– Taking the shot. Technology is rapidly changing sports—from mobile sports betting to the fan experience on the ground. One model for the high-tech future of the fan experience is in Los Angeles, at the 1-year-old Intuit Dome.
Halo Sports and Entertainment, owned by LA Clippers owner and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, opened the facility last year. Longtime Clippers exec Gillian Zucker became Halo’s CEO after its launch. She told my colleague Kristin Stoller at Fortune’s COO Summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., yesterday about implementing tech—including facial recognition—throughout NBA fans’ experience.
The Intuit Dome opened with an atypical ticket policy—requiring visitors to have their own tickets on their own phones. Without that change, much of the experience Halo wants to build wouldn’t be possible. When one person scanned four tickets on behalf of their group, the company was missing out on information about those other three customers or fans, Zucker says. “Everybody wishes they could know everything about their customers,” she says. “We essentially [knew] 25% of the people who are coming in.”
That friction has taken some getting used to for fans, but it gave Halo more information, paving the way for hyper-personalization. Its tech tracks decibel levels at each individual seat—allowing the Clippers to award the loudest fan in the arena at each game. Emerging tech also allows visitors to look at a screen when they enter and be greeted, by name—with every fan seeing something different. “It’s exciting enough that it gets people to engage with their face ID,” Zucker says.
While that might sound like a lot of personal data being recorded just for attending a basketball game, Zucker argues that consumers are comfortable with tech—when it’s not called “facial recognition.” When asked about that technology, they say, “I want nothing to do with it,” Zucker says. “We say, how do you feel about Clear? They say, ‘I love Clear,'” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- It ends here? Justin Baldoni’s $400 million lawsuit against Blake Lively was dismissed by a judge. The countersuit followed Lively’s own lawsuit and allegations of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us, which Baldoni has continued to deny. Reuters
- Problems at home. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has a new book out and a documentary about her premiering soon. While she continues to be admired on the world stage, the former PM faces resentment and anger at home in New Zealand. This piece asks: “Why did New Zealand turn on Jacinda Ardern?” The New Yorker
- Her story. In her new documentary Call Her Alex, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper alleged that her former female college soccer coach sexually harassed her. The disclosure follows Cooper’s partnership with the National Women’s Soccer League earlier this year, which Cooper said at the premiere was an effort to reclaim her relationship with the sport. Boston University coach Nancy Feldman and the University did not respond to a request for comment. The Cut
- Final bow. Misty Copeland, the first Black woman to be a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, is retiring after 25 years with the company. “I’ve never felt like I’ve gotten to this place and [been] given this opportunity because I am the best Black dancer to ever exist,” Copeland told the New York Times. “I was the first at American Ballet Theater to be given an opportunity.”
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Airbnb named Rebecca Van Dyck CMO. Previously, she was COO, Reality Labs at Meta.
SurveyMonkey named Meera Vaidyanathan chief product officer. Most recently, she was global VP of product management and design at Twilio.
Gen Phoenix, a sustainable materials developer, appointed Elizabeth Cowper as chief people officer. She was previously CEO at We Are Ludo, which she founded.
ON MY RADAR
How politics and image control destroyed the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative San Francisco Standard
The stunning decline of the preference for having boys The Economist
How underpaid are WNBA players? It’s embarrassing New York Times
PARTING WORDS
“I always say to everybody here, ‘When you make something that matters, you make money.’ It’s not about making money first, it’s about making something that matters to people and then you’ll be successful.”
— Gail Federici, founder of John Frieda Professional Hair Care, on growing Color Wow—which Forbes estimates is worth around half a billion dollars
