Atlanta Braves Win Horizon Summit Data Visualization Contest


Justin Haffad of the Atlanta Braves won the Horizon Summit data visualization challenge at Levi’s Stadium on Friday with the design of a Tableau dashboard that allows sales representatives to more efficiently meet with their different clients.

Haffad’s entry beat out two dozen other other submissions from a range of different companies, teams, and leagues. The data visualizations spanned topics from fan engagement and feedback to email marketing and venue operations, and included both seat maps and new tools.

The Braves’ eight-person membership services team is incentivized to organize out of office meetings with the team’s business accounts, but working out how to plan those meetings efficiently can be a challenge. Haddad embedded a Google Map within a Tableau dashboard to help solve this problem. Filters can now adjust which accounts show on the map according to metrics such as which are the highest spending, which are newer or older, and which have been recently visited. A planned route can then be exported to a phone.

“Reps are able to design a route where they are minimizing time and distance and don’t have to zig-zag over Atlanta when visiting accounts,” Haddad explained.

Future upgrades may include looking at how engaged accounts are (whether they are using their tickets to attend games), whether customers have had a bad experience, and whether an account is at risk of not renewing.

The other entrants for the data visualization contest included:

  • SSB: SSB’s feature importance dashboard allows a user to understand the role that different engagement touchpoints have in determining whether a fan might, for example, buy basketball season tickets, or sign up to a flexible football ticket plan.
  • San Diego Padres: The Padres created a visualization of Petco Park that can be used to understand which seating areas and tickets have views of different marketing assets within the stadium, essentially tracking the in-venue impressions of different advertisements.
  • StellarAlgo: StellarAlgo’s customer data platform helps live audience business customers, including sports teams and venues, to better understand and connect with their fans.
  • ARIVAL: Arival uses augmented reality to visualize team and player data in order to boost fan engagement. Graphics can be overlaid on a view of the outside world seen through the screen of a mobile device.
  • KORE Software: KORE worked with the Oklahoma City Thunder over the last two NBA seasons to understand to flow of tickets as they may be resold, forwarded, or donated, and then whether those tickets are ultimately used to attend a game or not.
  • National Football League: The NFL analyzed the social media posts and digital engagement of its fans, understanding whether posts were positive or negative, identifying the social groups sparking conversation, and looking at the platforms and products that drove engagement.
  • National Hockey League: The NHL built an interactive net gate revenue dashboard to better understand revenue trends across its 31 clubs over the last four years, and help those clubs evaluate their businesses.
  • Oakland Athletics: The A’s built a Tableau-powered dashboard to better keep track of sales leads. Being able to view all of the sales statistics and goals in one place can significantly improve efficiency as each of the team’s sales reps has roughly 425 open leads at a time.
  • Washington Nationals: The Nationals compared the number of tickets remaining in various stadium areas at Nationals Park with a demand index for those tickets over a 50-day span leading up to a specific game.
  • Wells Fargo Center: The home of the Philadelphia Fliers tracked a happiness index of fans interacting with various different guest services including all of the arena’s restrooms, concessions stands, and retail stores, and used the data gathered to quickly correct issues.

This content is part of our coverage of Sporttechie and the San Francisco 49ers’ Horizon Summit. SportTechie organizes regular events that bring together innovators, investors, and key decision makers from across the world of sports technology. Find out more about future events here.