 Data Sports SV event, this is theCUBE, our flagship program, we go out to the events, extract the synopsis from the noise, I'm John Furrier, join with Jeff Kelly, and the next guest is from the San Francisco 49ers, the general manager of Stadium Experience, Doug Garland. Doug, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. You're a CUBE alumni, you were early on in theCUBE, back in the old Cloudera days when we came in for a special news broadcast. I was, I remember that. And Cloudera recently in the news are raising $900 million in a round of funding, pretty, pretty amazing there. So, the technology swing in Silicon Valley, which you've been a big part of in your career, now with the Niners, it's been pretty amazing over the past decade, but come on, the Niners, Jim Harbaugh, a little controversy in the office, but winning, winning attitude, winning organization, new stadium, tell us about what's going on over there, obviously in terms of the culture, the innovation, and the stadium's at the center of all the action right now because that's gonna dictate everything going forward, new stadium, new experiences, and probably new revenue sources, et cetera. So, dig into it. What's going on in the stadium? So, yeah, you'd mentioned everything going on with the team right now, and what I'd say is, first of all, the 49ers have a tradition of winning, certainly. And when the 49ers think about winning, they wanna win on the field and they wanna win off the field, and we've been fortunate to be winning on the field recently, going to the NFC championships, Coach Harbaugh, and this is all transpiring with Jed York taking over as CEO of the 49ers. And for a long time, the 49ers have wanted to get a new stadium. Candle Stick has been a wonderful home for many years, but it was a little long in the tooth, and it was really time for a new stadium as a home for our team and a place for our fans to come and have a great time. And we were fortunate to be able to find a great location in the city of Santa Clara right in the heart of Silicon Valley. Now, when I'm relatively new to the world of professional sports, in terms of working in it, not as a fan, obviously, I've been a fan forever. But what I've learned is that when owners come in and there's a new stadium that they're building, they think a lot about what should the hallmark be of that stadium. Everybody wants it to be architecturally interesting. Well, what's gonna be the hallmark of that stadium? We saw the Dallas Cowboys Stadium go up, kind of everything's big. They got big TV, among other things. When Jed and the management team of the 49ers, Brog Morate, our COO, now team president, then COO, now team president, we're taking a step back and saying what should our stadium stand for? Well, it doesn't take too long to say we're in the heart of Silicon Valley. What we should stand for is bringing forward all the innovation of Silicon Valley into the hands of our fans so that they can have a great experience. And that's really what the new stadium's all about. So on the technology choices you guys have, I mean, the construction takes center staging, we start getting built and all the seats are in and they're filling in all the gaps and they're gonna look beautifying and everything. So what is the core vision around the technology? What is the innovation strategy for the fan experience? Is it better videos, better bandwidth? Where's the centerpiece on the strategy? To start with the bandwidth and the wifi? Is it the concessions? Is it taking selfies? What? Taking selfies? I mean, of course, you gotta take a camera selfie. The short answer is yes to all of that. So when we think about the stadium and constructing a big experience, it was mentioned earlier, we do think about the competition from the catch. When you're a fan and you're thinking about going to the game, you wanna go to that stadium because you're there with your friends, you see the live action on the field, there's nothing like the energy you get from being part of that crowd. But you know there's gonna be heavy traffic, you know there's gonna be lines, not just to get in, but to get food. You know a lot of that color commentary, particularly around football, that you begin to enjoy on TV you're gonna miss. So it's kind of a trade-off because you can look at that comfortable couch with those wonderful replays and the food right around the corner that you don't have to wait in line for. So we think about that. We want it to be less of a trade-off. We want you to come into the game and not have to make that trade-off. So how are we gonna do it? Well, you can take a step back and think about how to deliver it, but it doesn't take a genius to say, well, wait a minute, what's really going on in terms of consumer technology today? What do we hear all the time? Mobile first. So we know the fans coming to our game are gonna be carrying smart devices and we know that they're accustomed to being able to order food on their mobile devices or consume content on their mobile devices. So what we wanted to do was construct a stadium that would support that. Now, what does that start with? Well, if you're gonna have mobile device, you better have great wireless coverage. So we're gonna have great wireless coverage. Certainly like every stadium, we're working with the cellular carriers to have great wireless coverage, but we're putting into place a network, including Wi-Fi that we think will bring an unprecedented level of coverage in the stadium. You feel confident about that? Yeah, we feel very confident about it. That's a hard problem we heard from Bill here in the Niners. Took him a long time to get it right. You guys all in on that? Is it all hands on deck? Yeah, it's well, very much so. And so what we've done is we think we have deployed access points in the stadium in a new way that's not typically done. And we're working with our Wi-Fi partner, Aruba, to make sure that we get this system up in tune. I'll tell you what it reminds me of. It reminds me of the early days in cellular. So I spent 10 years in cellular in the 90s. And some of what we talk about with regard to frequency planning and thinking about capacity versus coverage trade-off and creative antenna deployments, that's what we're doing at Levi Stadium. So we're gonna get that wireless coverage right. Now, like every wireless system, it's gonna require some tuning when we launch. No question about that. We're gonna do the best job we can, but wireless systems will alter their behavior. Wi-Fi will be unlicensed, that's the 2.4. Yeah, and the 5GIG. And the 5GIG, but then you're gonna overlay spectrum on top of that, licensed spectrum with the what the carrier will be. Yeah, but we're gonna really rely on Wi-Fi. And one of the things that we're relying on is you mentioned 2.4GIG, but most devices coming out now will also operate in the 5GIG of our spectrum. Now, why is that important? One of the reasons it's important is because when you think about wireless, you can think about channels that mobile devices can use. In 2.4Ghz, they're basically three non-overlapping channels that you can use. You add up to about 20 more when you go to 5GIG. So one of the reasons why we're optimistic about Wi-Fi working is we come along at the right time. There's more spectrum and there's more devices that can take advantage of that spectrum. Now, when you talk to the management, and I know you talk to other clubs as part of your collaboration, what are the things that you're hearing for use cases that are innovative about that, that people might not know about at home about, I didn't know I could do that at the stadium, or I didn't know I could do that when I'm in my relationship with the club, whether they're a fan or season ticket holder or a one game a year fan. Well, so I mentioned a little bit about that competition with the couch, but you can think about what we're gonna do. Let me tell you what we're gonna do. What we're gonna enable a fan to do is enjoy that game on the field by bringing them information about what's going on. One thing that's very important in football, replays. Fans want replays. So what we're gonna allow fans to do who are in the venue is to watch instant replays after every play on demand. We'll get them to you fast. We'll get them to you in under five seconds. It's one thing when you talk about instant replays if you're sitting at home or you're getting them on the web, but if you're at the game, if I can't get them to you fast, doesn't work. And that has to be under five seconds. So you're gonna do that. What else are we gonna do? One of the other areas that we know is a big hassle for fans at the game is waiting in line at concession stands. You, when you go to a football game, if you get hungry, you're smiling. If you get hungry, you're trying to figure out which part of which quarter do I have to miss so I can go get that hot dog. That's a trade-off we don't want our fans to make. So what we're gonna enable at Levi's Stadium is the ability for any fan sitting in any section of the stadium to order food and beverage to their seat using their mobile device. So what's different about what we're doing is the sheer scale of what we're attempting to do. We got some Twitter questions in here instantly coming back, even on controversial calls. Yeah, you'll get replays on every call. You'll get replays after every play. Now, under review plays. What's that? Even if they're under review. You get replays on every play. We're holding it to you. Yeah, now by the way, what I'm talking about is what you're gonna see on your mobile device. What you see up on the big screen may be different. But you'll get every play. So yeah, you'll get that. What does the coach get? The special, the real? The coach gets a special angle. Yeah. So you'll be able to do that. How about the hand around his neck? Was he gonna have a PDA around his neck and the little iPhone? So to all that, being the lately wireless, having each fan to get their own smart device, you can have replays, you can be ordering food. Yeah. That means a lot of data is gonna be created about their behavior, what they're doing, when they're doing it. What role will that play in kind of monitoring and analyzing how the different services you all are working? Do you have plans to kind of really analyze that data to see what's working, what's not working, to make adjustments? Yes. And how will you go about that? Yeah, very much so. So what we are creating is a fan 360 platform for the team. This fan 360 platform will not only collect data to allow us to improve experiences in venue, but also we're gonna bring in data sources that are outside the venue as well so that we can get a complete picture of the fan, hence fan 360. One of the things we know when we launch is that while we think we're gonna have a lot of stuff, right, we're pretty sure we don't have it all right. And we're gonna learn. And so what we wanna be able to do is harness all that data, see what's working, see what isn't working. It could mean that when we take a look at the kinds of plays that our fans in the stadium are looking at replays, might change what our editorial calendar looks like. Certainly, based on what we see from a food and beverage standpoint, NC and express pickup, which will also enable, we're gonna change our staffing plans. And by the way, one of the things that I should say is that while we're leveraging technology, this particularly when it comes to concessions, this is as much about operations and logistics as it is technology. The two have to come together. And will you use data optimize there? Well, it's people process and technology, right? It's not just the technology. And you've got to make those kind of business decisions about where to apply the technology and where the technology might tell you one thing, but you've got to kind of take into consideration your business objectives as well. Yeah, and so what we're all about is providing a great fan experience, but ultimately what we hope the great fan experience translates into is a better business for the 49ers organization. What's your vision for fan experience? I know you and I have talked kind of off camera, but I want you to share the folks, what's your vision? What's the collective organization's vision? It's probably not all lined up, otherwise you wouldn't be working there, but this is a new area. It's a combination of bleeding edge, but you can't fail because you have to deliver a fan experience. What's your vision? How are you gonna go out and deliver those services? So what we wanna do is, the way we think about it right now is we think more game, less hassle. So when you talk about what we're trying to create, people go to the game. We want them to engage in the game, and we want them to get more information that'll help them get emotionally invested in the game. And so in what we're creating from a fan experience, why we're doing replays, we'll also bring in information that's relevant to what's happening on the field. Can you pipe in sound noise to beat the Seahawks? I mean, that's some technology. Some speakers under every seat, you know. Yeah, we've thought about that actually, believe it or not. We've thought about doing things like monitoring which section cheers the loudest and trying to get some competition going. So we've certainly thought about that. But what we wanna do is we wanna get fans to get more game, and we want them watching the field. We don't want them on the phone all the time, but every now and then, if I'm talking with you in a great play, just happen, I'm gonna miss it. We want you to be able to go back and do it. The other thing we want you to feel is less hassle. You don't have to wait in line to get hot dogs. We'll give you some help in terms of getting to the game and navigating to your parking. By the way, if you gotta go, we'll let you know if there are long lines, short lines, or medium lines at the restrooms out there so that you can get up and go. That's gonna be a very popular situation. That's just make sure no Google Glass allowed in the restroom. Yeah, yeah, that's what we think. So we think that's gonna be a very popular feature. Okay, so I gotta ask you, what's been the most exciting thing that you've seen in your job so far? That kinda surprised you. Something that you didn't expect that kinda knocks you off your chair saying, wow, I wouldn't have expected that kinda enablement from technology to make that scenario happen. Do you have an example of that? Oh, I just gotta tell ya. I think there's a couple of things. One, in some of our testing when we're getting those replays as fast as we can get them, it's so much fun to see that come up. I've hosted friends at games with our trial app and they just can't believe it. But the coolest reaction I've gotten actually had to do within Seat Delivery of Food and Babbage. I had a very good friend out from New York and he was hungry and we were sitting together in the stands and I said, go ahead and order your food. And he did and he ordered it, went off, 20 seconds later, there was a 60-yard touchdown play and he turned to me and he said, I would've missed that if I'd gotten up to get that hot dog and he literally grabbed me and he said, this is gonna be huge. And that was very cool. The future's plastics. Yeah, exactly. It's that kinda moment where it's pretty obvious. Yeah. So talk about how big any IT department you guys have there. Is the new stand gonna house the offices as well? Is that gonna be an IT data center there? Community, charities, specifics? Yeah, so when you look at what we're building in the stadium, we're gonna have data centers, we'll have network rooms all around. There's major, major technology going into the stadium to enable it. So there's also gonna be a fully functioning TV studio as well. Comcast is gonna come in and do their games there, or do their reporting for the games. Maybe we'll have the cube down there. Yeah, yes. And so. The sports vertical's opening up as of tonight, so there it goes. There'll be this fully functioning studio as well. So when you walk around the stadium, most fans will see the luxury areas, the concession stands and all that. But behind closed doors, there's gonna be server farm after server farm after server. Dave at the Earthquakes has the biggest bar in history. Can you top that? Yeah, we're gonna have a roof deck. So we actually will have a roof deck. So. You will. Yeah, we really will. There'll be a roof deck. We're gonna grow grass up there. It's gonna be our whole, yeah. So I gotta say, I saw the owner speak at an event, SAP Sapphire last year. He said, why pay $60 billion, $60 million for a scoreboard when the fans bring their own scoreboard to the game? Yeah. And so his attitude was very interesting. It's like, hey, I don't need to go over the top like Jerry Jones and Dallas did with this AT&T Stadium now, which might be obsolete in a couple years or a year when I'd rather optimize for the fan experience in their hand. So. That is compelling. So drill down on that. So what basically, this is what Jed, Jed will often talk about numbers like this. So the reported number, and I'm getting the second hand, I don't know for sure, but was that the Cowboys spent $70 million on that great big TV that they put in the middle of the stadium. Now. The one that ball hits when the, when the, yeah. Yeah, when you punch. Yeah, okay. Now, like any equipment you install in the stadium, that can be outdated at some point. If you look at our figure, the capacity of our stadium is about 70,000. Now you look in the Bay Area, about every year and a half, people here spend about $1,000 on mobile devices, iPads, mobile equipment, all that stuff. You do the math on that. Assuming every fan has a mobile device. So a little bit of license there, but 70,000 times a thousand bucks, that's $70 million. So our fans are investing $70 million in hardware every year and a half. Cowboys did it once with that TV. So what we're counting on is we're counting on the fans to bring the hardware they need. We're looking to ride that consumer electronics curve. Instead, what we're doing is we're building a software platform to deliver services to those devices. That's what we're doing. Well, it's a really interesting point because you've got to be able to stay nimble. Yes. You've got to be able to adapt to the new things that consumers, in your case, fans want and how they want to consume it. So maybe expand on that. So one is to basically deliver the services on the devices they want to use. But what are some other ways that you're trying to maintain some level of flexibility? I mean, you're building a brick and steel building. Yes. You can't change that, but how do you stay flexible and adapt to it? Well, so that's a great question. So what we're doing, the application and the mobile devices, that's the hero, that's what you hear about a lot. But what we're doing really to maintain this flexibility and to build things out is we're building a platform that integrates all the systems in the stadium from access and ticketing to point of sale devices to content creation and distribution, others in the future. We build APIs into those platforms. That goes into our platform. And that platform does two things. It exposes functionality to mobile applications in a clean, modern way and creates data for the enterprise in order to more effectively manage the operation. So as new capabilities come into the stadium or as we think about new services, we might bring in some new equipment. That isn't going to change what's already operating. That will integrate into the back end and will already have the capability to take the mobile application and extend it through that API as well as capture the data. So think about it like a platform that extracts away all those differences. Yeah, so one other thing I wanted to go back to, you mentioned getting that 360 degree view of the fan. Yes. And in the enterprise world, beyond sports, companies have been trying to get a 360 degree view of their customers for ages. That's the age old problem. Can you give some advice to your counterparts in other fields out there who are struggling with that? They've got data sources coming in, new data sources coming online. They've got silo data sources. How do you go about actually making that a reality? And is that more than just a technical question? Well, actually, I think there's probably a couple different parts. I think that you're right. There are plenty of enterprises that have tried to get that customer 360. And what I tell you is that, once again, I feel like we're coming along at the right time. There's a lot of data technology that's out there now today. A lot of it available based on open source platforms that we're taking advantage of to collate all this data. And so I feel like we're kind of coming along at the right time. And we're coming along at a time when I think professional sports executives are a lot more data minded now. They want- And real time. And real time, yeah. So they're a lot more mindful of that right now. So we have this willing appetite to both invest and consume in this data. I think what we really haven't seen yet though, is just how this data is going to be harnessing used across the enterprise. One of the things that I hear when I talk to team executives, not just to the 49ers, but other teams, is that they really want to use big data. They really want the fan 360, but they're not quite sure what they're going to do with it quite yet. So I think we still have a lot to learn. So Doug, let's talk about old technology. Bill Belichick would go in the stands with his camera. Yeah. Spy gate, well documented. What's to keep you guys from installing secret cameras in the stadium? Is there NFL all over this? Is there restrictions on the NFL around camera usage because of the spy gate situation? I couldn't recite all of them, but I know that one of the things that the NFL does, like every other league, is try to maintain that kind of competitive parity and make sure that that kind of thing isn't happening. So you're going to be talking like this the whole time? Well, that's why we do this, yeah. So not sure I could comment other than the NFL seems to be pretty on top of that. So you guys, you guys kind of watch that, but technically you could install some magical cameras and figure that out, zoom in on the playbook. But now they have all kinds of different signs. I can't confirm or deny. Doug, thanks for coming on the queue. I'll give you the final word. Vision for the future, what's your take on it? You know, Gideon, you X Facebook, Jed is very young guy, smart, young organization. Obviously the winning attitude you see from Jim Harbaugh, all through the organization. John Paul, another friend working with you on this mission project. You guys get technology. Yes. The future's bright. What do you think is going to happen? What's your prediction? Not to say specifically, but what's the future going to look like in five years from now for the Niners? What do you see the world unfolding into? Well, clearly I see us winning on the team, winning on the field with a great team that we have. You know, we talked a little bit about Big Data, Prog Morate, our COO, harnesses that big data all the time. And so things like time in the pocket, things like one of the statistically significant success factors of teams is less turnover. It's why you see us working so hard to re-sign players and coaches who are already with the team because it's been statistically proven that that produces winners. So we're already harnessing that data. Now what you're seeing the team do is harness technology to create a great fan experience. I think there's going to be something we do at Levi's that's going to be like that diamond vision screen out here. I was talking with Peter Uberoff, ex-commissioner of Major League Baseball, well-known business guy, head of the 1984 LA Olympics. And as I was telling him about what we're doing at Levi's Stadium, he said, you know, I can't say that I'm a huge user of mobile, but I do know this. It sounds an awful lot like when we were putting in the first diamond vision screen at Dodger Stadium. Everybody looked at it and said, man, it looks like you guys are going to a lot of effort to put that in a lot of money. Are you sure the fans really need it? And after the first season, every stadium said, we got to have one of those. So that's what we hope. Got to have one of those. And again, got to make better play calling on the one-yard line. Harboff, you're watching. You know, we love you. Please punch it in next time. Doug, seriously, thanks for coming on theCUBE, special broadcast. It's been a special broadcast of theCUBE here live at AT&T Park for big data in sports. Data SV, thanks for watching. And that's it for here. And that's a wrap here at AT&T Park. Thanks for watching.