could be how much they're spending at the concession stand. So we measure all of that. And since we deployed our fan engagement platform, we were number one in the NBA in per caps for food and beverage. So we're in Sacramento. It's not the largest market in the world, but our fans are spending per person more than any other team in the NBA. And we think that's because we are giving them what they want, when they want it, how they want it, and how much they want to pay for it. And then the thing that we put on top of that is we've got to make sure that what they want to pay for it also makes sense for us as a business. And those are the things that we're then going to push out. Similarly, we were number one in fan engagement in the fan engagement surveys last year, which means the folks that are coming into Golden 1 Center are happy. They're enjoying the experience. They're taking advantage of what's being offered to them. And at the end of the day, when they're rating that experience, they're rating it in a very high level. And then lastly, I would just say, just globally, it goes beyond the game itself and the basketball games. Golden 1 Center is a world-class venue that has concerts and other shows. And because of the way we're able to engage our fans and sell tickets to whatever program it's out there, whether it's a rock concert, a country concert, Disney On Ice show, we're able to do that at a high level, and we had rankings from Pollstar. We were the number four ranked arena in the world when it comes to concerts coming into the building. So in Sacramento, for us, we can look at that and say, "Okay, that's a pretty good benchmark." We can figure out, "Okay, of course, we've actually, how do you become number two or number one?" And so we just continue to move on that. But those are some of the things that we measure, and we know that we are having success with that engagement. Yeah. That's great. Thank you for sharing. Wyatt, I want to talk to you about athlete-centric avidity because this is a big trend in sports right now. We all know that sometimes you grow up in an area and you're just born and raised a fan of that local team. But now more than ever, we're seeing a lot of fans gravitate towards the athletes themselves. This is a lot more popular, especially with the younger generations. But this is nothing new in NASCAR. I mean, the drivers have been very core and centric to your organization for a long time, and I know you've done a great job of capturing fan preferences around favorite driver, and among other things. So can you share a little bit about how you've approached that with your organization? Yeah. Absolutely. I'll start quickly. Show of hands. How many people have been to a NASCAR race before? All right. Decent little group. So if you've walked around any track for those of you that have been there and you see a whole big line of merchandise haulers, they're necessarily not NASCAR or Las Vegas Motor Speedway, right? They are the drivers. So it is important for us to have fans attach to a driver. That driver affinity piece we've found that if a fan has a favorite driver, they're more engaged with us on any single metric that you can measure. So digital and social, attending an event, now gaming and fantasy. So it drives so much within our sport and honestly, probably all sports. I mean, it was having a conversation yesterday with some folks and they were talking about, well, it was a guy from the Eagles and he was talking about his kids don't even root for the Eagles. They root for individual players, right? So in our world, we're a bit of a traveling circus that all teams, all drivers are at every event. So it's imperative for us to have those factions in the fan base rooting for or even at times against certain drivers.
And then what that does for us on the digital platform or from a personalization standpoint is now you've got a key attribute to really start getting into those personalized experiences across any touchpoint that we could possibly deliver them to. So it's setting preferences with your favorite driver that every time you come back to the leaderboard, your driver's pinned up top. So you know exactly where he is. The GPS tracking that we have in the cars, and we're plotting those on a visual of the track. It automatically has and shows where your favorite driver is. So you know where he is and have a sense of what they're doing in the race. So it's key for us to basically have all of those factions within the favorite drivers. And then, it related getting into what we're doing a little bit is have the drivers helping us, one, promote the sport and almost serve as a top of funnel mechanism to if you're a new fan, we want to get the drivers out there more. So however they're deciding it, that they end up having a favorite driver. So we've got a new program called the Driver Ambassador Program that just kicked off this year, where the drivers now are incentivized to really just do more things to promote the sport, to build affinity for themselves. And already we're seeing that their social following is up a massive amount. And then what the interesting pieces, so NASCAR from the leagues started this program, but I don't know the exact numbers, so don't quote me on this. But what we're finding is the drivers and the teams themselves are bringing more opportunities to us than we are creating for them, which is what we wanted to have happen. So building that affinity is enormous. Yeah. And that's a trend that we're seeing across sports is going deeper in the roster in terms of having the athletes promote the sports when collective bargaining agreements come up. And it's not just the top players anymore that are on the hook for marketing. We're seeing more and more players, be responsible for that because it does drive overall revenue for the sport, which I think is an interesting trend to see. And even Adobe, I mean, we're working with leagues like NWSL on helping the athletes be effective at marketing their own brands. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there. John, I'd love to hear your perspective on this for basketball. Yeah. I think it's very similar to the NWSL model that you said. The NBA has always been very, very good at giving the athletes the platform to build their own brands.
They have a program called the Business of Basketball, and each team is required to sit down with the players at the beginning of the year and give them a presentation on understanding what the Business of Basketball is all about and how it relates to them as individual players and what it could mean for their team. So I would give presentations around what are the key revenue streams that we're driving from a Business of Basketball from the team perspective, and then try to relate that to how does that help you as a player grow your individual brand. And for us, it's very important because it then gets them bought into what it is we're doing. Players are getting asked more and more to participate in things off of the court because of what we said over here, which was the affinity of that player is actually becoming bigger than the affinity of the team itself. So they're getting pulled. They have practice. They have games. It's a grueling schedule of travel, but yet we still need them to go to sponsor locations. We need them to film content for us. So if we get them bought in to do that by showing how that helps them build their own brand, it really is a win-win situation. Every player now has their own social handles. They have their own ways of communicating to their fans outside of the way that the team is communicating. So making sure that you're aligned with those is very important because that's how you really marry the affinity from the individual player and have that carry over to the fan engagement for the team itself. Yeah. Absolutely. And thinking about the players, we had a tour. You gave us a very VIP tour at the Golden 1 Center a few months ago, and we got to see the practice court that was all tricked out with cameras and all of the tech, all of the AI, just keeping track of all of the stats and how the players are practicing so they know what to work on and what to improve. And we know there's a ton happening with AI in terms of biometrics and the athletes. I'm curious from your perspective, what are you most excited about for AI impacting the fan experience in the arena? For me, it's taking the AI and taking all of the data we have of the players and being able to recreate what they're doing with the fan back at their own time, on their own device. So they don't necessarily have to be somewhere all of the time. They don't have to worry about missing something. They could see, I think, in the future, AI will create content of players and what they're doing on the practice court. And you can see how many three-point shots they're taking and where they're making them from and what goes into their training regimen. But that can all be generated automatically for somebody just by taking all of that data in and training the AI agents in the ways that are going to make that powerful for them. But then on top of that, I really do think it comes down to the content that you can create from that. And we saw in the Keynote today all of the great tools that Adobe has in that content creation and doing it quickly, and in real-time. So the shelf life that people have when something happens is relatively small these days because none of us have any attention span anymore because of what's on our phones and what's sitting in front of us. So to be able to take something great that has happened in a game, or in a practice, or in an interview with the media and quickly create some content to that that's personalized to the person that's watching it. So they're receiving it in the way that they like to receive content. It's in a format that they're used to seeing, and it has a message that is going to resonate with them. Having all of that be able to be created through an AI tool really allows you to deliver that in the time that is needed for someone to really think it matters to them. And I'll quickly add on that because one thing we found is it's complicated to understand what is happening in a race with 40 cars going 200 miles an hour. But we've used AI in terms of being able to provide fans context. So you can't follow every single piece of racing action going on in the track, but AI can help tell the story of what's going on in the race. And so we're providing that in a timeline format. So users are engaging with it and then now we are backing that up with highlights or up down interactions, and so we'll continue to build on that. So AI builds a profile of that digital engagement. Yeah, that's a great point. There's lots of different levels of fandom and to be able to communicate with the casual fan in ways that educate them more on the sport and get them more excited about the sport and keep them watching and ultimately get them to be a super fan. I mean, that's the goal. So I agree. I think that's a great use case for AI. And I also think with all of the content out there, it's exciting. We talked about social channels, and certainly, that's an important part of the marketing mix, but also taking that athlete-centric content or whatever targeted content it is and pushing it out via OWN's digital channels, that we control, and being able to do that in a timely manner, especially in sports, it's all-time sensitive. I think I'm excited about the possibilities that are happening there.
So let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk about loyalty because I'm pretty sure everybody in the audience is thinking about loyalty in some fashion, whether it's retaining fans or customers or clients. And there's lots of different ways to approach loyalty, and I actually know you both have different strategies there. So, Wyatt, I want to start with you because I know NASCAR started a new loyalty initiative a couple years ago. So I would love to hear how that's going and just share with the audience maybe some of your learnings and wins so far with that. Yeah. As Jen said, so we started a league-wide NASCAR rewards program two years ago. And there's probably, I don't know, 30-some different ways and it's continuing to build on how NASCAR fans can earn points. And it's seasonal based, so you earn points throughout the year, and then you can cash that in at the end of the year for tickets to an upcoming race, or merchandise, or experiences in different things. So it was essentially, a data and an engagement play for us. And we're have moved to this point of essentially having rewards front a lot of our first-party data capture across digital platforms. So again, we're getting user data, but then the user is getting something in return. So we're having that value exchange, and then doing things to get them to come back. We're constantly thinking of how we build more into the program. So there's things on a weekly basis, even a daily basis. It's creating sponsorship opportunities for us. So the rewards program has grown significantly since its inception, and we're just trying to add more to it, to get fans engaged. Because we like we talked about before, once they're engaged in doing more things with you, whether it's being a rewards member or a fantasy player or what have you, then you've got to hook into them, right? Then you can figure out more ways to create journeys or get them to do more things, and then hopefully be advocates of the sport itself.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. John, I'd love to hear your perspective. Yeah. We're not that different. It's could be just a little bit of semantics. We don't really call it a rewards program. We don't really develop a rewards program. We really call it an engagement platform. And it's more flipped on its head where a normal rewards program is you're rewarding somebody for the amount of things they're doing with you and they're earning points and then they're getting rewards for that. We flipped it to an engagement platform where we're actually going to be the ones who are being held accountable for what are we doing. So we're creating a platform and a program that, again, based on a customer profile, gives us rules of when are we going to communicate with that fan or that customer? What are we going to offer them? When are we going to try to bring them back into the building? And so we put the onus on us to reward the fan based on the AI and the technology and the data that we have on that fan. So a fan really doesn't have to really spend a dime with us in order to get something in return as long as they've engaged with us in some form or fashion. It could be, they've never been to the arena, they've never come to a game live, but they watch our broadcast or they subscribe to our Instagram account or they're watching our videos on replay. We're still going to create a program and a profile for that person that gives them something to engage with us. And again, I say it's somewhat semantics because we're doing that engagement for a reason. We feel the more engaged that our fans are with us, the more they're going to end up spending with us, the more they're going to be end up enjoying all of the products that we have. So I think the end goal is definitely the same, and fans will get rewarded based on what they do with us. We try to make it a little more direct where they're going to get rewarded with things that matter to them. It might not matter to their friend or someone else who's coming to the game, but it matters to them. And we know that because of the data and the fan profile that we built. Yeah. Similar components. Just maybe the positioning is a little different. I hear you. And, Wyatt, you mentioned the word sponsorship. I think when we think about loyalty and we think about retention, we want to retain sponsors. I mean, in sports, maybe just behind media rights deals, sponsorships drives a lot of revenue for the leagues, for the teams, for the athletes, and we're seeing a big shift from sponsors these days. It's less about just pure eyeballs, and I think we're running out of real estate on driver's uniforms for logos and patches. So we're really seeing and hearing sponsors' demands, targeted activations, measurable results. So how are you approaching that with NASCAR? Yeah, I mean, I will say everyone knows that sponsorship is the lifeblood of our sport. I mean, I think we're probably one of the few sports that becomes a verb, right? When you hear NASCARize something, you know what that means. So no, I know, I mean, it's a good point. We're trying to figure out ways for the sponsors to get involved. I'll go back to rewards for a second. I mean, there's programs now. We're combining sponsorship elements with rewards earning points. We're doing something now with Powerball. So it's a very, different way of just getting a brand message out there, but it's all parties have skin in the game in order to get something out of it. And then we're more likely to promote it. NASCAR fans, they're extremely loyal. So when they going back to the rewards theme, if they're already rewards members, now they have an opportunity to engage with a sponsor program. They're likely to do it. So I will say what we found we've got a ton of digital sponsorship opportunities. And most times, the sponsors will ask and gravitate towards our live products, right? So when cars get on track, the digital platform essentially comes alive. We see enormous traffic. We see enormous engagement, a lot of time spent. And so sponsors because they have a captive audience, obviously, want to be there as well. So we try to think about unique integration opportunities that we can do with sponsors on those platforms. But outside of digital, what we've found across our sport is the sponsor return is best when it has multiple touchpoints. So yeah, you want to have a digital presence, but you might also want to have a TV or a radio buy. You might want to have a team deal. You might want to have a track deal. And when you put all of that together, they're getting so much more out of it because it extends their activation across, again, different touchpoints within the sport.
And then another one that people may or may not know about NASCAR, it's that the brands are getting out of it. It's a huge B2B opportunity. So brands again could be brands that are sitting here in this room. They're using the sport to bring customers, to bring potential clients. They're interacting, we set up meetings, routinely throughout the year where we get sponsors together and jokingly they're speed dating, right? They're talking about business opportunities between each other, and a lot of businesses has come out of that. So we think about sponsorship and sponsorship opportunities pretty much every day. Yeah. All good points. So, John, should we switch gears to baseball, or do you want to touch the sponsorship topic first? Touch the sponsorship topic first real quick, just because a lot of what we're talking about really goes back to that engagement thing, and we're talking about fan engagement. And from our standpoint, I think our sponsors really demand engagement. It's no longer just put my sign up. It's what you said, Jen. It's like they want to have interaction with that fan. They want them to be engaged with the product. So we use, again, our engagement platform, which sits in your wallet on your phone. It's in your mobile wallet. It's called a royalty pass. So you're opting in to participate in this engagement platform. But with that, I'll use Coke as an example. As everybody who knows me knows I'm somewhat addicted to Diet Coke, so it's fitting that I'll use them as the example. We created a Coke pass, which also sits in that royalty pass. And for Coke, it was all about every time somebody taps at our concession stands and buys a Coke, they are going to register that. And as soon as they've hit the fifth number or the fifth Coke, they will instantly get an offer from Coke. And it could be an offer to get a free one there. But with that royalty pass as it sits in your wallet, we can extend that beyond the building itself. So it could be go redeem a Coke at the AMPM Store or at the Raley's Grocery Store. It doesn't have to be within the building. So using the technology to be able to engage with that sponsor and the fan together outside of the arena just expands the market for that sponsor in a tremendous way. Yeah. I love that example, extending it beyond the arena. And just beyond the Golden 1 Center, let's shift gears to baseball for a minute, a different sport. You have the A's that are coming to Sacramento, for a few years starting with this season as they build their permanent home here in Las Vegas. That's exciting, and it's really, I think, a testament to you and your team and the great job you've done running the Golden 1 Center, the Kings organization. I'd love for you to share with us maybe a little inside baseball some of the backstory on how you earned, the business of the A's coming to Sacramento and maybe some plans for fan engagement the coming season. I mean, there's going to be over 150 games between the A's and the River Cats in 2025. - That's a lot. - That's a lot. So tell us how you're going to do it all. Yes. We're going to be busy. The 150 baseball games plus the basketball games and all the concerts. So no lack of activity, which is fun for us. But yeah, they're having baseball, which is now opening days of 31st, so less than two weeks away. We're going to have Major League Baseball send on to Sacramento, which is going to be an event in and of itself, and having a game played in a Minor League Park, which we feel like we've really made it a major league experience is going to be great. But when the A's announced that they were relocating out of Oakland to Las Vegas, they needed a new home. There were certainly a lot of other cities that recording them to be their temporary transition home. But we went to them and just tried to explain to them why Sacramento would be a great place. Number one, because of the fan support and the region and everything that the region has to offer, but also because how we can continue to grow their brand while they're transitioning here and building their stadium here in Las Vegas. And a lot of it's everything that we've done at Golden 1 Center. We showed them how we do our fan engagement, how we can make sure that an athletics fan can be tied into a Kings fan or activity at Golden 1 Center, and we will make their experience much more than just that baseball game that they're coming to. We know for baseball, especially Major League Baseball, maybe not as much for Minor League, but for Major League Baseball, there's a lot of fans that travel with their teams. There's a lot of weekend series and fans will go to different cities to watch their team play a weekend series. So we want to make sure that we're utilizing our technologies to engage with the away team fans as well, and how we're going to curate their experience and to make sure again that the environment that the team is playing in is a sold out environment and it's rocking every day. So utilizing and showing them how we do that and how we've been successful at Golden 1 Center with the Kings and the River Cats. The River Cats last year were named the Minor League team of the year for the engagement and the experience that they've had at Sutter Health Park. So that I think is what gave the Athletics to trust to us to be their temporary home in transition to Las Vegas. So we definitely have a lot of work ahead of us, but it's the work that we love to do because it's all about staying engaged with our fans. Now in baseball, which is interesting, we have the Giants Triple-A team playing one week, and then we're going to have the A's Major League team the other week. So we have two major league teams in the same ballpark, which in and of itself creates its own challenges from a signage standpoint and look and feel of the ballpark. But we think we've got that all dialed in. We're excited for the 31st. We actually have a Giants pre-season game when they break spring training on the 23rd. So on Sunday, we're actually going to have the Major League Giants playing at Sutter Health Park in an exhibition game against the River Cats. So again, plenty of activity, and I think just drilling it back down to how we're going to stay engaged with our fans, how we're going to make sure that their experience is curated to them, utilizing our technology to do that. And then what are we going to do after they leave the ballpark? How are we going to create the content that we're going to deliver them so they can remember the experience that they had so they want to come back? Yeah. It makes sense to me. They just want to be part of that best-in-class success. So yeah, smart decision.
Wyatt, we saw a bunch of hands go up when you asked how many people have been to a race. So we know there's a lot of fans in the audience today. So it would be fun if you could share with the fans what they can expect to see from NASCAR. How is fan engagement going to change for them with technology, with everything you've been working on with your team? What can they expect in the coming years? Yeah. I mean, this year alone is been an enormous year for us in terms of new and different, I would say, things across the digital platform. I mean, one, we've launched entirely new homepage. We revamped our live experience on NASCAR.com So we're giving the fans way more data and real-time information than they ever have before. So that's been exciting. I would also say and give a nod to my tech team here on in terms of personalization-- Of course, we're doing something from a centralized league standpoint of getting relevant ticket offers in front of fans. I feel like that's everyone should be doing that.
But now in terms of using AEP, all of the signals and attributes and all of the information that we've been collecting and flowing in, we're now looking at the content that the users are engaging in and using AI and the tools we have with Adobe and others to now present a personalized news section and recommend content that we think that they will be engaging with. And we're seeing good returns even already that the difference between a static news list and a personalized my news list, everyone's gravitating to the personalized presentation, but with no surprise there, right? So we're going to be doing obviously, more of that. We talked about the favorite driver piece, before as we fill out more profiles and understand who their favorite driver is. You would expect to see more personalized content around drivers. And then we hopefully will get better around, new fans are come are coming to the platform just where they're showing interest and being able to cultivate that interest and start them on their journey. Yeah. More personalized and better orchestrated fan experiences. I mean, that's what we're all after. I think we like to say, how we're able to help connect fans with the experiences they love most because everybody has different preferences. And knowing those preferences and catering to them with the right offers at the right time, right messages, right driver content, like, everything we cover today, I think it's nice that it's all reality due to the foundation you and your team built. And now the advancements in technology, it's all happening. So I have one more question. And this is just a heads up because we do have a little bit of time to take questions from the audience. So start thinking about those because I'll go to you all next. But we were chatting a little bit earlier today about how, you've both been in the industry for so long, right? 25 years with the team, 13 years with the league. I've been in sports for 20 years. It's hard to leave the industry once you get in it. And a lot of people who aren't in sports often ask me how did you get in sports? What did you do? And you both have interesting, career histories. And I think it would be fun just from a career development standpoint to hear maybe when you decided to get into sports and why you decided to stay for so long. So, John, you want to start? I'll go first. Yeah. When I graduated from college, I really didn't have sports on my radar. It wasn't something that I thought, "Hey, I want to go work in sports." It wasn't even something that I thought I would ever do. I started as a public accounting CPA at Pricewaterhouse in San Francisco and had an opportunity after about five years or so to go work for the Giants because one of my friends at Pricewaterhouse had left, and he was hiring somebody and it was a time in my life where I didn't have a whole lot tying me back and holding me back, and he asked if I wanted to go. It was clearly a step backwards in my career. I had to start at a pre-entry level into sports, but it was one where I thought I would give it a try. And again, it was one where at that time in my life, I wasn't making the best decisions. I wasn't really thinking about the things I was doing. I was just going with the flow. But then once I got into it, I realized that we're all work hard. We all go to work. We want to be our best. We want to help the people working next to us be their best, and it's draining. But to be able to do it in sports was just something that was very captivating because at the end of the day, you're producing fun. You're producing entertainment. You're putting smiles on people's faces, and that was really grabbing. And then once I started doing that, I realized, "Hey, I got to work really hard because I don't want to ever leave this." This is a lot of fun. It's very rewarding. No matter how hard it gets, I just want to make sure that I can continue to do it. And from the Giants, I just started being very intellectually curious and just poking my nose, in the places where they probably didn't belong and just learning different things about the sport and the business. Had opportunities to go down to work for the Angels and Ducks in Anaheim, when they were wholly owned by the Walt Disney Company, after the Giants for a couple years, and then did the same thing. She just poked my nose around and ask people questions that they're like, "Why do you keep asking me that?" And I was just wanted to be curious about what was happening around me. And then, ultimately, that led me to Sacramento 25 years ago. So now they can't get rid of me. So now I'm there and I love it again. It's more about for me now, it's more about the experience that we're creating for our fans in the region. As a NBA team or as NASCAR in a sport, we really are a platform that is doing good for everybody that comes in contact with it because sport is the great equalizer. And all if you look in the history of all of the things that have gone wrong in our country over the last century, the thing that has brought us back or we were first to come back has always been sports. It's the thing that brings people together. It makes people happy. So to be able to deliver that and create a region in Sacramento that people can be proud of because of the entertainment platform that is there, is something that I just love doing, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Hey. There's something about not overthinking things and going with the flow and following your heart, and I think it did good for you. Wyatt? Yeah. Ironically, John and I were talking earlier. I had a similar path starting out anyway in terms of banking and finance right out of college, whereas working for Capital One and just at least personally I had midlife crisis at 27 and realized that that's not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So I had set out on this journey to be a collegiate AD. It was a passion of mine. I'm a former college athlete. So I went to grad school at the University of Texas at Austin and worked for their athletic department while I was in school. Of all things, I have a master's of education. Don't know that I'm using it like truly MEds do, but here we are. But from there, Texas assistant AD for marketing, University of Maryland College Park for a period of time, then ran corporate partnership marketing for the Atlantic Coast Conference for roughly 9 or so and then have been at NASCAR for 13 years. But interestingly, it's come full circle a little bit in terms of what I was doing at Capital One, where I was managing a tech team that I could do nothing of all the people that reported to me do. So I'm very thankful for then and now work with a lot of great people and around a lot of cool tech and be able to do a lot of cool things. But like John said, we're in the fun business. It's sometimes we lose sight of that a little bit in terms of like, yeah, it's a job. You get frustrated. You have good bosses. You don't like everybody you work with. But at the end of the day, and this came up in the NFL session earlier is if you have that fan-centric mindset and just remember that people are there because they want to be, I mean, that's a pretty powerful thing. So it's been a blessing to work in sports all these years. Yeah. Very successful pivot for you too. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you, John. Thank you, Wyatt. We appreciate you. And thank you, everybody for joining us.
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