The following interview is part of our ongoing Expert Series that asks C-level professionals, team presidents, league executives, athletic directors and other sports influencers about their latest thoughts and insights on new technologies impacting the sports industry.
Name: Jody Mulkey
Company: Ticketmaster
Position: Chief Technology Officer
Jody Mulkey is the Chief Technology Officer at Ticketmaster. An accomplished technologist and inspirational engineering leader, he is known for building high performance systems and teams. Prior to Ticketmaster, the Texas native spent over 14 years at Shopzilla Inc, a leading source for connecting buyers and sellers online that reaches a global audience of over 40 million shoppers monthly.
As Chief Information Officer of Shopzilla, he led the overall the technology development and operations of the company. Part of the inaugural team at Shopzilla, then Bizrate and in the formative years, Mulkey built the company’s data systems, analytics, infrastructure and team from the ground up. He studied Business Administration at the University of Southern California with dual emphases in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems.
1) What utilization of technology in professional or college sports has recently blown you away and why?
This year, we began to see some very compelling and personalized in-venue experiences, driven by the convenience of mobile technology. A great example of this is through our partnership with the Orlando Magic. From the creation of a loyalty program to mobile in-seat purchase and delivery, everything is centered on delivering an incredible experience for fans at the game. And Ticketmaster is rolling out even more new technology for mobile as we speak to unlock amazing opportunities for fans in unprecedented ways. By connecting our clients with their fans in venue, our clients will be able to have much more personalized interactions to ensure their fans are getting exactly what they want, when they want it. The fan’s game experience will be better than ever through this combination of predictive analytics, marketing automation and Ticketmaster’s open platform.
2) If you had to invest in one technology that would change the ticketing industry, what would it be and why?
Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence is the technology that is changing our industry. It’s where we are already heavily investing and are continuing to double down on as a company. We started to build our Machine Learning platform five years ago, the cornerstone of which is our world class Data Science team led by John Carnahan of Fox Audience Network and Yahoo! Research fame. John and his team leverage the wealth of resources and data we have at Ticketmaster to create products to support the abuse prevention area of our business that focuses on battling bad actor bots and abusers of the ticketing system that work against our mission to get verified tickets into the hands of real fans.
The team is currently bringing a new product to the market that uses a proprietary algorithm that helps Ticketmaster and our clients ensure that we get tickets into the hands of real fans. After several recent launches, I was beaming with pride knowing that our team created the technology that allowed an artist’s dedicated fans direct access to tickets for the show.
3) If money were no object, what technology would you build or buy to help you do your job better?
Machine Learning is just the beginning…Artificial Intelligence is the future. Composing multiple ML models and using those to influence complex decision making has huge potential. Leveraging that knowledge to help our clients better price tickets is the obvious big win in the short-term, but it can reach much further than that.
Using Artificial Intelligence as a tool to create more personalized experiences for fans that help shape memories of a lifetime while also improving our clients’ bottom line is the ultimate win for the ticketing marketplace and the live event industry as a whole.
4) As a sports fan, what sports-related service, app, product, etc., could you not live without and why?
I’m an avid USC fan so I can’t live without my USC Trojans Gameday App. And now I can’t wait for the Rose Bowl this year — go Trojans!
5) If you had to project 20 years into the future, how will most fans purchase tickets to their favorite sports and entertainment events?
I project that “IOT” (Internet of Things) evolves to mean the Internet of Tickets. Whether it’s wearables, cars, clothes, retina scans or DNA, wherever technology takes us, all will be connected. Based on your set preferences and comfort level, we’ll know who you are and what you want when you walk in the door of any venue. Your preferred food and drink will be waiting for you at your seat, or created in real-time in front of you with nanotechnology.
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6) Give us your bold prediction about a form of technology that will be integral to purchasing tickets to sporting events over the next 12 months and why?
Live events are one of the most exciting things around, and yet live event ticketing has historically been behind the curve of consumer technology and needs — and it doesn’t need to be that way. Meaningful personalization on both the product and marketing side is an integral component of where we’ll see ticketing technology continue to grow in the next year. Why should you have to find events to go to or tickets to get in? Both of those should come to you. And once we know what you like (quantity, quality and a price range), that will happen automatically. At Ticketmaster, we’re leveraging our technology to enhance the entire ticketing process from discovery to purchase to the venue entry experience to ensure we get fans whatever they want, when and where they want it. This will evolve from a “nice to have” in limited venues to an everyday way of life for the live event attendee.