StellarAlgo CEO Vince Ircandia Talks Utilizing Fan Data

FROM FRONT OFFICE SPORTS

Our CEO, Vince Ircandia, sat down with Front Office Sports to discuss the trends in data within the sports industry. From his time as an executive, to his role now as the Founder of the industry’s leading customer data platform, Vince shares what he sees as the most important aspects of technology in the coming year.

Edited highlights appear below:

On trends to watch in fan engagement (0:21)

“There’s a number of big trends that we see out there right now. First and foremost, I think the demand for data continues to just increase. Sports properties are trying to understand their audiences better. The brands that they work with in order to sell the products and create the experiences that are really valuable. They’ve got to understand those audiences better. So we see the demand really increasing and as a result teams are trying to put in those infrastructures in order to support the experiences that they have with fans on a more real-time basis.”

On the right kind of actionable data (4:25)

“There’s never too much [data], but there’s definitely a right kind and a wrong kind and for for us it’s about being able to go through those large data sets, and pull out the pieces that are interesting. When you look at things like economic data, as I mentioned, demographics, geographic, psychographic, you start to pull that in. Using the machine learning to be able to say how engaged the fan is, this is their overall affinity for my property, and then here are propensities for things that they might be interested in. The Netflixes and Amazons of the world have been doing this for a long time. They’ve gotten really good at it. But being able to cut through that data and saying, in that moment, let’s predict what this fan might be most interested in. And then once they engage with that content, being able to create that feedback loop is really where you create sort of a power pull”

On understanding how to act on fan data after collecting it (5:39)

“The industry continues to get more sophisticated. We see the teams making leaps and bounds in terms of the talent that they’re hiring and training, internally. But it’s a journey and understanding the processes that support making this data really valuable is something that I really can’t underscore enough. People talk a lot about the tools and the data outputs and the insights, but if you don’t have the processes in place and the best practices in order to really make that data insight valuable, it’s worthless, frankly.”

On collecting the right kind of data (6:28)

“The data collection front end is also an important part, if you’re not collecting the right data up front. We integrate with all the major CRM systems. So we see a lot of that data. Anybody that’s used to working in CRM knows that the data is sort of all over the place. So organizations get really good at budgeting and say, ‘well, my CRM licensing cost is X,’ but they never budget for the fact that you need to, you know, train your sales and service people who are entering that data. You need to make sure that you have processes in place to cleanse that data on a recurring basis. So if you don’t invest in those systems beyond just like a base license and costs, things break down. And so we’re really trying to make sure and help the industry to put in those best practices so they’re collecting data on their audiences, and then that data becomes valuable for them into the future.”