 Hi everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here on location at AWS's re-invent cost in Las Vegas, our 11th year doing theCUBE, and it's going to be quite a journey. This year more than ever, it's about a major change in general AI driving new changes for the next gen cloud. Also Amazon, the leading cloud is laying out all the announcements. It's just getting kicked off and it's already buzzing with activity and we're excited to be part of two days of four days and our next guest is Julie Sosa, head of sports, global professional services with AWS. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for having me. So first of all, I love all the sports stuff going on, Prime, all the stat cast, the nerd stuff and the football relationship and that's very nerdy, which is, and it's data and stats, so like props. So, but there's a lot more going on in sports and tech with data. What's your role? What's your job? Then we can get into some of the cool things because you got a lot of cool things going on at your time. Yeah, I do, I have a great job. So yeah, I mean we're looking, we're really analyzing all of the trends and areas of opportunity for innovation in sport, right? And data, as you aptly noted, is a huge part of that. We're collecting data in copious volumes that we never collected in sports before, right? When I was a kid growing up as a sports fan, the raw data of sports was a box score. And you could read it and understand it. Now the raw data of sports is degrees of latitude and longitude, right? And it's coming in, in the case of the NFL, which you mentioned 300 million points of data per season. F1, 1.1 million points of data per second on those cars. So nobody's sitting there with a calculator or a clipboard figuring that out. That's a job for machine learning and AI. And then it becomes interesting because you have all this data, what do you ask of it? You know, what do you do with that data? That's the interesting part that we're doing a lot of work in right now. And almost all sports are impacted. I was just, I was in a pro-am for the SAS championship and you guys are there. You got the NFL, PGA, NHL, and pretty much every sport, right? You guys, what sports aren't you in? I don't think there's a sport that we're not in, per se, because we're probably working with a broadcast partner or a team or a league. You know, in the use cases vary, but I will say that the theme that you've identified in terms of analytics is pervasive. I mean, if you're a league, you're looking at player health and safety and rule development and, you know, refereeing and all of that sort of thing. If you're a team, it's moneyball. John Wright, it's just game strategy, it's scouting and recruiting. And then ultimately, it's serving the fan. How do you tell new stories? How do you edify the fan? How do you engage them? To zoom out and lay out the scope of the engagement you have with customers. Because again, you just talk about three dimensions of the sports, running a team, the fan experience, facilities, all that stuff, the scoreboard's gotta be secure. I mean, all kinds of weird things you don't think about. Like, someone can hack the scoreboard during a game. Like, that's a security problem. So what does the sports team, what's your engagement with? How do you engage with your customers? Take us through a day in the life of a use case. They call you, you call them, they say, or you meet in the middle, they use the cloud, obviously. What does the engagement look like? It's a great question. And I think it goes back to sort of basic, fundamental AWS principles in terms of, we work backwards, right, from a customer need. And so, oftentimes it is a customer saying, we need to solve for X or we have all this data. How do we get insights out of it? How can you help us do that? As a matter of fact, tomorrow there's gonna be a session that we're doing with the NHL about, how do you even come up, you have data? How do you ask a question of it? What question do you ask? How do you build it? And then how do you tell the story, right? So the engagement model, once we understand what their needs are and help them solve that, sometimes we can see around corners too, and say, hey, if you thought about this, do you want to lean in a little bit more here? This would help. So it's a very collaborative process and that's what makes it so great, is that you're working together towards a common goal to elevate a sport. You know, it's interesting, the sports of all the years I've observed that it was always very much an owner thing and they were very, I won't say tight with money around tech, everything's on the field, as they say. But now that needs to be antiquated and outdated, how modern have they gotten on there, if it's like storage, because you have data, you get storage, you have other concession data. By the way, concession could be third party, so you need integration, right? So it's complicated. So where are they on the scale of modernization? Are some more, some more ahead of others, where, how does that factor in? Yeah, some sports are ahead of others, some teams are more progressive than others, but I think everybody sees that the future is somewhat inevitable and the future is actually now. So yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, you're seeing increasing business insights and performance analytics staffs, right? So one measure of this is, where are they hiring? Right? More and more around data and technology. And it's a, you know, it's a being competitive thing too. Look at these venues, right? You look at the SoFi, you look at Allegiant here. These are really high-end, technically advanced venues, and I think fans are starting to expect that. So even those who are like, I don't want to necessarily spend the money, I think fans are going to push them to deliver that sort of high-end technical experience. You know, it's very interesting, the multifaceted aspect of the economics impact, stadium and so far, amazing stadium, watch a game, amenities, all of yous are great, but it's multi-purpose. Olympus will be there. I mean, so the economy and where you are in the city, the role of the stadium, Oakland Raiders went from lowest-ranking, money-making team to what, top 10. Right, right. Well, and what you're talking about, you're seeing this increasing trend towards districts, fan districts, right? So it's not an isolated venue out in the middle of nowhere, but, and, you know, there are restaurants, bars, mixed use. I mean, I remember Foxboro, I thought was used to be in the middle of nowhere. Now there's all these bars and hotels and restaurants, and you're starting to see some teams lean into those districts and say, you know what, let's share data with each other. So that a customer of one of us becomes a customer of four of us. Come to dinner before the game, go to the game, go to the bar afterwards, check into the hotel, let's make this a rising tide, lifting all boats. And so that's another data story too, is fans. How do we share data about fans to super serve them? The fan experience, the stadium, which now is not just a stadium, it's the economics, it's the region of the area. How does the changing expectation change? So with generative AI, I was seeing clearly that how I'm getting my sports, I have multiple devices, I'm non-digital. Fans are not in the stands, they're going to stream. I remember when the Levi Stadium came out deal, they were stuck to only broadcast within the IP address of the stadium. So they had restrictions, so broadcast rights, how do the fans, so what is the changing landscape on the consumption side? And what are some of the changes you see on producing the content, whether it's on the field and or captured on digital? Oh my gosh, there's so much there. So on the consumption side, I'll say probably the biggest thing we've seen, we've seen this broadly across media and entertainment is adoption of streaming platforms, right? So what that does when we're producing a game is you used to have, and you still do, this one to many, right? The broadcast, we're delivering one, the least offensive broadcast we possibly can, we have this sporting event to a very wide audience. In streaming, it lets people sort of choose their own adventure a little bit, right? So if you're watching Thursday Night Football and you want the prime vision stat laid in cast, you can opt into that. You want to watch the Manning cast, you can watch that. So I think some of the adoption of these platforms let us deliver sports in unique and more personalized ways, right? And I think that's really exciting. You see what the NFL did with the toy story, right? And that is both leveraging a platform, but also the technology, because you were using that tracking data to put, you know, it's not Dak Prescott, it's Buzz Lightyear, right? And you're getting kids involved in a sport, and you can do that on streaming. What do you see in terms of communities out developing? Because you start to see a lot of user-generated brands come out of nowhere. The guy who wears the same shirt on a podcast becomes like a darling for the community, gets a million views. Well, but that enters into this too. If you don't want to hear the broadcaster, you can have an influencer call that game. You can have a celebrity call that game. You could call that game, right? So, I mean, again, there's also a lot of rights in sports, or I think that sometimes gets underestimated. So the geogating on the IP, like that's a real thing for real reasons from a distribution standpoint and a rights perspective. But I think those doors open. And I think right now there's a lot of like, oh, we're going to try a lot of things. I look forward to the day that it's fan-driven. So I get to choose what my broadcast looks like, right? And I want to be prompted for prop bets, or I want to be reminded order pizza at halftime. Like all these things, I want explosions when there's a touchdown. I want my fantasy stats in real time. I want to chat with my friends or whatever, they place a real money bet, whatever. I think that sort of functionality and engagement and personalization will ultimately be built into the streaming environment. And personalization is absolutely a holy grail for genera of AI. That comes back down to our circling back the data. Where's the data equations? Because I was saying to Rothen who was on earlier and I just saw Swamy and I'm like, data management is going to flip its head on his head because old school data management won't work. So. Well then that's what we're seeing in sports too is a lot of these generative AI use cases and other things you're thinking about require sort of a foundation, right? So getting your data, getting a data strategy, a data warehouse, being able to have your data. And data means not just the numbers, but it's also all of your content, your video. Putting all of that in a place that it can be accessed and organized in a way, I think opens up a lot of opportunity. So it does open up generative AI use cases. But it also, I mean, if you're a sports property, you have all that video, all of that content, all of that data and it's all tagged uniformly. It lets people, you know, you can go down the rabbit hole with fans. And like I want to see every goal scored in the third period with less than 30 seconds left that, you know, then was eclipsed by another goal, right? What's the most exciting sports you hit the stack, Frank? I know Formula One was just in Vegas. That's always the hot one. My son is addicted to it now. And we watch it on TV. We share screens. He's got all the stats. Obviously football's huge. Yeah. NHL could someone say is niche, but I'm a big Bruins fan. They just lost three in a row. Yes, they did. Yes, I know exactly who they were. They lost to Detroit, to New York, and then the blue jackets, what? Yeah. What's most exciting sport right now? It's their jersey, by the way. Those white ones are just not working. I just got to swap the jerseys. Yeah, I think so. I think you're right. The data's probably going to show the fans don't like it. It's just psychology. Players probably don't like it either. Right. All these data-driven decision-making. You know, you're asking me to choose between my favorite children. They're all exciting in their own way, of course. I like you. I'm a huge Boston Bruins fan, and I love the NHL. And so, and it's exciting to see what these analytics are doing for them. And they're really leaning into cloud production, which is a really interesting and, you know, burgeoning space right now. So, they're a highly- You don't want to pick a favorite yet. What's your favorite? What sport do you like the best? I watch a lot of hockey. They do. You're a hockey fan. Well, and college football. I'm a Michigan Wolverine. They're a big win. Big win. Congratulations. Stressful. You know, Jim Harbaugh is Palo Alto native, so a lot of common good stuff. Well, take us through your job, because I'm a little curious, like what's the day in the life of your job? What do you work on every day? Well, first of all, I have a rock star team. I mean, people, and then we all come out of the industry, so we're all trying to solve the problems that we had when we were on the other side of the table, right? So, that's exciting. So, yeah, it ranges from working directly with customers and doing that. Okay, what are we trying to solve for here to try to think about what's the next big thing? And, I mean, AWS, you probably are seeing just the rapid fire of announcements coming in here. So, keeping on top of all the tech here and how it can apply to sports is a big part of my job too, and having conversations with our Gen AI leaders and saying, okay, help me understand this, could this happen? What are unintended consequences of some of this technology and how do we safeguard and make sure security and responsibility is core in everything we do? So, it's a lot of working with customers, working with and supporting a killer team and then staying abreast of it all and trying to figure out new ways to drive the industry forward. What's great is Andy Jassy is a big sports fan. He was just at the game with him on the 17th, on the 16th, the one who watched the Kraken game. He was in New York for the Rangers game last week. I ran into a little bit there, but it's good when you've got a company that sees the sports, but also it's business. I mean, it's its own thing. It's not like just barter deals. I mean, they probably do some barter, but I'm sure the economics will all work out, but they have business needs. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, you can get really foundational, basic infrastructure needs, but then there's also that, okay, tip of the spear, what's next and how do we help you drive there and be a real innovation partner. But yes, it is business, but I also think the cool thing about sports is it lets us at AWS tell the story of technology and the cloud and that power in a really accessible, compelling way for the average person, right? Julie, when Dave Alonso and I started the Q 13 years ago, we had a term called tech athlete. We would look at the stars that were in the tech fields as like, like athletically, they go to events, they work hard, they deliver the goods, but now you actually got tech athletes. They're actually athletes who are into tech, they're into investing, they're much more leaning into tech and the new economics around it, especially with the whole college football shifting of the division. College football, to that point, a very interesting thing. You're even seeing Sam Schwartzstein, who's the on-air talent for Thursday Night Football, Prime Vision, tells us Arch Manning, you know, the darling of college football right now, he's majoring in data science, right? So just think about, think about the athletes of today, the nascent athletes of today and what they're studying and they're leaning into tech, they're leaning into data science. Think about how they approach the game and how they play and the longevity of those careers. It's going to be really exciting to see that shift. You know, the old expression, multi-tool player, you have to be data savvy if you want to be learning in the meetings and or your growth, personal growth mindset. I mean, it's from a performance perspective, as well as a health and safety perspective too, right? Optimizing your training and all of that. So I agree. You know, I could talk for hours on sports and tech. We should do it again, but since we don't have a lot of time, tell us what's on your agenda for the next couple of months. What are your goals? What are you guys trying to do for the next year? What's the roadmap look like for you? Yeah, I mean, I think the big themes we're seeing are really still around this data and because we're still early days, you know, I've been asked, you know, we hit the, you know, the pinnacle of this data explosion in sports and my answer is usually like, oh honey, we just getting started. So I think there's still a lot of use cases around data. Also, live cloud production, which I mentioned a little bit earlier, I think you're going to start to see the sports industry, realize that this is more economical. There's time savings. Your carbon footprint is far reduced and you can attract a diversity of talent if you start producing in the cloud. So that, I think that there's a lot of energy. How early is that? Is that, what's the progress bar in editing in the cloud in your mind? Oh, we do it now. You can, you can edit in the cloud. So we can pull our stuff in the cloud. 100%. We actually have a demo down on the floor showing it. So yeah. We'll do a fly by Julie. Thank you for coming on. Thank you. Great time. Great engaging conversation. We're sharing the data. We're sports up here doing tech. We love it. Most of the cubes have been covering this sport, AWS re-invent ecosystem for 13 years, 11th year at re-invent. And again, the game is just getting started. Genevieve AI is going to change the game. The data relationship to AI is going to be really symbionic data to AI to data, the role of the human as the creative source and all this will be the key to success. New economic models, new business models, all happening in sports. You got the coverage here on theCUBE. We'll be right back after the short break.