At Levi’s Stadium Thursday morning, San Francisco 49ers President Al Guido put out a call to every technologist present. The NFL franchise, he said, is hungry for innovation and craving partnership opportunities.
His call to action came during the kickoff keynote presentation of Horizon Summit, a two-day sports technology and analytics conference co-hosted by SportTechie and the San Francisco 49ers. SportTechie CEO Taylor Bloom moderated a conversation between Guido and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment CEO Scott O’Neil. Both are partners in Elevate Sports Ventures, a sports investment property and consulting company.
“Our business strategy team does an amazing job managing the brand, making sure the guest experience is fantastic, while also thinking about ways to leverage the opportunities we have in this market to partner with unbelievably smart companies to make us better every single day,” Guido said. “There’s a lot of great technologists in this room that we want to partner with.”
Guido, who has referred to the franchise he manages as a “sports and entertainment company,” and reiterated those sentiments again on Thursday, said the 49ers are looking for ways to grow their brand outside of the 10 or so regular season games they play, while simultaneously fighting to make the experience for core football fans better each time they enter the stadium.
“In the NFL, we put on 10 Super Bowls. We only have 10 opportunities to make sure everyone has a fantastic time If you miss on any one of those, you lose a fan forever,” he said.
The 49ers are focusing on expanding into verticals beyond football to further support and expand their business. As an example, Guido pointed to a stat he’d heard from partner company SAP (which provides the 49ers with their Executive Huddle analytics platform): 80 percent of SAP’s revenue now derives from verticals the company wasn’t in five years ago. The football team has invested in some 40 companies over the past two years through its venture arm, spanning a spectrum of products and services.
“Look, sports is also going to be driven by the four things we know: tickets, suites, sponsorship, and media,” he said. “But that’s not the only thing we should be doing in our world. We’re looking for people to help us build out other verticals. We’re not technologists day in, day out—we’re a sports team. So we want to partner with entrepreneurs.”
Guido pointed to “exciting opportunities” around gambling, licensing, and sponsorship as areas where the 49ers are hoping to advance ahead of the curve.
O’Neil had a similar view on how he runs Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. He defined the parent company of the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Devils, and Prudential Center as a “growth platform.”
“We have this platform to reach people that’s deeper and wider than any other business. People are paying you to wear your logo on their clothes. Could you imagine if there were 12 people assigned to cover your company every single day? Imagine if you had millions and millions of fans around the world who eat, sleep, and drink your brand. That’s what we have in the sports business,” O’Neil said. “I think that very basis gives you an opportunity to grow, learn and innovate.”
Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment is always “looking for holes in the market,” he said, and the company is looking for mutually beneficial partnerships in which startups can leverage its massive network of sports teams, esports teams, fans, and media properties.
“We’ve got great relationships with the leagues, we’re in multiple sports, football, esports, hockey, we have a basketball arena,” he said. “We can help companies get wider.”