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- [00:02]
A
Dive into the dynamic world of high school sports. Whether you're a seasoned athletic director, a newcomer to the field, or simply curious to learn more about this exciting profession, this podcast is your go to resource for inspiration, education, and a deeper understanding of the game changing decisions that shape the world of high school athletics. Welcome back to AD360. I'm Greg Vandermayt, and as always, I'm joined by my co host, Scott Rosenberg. And here we are again. Got another fall season upon us, another school year starting up. You know, athletic departments everywhere are either ramping up to get going or they're full tilt in the thick of things. Super excited to kick off another school year together with Scott. Scott, how are you feeling today?
- [00:45]
B
I'm great, man. It's definitely that time, right? The grind has started, I guess. I hope our smooth, melodic voices can calm some people down. Maybe on the way home, throwing the podcast on from a long day at work. And maybe listen to what we're talking about. Because both you and I know tough time of the year, but also really exciting time of the year, right? Like rebirth, renewal, ready to go.
- [01:13]
A
Yeah. I think that today's topic is going to be a fun one for us to cover because, you know, as we just alluded to, it's that time of year where ads are getting put to the test, pulled in multiple directions. But one thing that's really evolved in the space for athletic directors is how you can utilize data to prepare and make decisions for your department, for your schools, not just relying on traditional, you know, gut feeling or this is what we've always done. Now we can actually have some, some real numbers to help guide some choices. So today's episode, we're going to dive into how athletic directors can use data from ticket sales, streaming platforms, social media, et cetera, to. To make some more informed decisions about their program. So pretty, pretty excited to dive into this one with you today, Scott.
- [02:01]
B
Yeah, And I think the overarching question, you use the word informed, right? Is finding the balance between driven and informed. And we're all backseat drivers, right? Like we're sports fans and we'll watch like a professional manager and baseball or basketball coach or whatever, and like, we're sometimes second guessing what they do. And, you know, there's a lot of different styles out there. I'm, I'm in New York City. Like, I hear the New York Yankees manager get criticized for being too data driven sometimes. Um, I'm a Mets fan. Sorry, everybody. Right. But like, a lot of people think the Mets manager is actually Pretty good with deciding on like he is data informed, but he often throws in like what, what is that gut feeling? Right. And not just going with the numbers. So that's gotta be the most important thing people figure out for themselves. Like what are, who are you gonna be and what are you gonna do with the numbers?
- [02:58]
A
It lets you kind of be like a real life version of Moneyball. Right. Using baseball reference for you there. Well, if you're ready, Scott, I think we just kind of dive in and start chatting through this. I mean, I think we can kind of start with some of the basics, like how can ads utilize information and data points from their, their ticketing and concession data to really kind of make budget driven decisions.
- [03:22]
B
Yeah, I mean the great part about it is that you tend to have a good amount of like historical data. So you're not necessarily, or at least you build that up. You're not necessarily looking at like a one year, a one game kind of scenario when you're planning for things like security and staffing at games. Right. Like I would be looking at attendance from ticketing to decide, hey, like is this game, you kind of probably have that gut instinct like when do we get more people, when do we get less? Who's the rival? You know that. But hey, like if you really want to drill down to we need to have this much security per number of people in the event. Let me pre plan that based on the numbers themselves. If you're that budget perspective could be, listen, some athletic departments get to keep all of the attendance revenue coming in, some don't. But if you're one that does, it may help you start making some budgeting decisions for how you're going to spend that revenue. Right. Like I know that when we play school A, we're, we're going to do great. We average bringing in $6,000 for that game. I am now going to have approximately 6,000. It's been that same number for three straight years. I've got $6,000 to use on something else. So like I think that becomes important. And then you touched on concessions, right? Like when you think about using a platform like Gofan for concessions, you can, number one, I think you'll sell more. But number two, keeping track of stock or inventory is really helpful. Like hey, you know that you're selling more peanut M and Ms. Than regular M&M's and you gotta order more of one or the other and you got those trends and maybe you don't have as much waste at the end of the season because the way you order is more again, like data informed or data driven.
- [05:19]
A
I think that's a great, I think that's a great point, you know, because like, when you look at it from a concession standpoint, something that just kind of comes to mind is as an athletic director, you're kind of almost running your own little tiny convenience store and you have things that have shelf lives and you don't want to waste anything because if you go out and like the, the M M's analogy, right? Like, say it gets to a point where like, well, these no longer, I can't sell them. They're. They've been on the shelf for a couple years now. Nobody wants them anymore. Then they've just burned some money. And that may seem minimal when you're just looking at it from a small perspective like that, but it adds up, especially over the course of a given year and just kind of getting that visibility from your concessions piece, you can figure out what are your fans really having the appetite for and being able to kind of cater a little bit more towards your crowd and driving that concessions piece. Because if you're able to keep that for your athletic department budgets, that's a great way of kind of doing a passive fundraiser, if you will. And then also, I like when you're talking about the ticketing piece and you're looking at it from the perspective of we were able to, to keep that for the department, right? Like that, that went back to athletics. So that was a big part of what we did. And we wanted to make sure, you know, from a season ticket perspective, we were selling season tickets because that was a large money maker, especially for football and both basketballs. Looking at your schedule, making scheduling decisions, you know, trying to determine when's a good time to place homecoming and you have some historic data of teams that you've played, okay, this one, they don't, they don't travel well. We're not going to have as big of a crowd for that. Let's make sure that it's a, maybe a rivalry type game or something like that, or just having that ability to look back on how your sales have performed. I love the staffing piece of it, you know, because there's nothing worse than you think that you're going to have a small gate and it ends up, you know, being a much larger one and you don't have the staff there and it becomes a bad fan experience. Then you're in hot water with administrators and everything like that. So I do think that being able to go back and look at Your data and figuring out, from a scheduling, a staffing perspective, just an overall planning of the season and how you're going to really promote your games, too. You know, if you have big games, you know they're going to sell regardless. But it also lets you know, like, hey, this week, typically this, this matchup doesn't do very well at the gate. What are some additional things we can do to get information out there to really drive fan engagement? I think there's a lot of points that you can look at and all of which you just discussed. I think those are great jumping off points for initially looking at your events, utilizing that ticket data.
- [07:49]
B
Yeah. One thing I thought of as you were speaking. I agree, by the way, is, is like, even if you have capacity limits at your place, if you can look at historical data of how many people you're getting from the opponent coming in versus your home fans coming in, I mean, if you want to set capacity limits, if you want to be able to give a certain number of tickets away to the opposing school who's coming to you. Right. And use different codes or whatever that might be, and empower the opposing ad to figure out a way to, like, divide and share those tickets, that can even be helpful, too. And obviously with. With our platform, you can do that.
- [08:27]
A
Absolutely agree.
- [08:31]
B
Well, we, we talked about ticketing and concessions. What about streaming data? Anything that comes to mind how you might be able to use that data to make informed decisions.
- [08:41]
A
I think this is a great one because it provides you a little bit of a different perspective in how people are engaging with your events and your specific sport programs. So I think one thing that you could look at is just a comparison of live audience versus online viewers. And you can look at that by sport and try and determine what is driving a large amount of people that come in person or a large amount of people to view via streaming. There's going to be all sorts of external factors, like you may have a great matchup coming up and the weather is just not cooperating. You're probably going to see a huge spike in your streaming numbers because there's going to be those folks who are like, I don't want to sit in a cold, rainy game. I'm going to watch it and stream it at home. But there may be some programs where they just prefer the streaming element of it, or you may have programs where the time in which they're competing really drives the streaming rather than the in person, just because, you know, families aren't able to make it at specific times. If you've got contests that are like right after school, finding out who has like your. What programs have strong digital audiences, so you can kind of cater more towards how they're consuming your events and information about those programs. I think also on top of that, you can use that to kind of guide your scheduling of your contests, your promotion efforts. You know, are you going to be really pushing more information about streaming because you see that they are streaming heavy, or you're wanting to try and figure out ways to connect and get people in person, you know, and then it always does extend that visibility for a program. Right. You're able to get that out to not only your campus community, but also, you know, those that are outside of your area. And I think one area that as we were going through and kind of looking at these questions that I thought of was if you're leveraging sponsorships within your organization, like within your athletic department organization, you can provide tangible numbers to be able to place some ads on your streaming, like with the network, and you have those watermark ads that you can place there. You can actually go and have legitimate conversations with companies and talk through them and be like, hey, for these events, here's how many streams we typically have. And you can determine and truly evaluate the value of each ad. So I think there's a lot of very important information that's available from your streaming data. You just gotta be able to roll up your sleeves, kind of dive into it and look at it on a program by program basis is kind of my thoughts. How about you, Scott?
- [11:15]
B
I love what you said. I love the advertiser perspective too. Right. Like, where's the return on your investment to be placed on a stream? I think that becomes huge. I also really like that timing of the game point. It made me think of a scenario where like, what's the right time to play certain games? There's a push and pull for the timing of games, I'm sure, not just where I lived, which was like academics. And is a game better to be played at 4 o' clock than 7 o' clock and get kids home so that they're doing their. They have maybe more time to do their work. Is it better at 7 o' clock? And then there's a referee kind of situation where like I remember basketball tough, right? Like most schools were playing seven o'. Clock. A referee assigner said, hey, can you guys play some four o' clock games varsity? Because I can get the Official to a 4 o' clock game to refle varsity game and then I can send that same official down the road to officiate a 7 o' clock varsity game and having numbers behind you like from streaming. Well, listen, when between attendance and streaming, when our games are at 4 o', clock, we get this many people in to watch games either live or via streaming versus we don't get that same attendance. And I know people are missing it maybe. Or I've got to push people to streaming versus being there in person at this time versus this time. So I think you can like sort of start making at least an argument for or against changing things up or what time you might put those, those specific games in. I also think there's like student broadcast programs where maybe you're choosing like one game a year per sport to have a student run broadcast. Well, which ones get the most like streaming numbers? Right? Like maybe I'm going to plug in a student run broadcast when I know historically that in October or versus this opponent we get a lot more streaming numbers than in the past because I want to highlight my kids doing their own broadcast. So maybe it's a little bit of a nuance, but like why not use that data to inform that kind of decision too?
- [13:36]
A
I love that student broadcast piece of it too. Because that's a promotional element for one of the programs within your school. Right. And in this day and age, I mean everyone is trying to promote their overall campus environment to draw and market towards students that want to attend there. Right. And what better way, especially those that are interested in broadcast media then finding that key contest that you know there's going to be a lot of eyes on you. Highlight your kids that are in the program. I love that idea. I think that's a great way of approaching it. All right, so next one, you're a little bit more of a savant on this than I am. How can ADS really harness social media analytics to increase fan engagement?
- [14:21]
B
I think it's just simply understanding the numbers and where you want to put your time, like which type of platform. We all know they. These are completely limited in time. So like, I mean we talked about this. At some point we started getting a huge Twitter or X following at a certain time of that platform. And I was communicating like a hundred percent. That was my social media platform. But then, and I had like our student athletes on there, I had our parents on there, I had our alumni on there. You could see it was following you. And then I just started seeing that fall off a bit as I got towards the end of my tenure, you know, and then it was like, well, why Am I going to do Twitter takeovers from kids when maybe it should have been on Instagram? Am I getting the parents looking on Facebook and the kids looking on Instagram? Should I be looking at TikTok? Right. So I think it's just more a matter of like where are the eyes? You always want to meet the kids, the parents, the communities where they live, as we always talk about. So where are they living on social media? And then you want stuff to go as I don't know if anything I ever did was viral, but you want other people to promote your stuff. So if I'm posting things on a platform where parents or alum can basically repost that, retweet whatever you want to call it, and it's getting out to a wider audience than just those who are looking at us, that's a win because it's all about communication, celebration and things like that. So like, let's just spend my time wisely on social media. That's the way I would look at it.
- [16:01]
A
I really like the point of like you're talking about how in the beginning you saw like a surge, right? I think that, I mean, I'll use myself as an example. You just get, you get a little bit complacent with it and you're like, oh, okay, we're getting some good traction here and you just continue doing what you've always done. But social media is ever evolving, right? And I like the points that you're saying, like you gotta kind of take a little bit of a dive into your platforms that you're utilizing and seeing where you're getting the most traction. That's where you need to put most of your efforts because it continues to evolve. You know, like there was X back in the day and that was huge. And then it started transitioning of the other platforms. And I like where you're saying you got to meet them where they live. Because not only is it good for you to be able to get that marketing information out in front of the student population, the fan base, et cetera, but it's also now you know that you have the proper channels that you're going through to get that information out, you do have to take a little bit of time to analyze what's the most effective, where do you have the most following, where are you getting the most engagement. And that's probably where you're going to want to steer your efforts. And that doesn't mean that that doesn't change over time. But I think that it's such an ever evolving Piece, you got to kind of keep tabs on it to ensure that you are putting your efforts in the right areas, if you will.
- [17:12]
B
Yeah, agree. I love it. All right, so now we're talking. We've talked a little bit about it, but maybe we expand on this attendance piece. Anything besides what we already mentioned that you can think of for utilizing this data analytics in terms of attendance at games patterns?
- [17:31]
A
Yeah, I think so. I mean, like, I really think that the first one that just stands out is like year over year, attendance by sport, by season, you know, trying to identify any type of trends. Like if you're increasing your attendance, it allows you to kind of dive in and be like, what are we doing better? You know, obviously again, going back to there's certain external circumstances that you're not going to always be able to control. You may have had a star recruit one year that really drove attendance for, you know, lacrosse and then they've graduated and moved on. And not as many people are coming out to the contest because they're not going to be able to see that individual anymore. But I think it gives you some good visibility as to how your individual programs are doing in person. Attendance, that's always huge because you want to make sure that you're getting that gate. But then also you're kind of looking at it from a streaming perspective. Is there an ebb and flow? Like are we down in person? But we had bad weather and we're up on streaming and just kind of analyzing that. And then as you alluded to earlier, you can make informed decisions as you're getting ready for the season and planning out your budgets for your staffing, for gate attendance, security, you know, if you have to have, you know, parking concerns, you know, it helps you estimate what a given crowd size is going to be year over year for those contests. Now there's always going to be the outliers. You know, you have a non league contest, somebody you've never played before, you don't know how that's going to go. But for the lion's share, you can look at a majority of your scheduling over the years and get an idea. And also, I mean, talking about like that, that staffing adjustment, like if you have sports that aren't demanding as many personnel, that becomes a cost savings to the department. Right? You don't want to just put people in dollars out there just because that's what you've always done. It allows you to really evaluate that. And then one last one that kind of came to mind to me is as you're evaluating these, especially in person attendance trends, does it then give you some ammunition if you're trying to do some facility upgrades? You know, maybe we need to improve the bleachers. Maybe, you know, we're seeing that night games are doing really well, but our lighting is not great. And it gives you some ammunition to go and have those conversations with the administration of, here's where we need to start making some facility improvements because we're seeing legitimate growth in this area and it allows you to have that information readily available to back up what you're requesting. And it's not just saying, hey, I want to. I want to add more bleachers. Well, why? Here's why. Over the past four years, here's what our attendance has done. So I think that those data points really give you some good, hard data to go and have conversations with the decision makers within your school community. How about yourself?
- [20:18]
B
Yeah, I love that. That last piece really resonated with me about, like, facility planning or being able to have those numbers, like, go to your business administrator. And yeah, oftentimes you might hear no is the first answer, which is normal. But I think that's me when my kids ask me for money. First is no, and then it's, well, give me some data to back that up. Right. Why do you need that? So, like, having that as your second part of the conversation becomes, like, really smart to use those, man. Greg, you ever remember being a student in class and you're like, you have this great answer and you're hoping that the kid who raises their hand first doesn't say that so that you can get that answer out? I feel like you just did that to me because you covered a lot of what I would have would have answered. So, man, the only thing I might add to that is we were a small school and didn't always have great crowds at games. And like, I was cognizant of. Think about, like, a basketball game. We had two sides, like two sets of bleachers, you know, behind the student athletes, not behind the student athletes. Like, I would oftentimes try and keep fans away from behind the teams if I could. Right? Like, why have that distraction? Why have somebody yelling, parent. Yelling at a coach or something, like, while they're trying to. So I would maybe lean towards getting them across the gym. But if I knew from the data that, like, we're always busy when we play this school, like, I'm gonna have to open up those bleachers from the start as opposed to wait or add seating or something. Like that it would be good to kind of look at those trends and, and know that from the past that.
- [22:02]
A
I just had a similar moment there because as you were saying, that the wheel started spinning on my end. Thinking back to the facility team, who is so amazing that I worked with when I was there, and you can save them some heartache because we always had to pull and push in bleachers for various events. And if I knew, hey, this is going to be, this is going to be a small draw. Let's, let's not have you guys spend this time pulling out both sets and doing all this. Let's make it a little bit easier. Let's drop the curtain, only have one side open. That's a great point. That's really a good point.
- [22:29]
B
Thanks.
- [22:32]
A
So how do you really strike the right balance between, you know, data driven decisions and also just trusting your instinct, the institutional knowledge that you gather over the years of being in the position. What's the balance between that? Kind of a loaded question.
- [22:48]
B
I don't know. Like, I don't know. I think personally that I'm a big sort of like gut instinct person in general, you know, like when you're hiring staff, like, you look at resumes, a lot of them look the same. You get them in the office and like, you just feel like that's the right person for the job and you can't always even say why. So, like, that data informed mantra to me is, is where I lean as opposed to like data driven. I also think there's probably an aspect of seniority on the job, how long you've been doing something that would come into play. Like you may need to be more data driven at the beginning just because you may not have the right gut instincts or trust them yet until you've been doing the job for a little bit. So it probably changes a little bit over time. And I mean, what's crazy is just how much more data we have access to now. So even like three years ago, I may not have trusted the data or I may not have thought the data was valuable enough and now it's like, I mean, you have availability for so much great data analytics info that you'd be crazy not to use it in some way. How about you, G?
- [24:15]
A
You know, I like the phrase data informed. You know, I think that that's a good way of approaching it because as you get that knowledge and you know, on the job experience year over year, you can identify the outliers. Right? Like, oh, okay, yeah, we had a great crowd this year. For that contest. But this is why, and it may be a multitude of reasons, maybe that team was really good that year for the first time in many years, etc. But like, using more of a data informed approach as you have that, you know, institutional knowledge that you gain year over year and doing the job and learning more about how your campus environment and community receives things, I think it's a good way to go back and help you validate decisions as well. Like, you may have your gut instinct of this is what we're going to do, but rather than just going with that, be like, but let's just check the data points real fast to make sure that this is trending the correct way. And I'm making the best informed decision. So I really do like that rather than just being straight numbers, this is what we're doing based off of what year over year says. Also just kind of having that anecdotal experience from on the job training of like, yes, it was this way for these past two years, but we're going to see a dip because of X, Y and Z. I think it's a combination of the two. I really agree with you a lot on that front.
- [25:29]
B
Good stuff for sure, man. All right, let's talk a little bit about measuring, like, the broader program influence or impact, like on the school, on the community in general, what data points might help you measure that.
- [25:50]
A
You know, I think when you're looking at it just from a ticketing perspective, you can see how well your student participation within that program is. And I'm not just talking about, like, they're playing the sport. I'm talking about, like, how involved are the students with each program? How informed are they about each program, the contests that are taking place? Because I know, like, not everywhere is like this. Where I was at, we had different ticket types. And then you could make the decisions based upon that. Like, hey, you know, we got a ton of adult tickets that are selling well. That makes sense because, you know, you got kids that are playing, families are showing up. What's. What do our student tickets look like? You know, are we getting a good draw from the student section? It's pretty easy to stare up in the stands and be like, yeah, it looks pretty good. But a lot of times I remember myself, I'd be on the field and I'd look up and be like, oh, that's pretty. Pretty decent night. And then I'd go back and I'd look at the numbers and like, wow, we were actually way lighter in the student section than I Thought it was just the perspective that I had on the field wasn't giving me the best viewpoint of how things are going. Right. So making that decision, I think it also, outside of just your, your typical streaming, ticketing, you know, athletic department numbers, I think it's also good to kind of touch point with your colleagues across campus and figure out, you know, talking with your academic advisors and counselors, how's our academic performance amongst the student athletes looking? And then to your earlier point, you know, talking about game times and shifting those, like, hey, we had a bunch of late games, and I'm starting to see this team's GPA is not doing as good as it was year over year. Maybe we need to bump some of those contest times back so they have more time to dive in to the most important piece of being a student athlete, which is the student portion of it. And then I would also say, you know, it, it gives you the ability to kind of look at the community engagement as well. You know, if, if you're leveraging, like the sponsorship piece that we spoke about, you know, like there's, there's the ability for, for ad sales and ticketing and streaming and things like that. What type of community involvement are you getting there? Is that something that you're doing a great job of, or is that something where you want to try and leverage some of the tools that are available and maybe have someone do that for you, you know, and release that and be like, hey, you know, I want to release my ad sales to a Go fan or to the network to try and get some more sponsorship dollars there and do more of a revenue share split and those types of things. I think it gives you a pretty broad scope of how you can look to engage with the data points and figuring out where you can make some decisions. There's really no limit to what you can look at. Cause there's data points for everything. It's just a matter of how you consume them and what, what you truly value out of it. How about yourself?
- [28:40]
B
Yeah, I think I would say, like, you could drill down to who are you and what do you want through these platforms, right? Like, you could require questions to be answered when you're selling a ticket. Just as an example, right. Like, so it could be you talked about your students. Awesome. Let's see how many students come in. But what if you want to know how freshmen are getting to games versus how many seniors now? Could they fill that out incorrectly? Right. And say, I'm a junior when I'm assault. Of course they can but in general, like, hey, not only are students getting to the games, but is four o' clock a better time? Do you play another sport? Are you an in season athlete? Should I be moving my games later so I can get more of my in season athletes there? Do kids have to get a ride home? Do they need to get a ride back if it's at night? So I'm getting less kids back for a game at 7 o' clock than 4 o' clock because they've got to get home first and then get back. So like, I think you can become pretty informed that way just to help get more people, you know, in the stands. When I think about streaming, I might think about like, well, how far away are people watching from, like how much outside the zip code is happening because of streaming and what value does that bring to those people, whether it's family members, alumni and stuff like that. And I think that can help you become better informed with some decisions as well. So there's a lot of tools out there. You just got to figure out which ones. And again, if you ask the right questions, then you've got some more access to data points as well.
- [30:14]
A
I like the additional information piece. You know, when you're trying to gauge what students are, like, what class are they, you know, do you have a ton of sophomores? Why aren't your juniors showing up? And it gives you a little bit of insight as to additional questions that you could be asking. And there's so many different ways in which you could use that additional information to drive and pique interest about things. I mean, like something that just popped in my mind is like, you could put a simple question on there as a couple options. What would you like to see as like the halftime contest, you know, to really drive some student engagement and possibly getting more people out to the stands. There's really a ton of different ways in which you can leverage that. So I like those points.
- [30:54]
B
I think that's a great way of looking concessions. Like, think about, hey, I'm. I'm going to have a special item on the menu tonight. Which would you prefer? Sausage pizza. I'm getting hungry, man. Like sausage or empanadas or, you know what I mean? Like you could even ask that and figure out, hey, for that special item at that game, I'm going to bring in a little bit more of this.
- [31:13]
A
So that's awesome. So from a, from a platform and tools perspective, what do you view has been like the most helpful in collecting and analyzing data for your athletic department? Like, is there Any specific ones you call out or they're, you know, just a litany of them that you've utilized in the past?
- [31:35]
B
Well, I mean, one of the things that I thought we would talk about, maybe not right now, but it's in a later question, would just start to be like player data, performance data and stuff like that. Touch on that one a little bit. But I think those can be really valuable, selfishly. Like, we talking about streaming data, ticketing data for all the things that we discuss. So those are like one and two in general. And then you might think about something like surveys. So, you know, some people believe in surveys after for their student athletes, for their parents. Are they anonymous surveys, are they not? But I just think surveys in general can really help you collect some great data points. And then you decide, are you driving decisions or are you becoming informed to make decisions based on that data? So I like surveys a lot.
- [32:26]
A
I'd agree with you there. I think that that's a key point, that it allows you to get more information from those that are engaging with your events. Like, the survey element's always great. I look back to like, there was platforms that were outside of like, your athletic operation realm, if you will, for like, injury report tracking, you know, how's athletic training performing? And then there's, you know, some. Some schools are able to and programs have the ability to invest in, you know, performance tracking. You know, are kids getting overworked. Your strength and conditioning departments, they have different platforms of kind of gauging, you know, how. How rested kids are and catering towards those needs. So I think there's a lot of different ways that you can look at different platforms, whether it be from your attendance, your streaming, you know, surveys to gathering that information. Athletic performance recovery. So there's, there's a lot of different tools and platforms out there. But again, it becomes what is valuable to you and what do you think is going to have the most uplifting and kind of identifying those is kind of my thought process on that front.
- [33:35]
B
Agree, man. It's. It's a large world out there of data, and you can definitely utilize that if you put the time in and know how to use it. All right, we're always talking about, like, what to do, what not to do. Biggest mistakes you or you could think about ads make with data, maybe more so at the beginning than later. But like, just what mistakes do you see people making when it comes to using analytics?
- [34:04]
A
I think there's a couple, you know, I think too many metrics. Instead of focusing on, like some key Trends. Like if you're just looking at associating numbers with every single thing, you're going to get lost in the weeds because you're going to start trying to determine what is the root cause of so many different metrics that may not directly tie into what your end goal is. And I think that kind of is a long winded way of saying looking at numbers without having proper context. You know, I think if you're, if you're just looking at data numbers and not really having any context behind it. And I know I've probably belabored this point on this conversation, but like, if I'm just looking at it and like, wow, our attendance really took a hit with, since it's fall right now, let's say it's, it's, say it's football, right? Football really took a hit this year in our attendance numbers. Well, you know, there was a La Nina effect all throughout the fall and it's a Southern California school that's getting hammered with rain. If you're not taking out, taking into consideration some of those outside factors and you're just staring at the numbers, you really don't have the true context of it. So it may be an external factor outside of your control and not a lack of interest. So I would definitely say trying to look at too many metrics and not trying to focus in on what the key trends you're wanting to identify are. And then, you know, a big value comes in, consistency of tracking. You know, like if you're going to be utilizing data for data informed decisions, then you need to consistently collect data. Otherwise you're just randomly pulling reports and going like, oh, okay, well let's just do this. It's like you're kind of shooting in the dark and don't know what you're aiming at. So I think there's a few mistakes that can be made with it, but there's a great value and just determining, you know, who do we want to be, what do we want to identify? What are the key metrics associated with that and really focus in on those. And when you have those down pat, maybe start expanding. You know, just don't try and eat an elephant all in one sitting, right? You want to really kind of focus in and get a good determination of what you're trying to determine with it. How about you?
- [36:14]
B
The only thing I could do is accentuate what you just said because I think it was really smart, right? Like too many measures can be a problem. Making sure you have context for the data that you get out of it. And I really liked what you said about consistency, right? Like, you need to be consistent in the way you use it across different programs. Otherwise there's bias implicitly built into it because you're using it maybe only to benefit you as opposed to make sure that you're honestly looking at the data to maybe get some answers that you would prefer not to hear. But we gotta be our own biggest, like, critics, right? Like, you have to be. I love this coach, I love this program. I love the way we approach this personally. But a lot of times the numbers don't lie. And so you've got to be honest with yourself, with the stuff that comes to you that you may not want to see.
- [37:19]
A
It's like that. I might bastardize the phrase, but the old phrase was like, there's liars, damn liars and statisticians. It's like if you're not being consistent with it and to your point, I think that's a great point. When you're only looking at it to validate something rather than using it to unfortunately at times have those hard, whether they're internal conversations with yourself or if they're with the programs of what's taking place, really wholeheartedly agree with you there. Like the consistency piece. You can't use it just off of emotions. You have to look at it consistently and make informed decisions based upon it. All right, well, as we wrap up, let's kind of look ahead. Let me ask you this. What are some emerging data sources that you think are going to be really the most valuable for athletic directors in the coming years?
- [38:13]
B
Wish I could say, because I'd probably make a lot of money if I could be the full crystal ball on this. But I mean, listen, I start thinking, like, how do you use data for your scheduling? You mentioned scheduling for, like, what game to have here. But what if it's just your independent schedule in general? Like, I want to look at five years of data on this school and this opponent because I've got to make some decisions on who do I play. How does that affect PowerPoints? Right? Like, how do I. Somebody would probably not be happy with me saying it this way, but like, like, how do I manipulate the schedule to best give my teams the best advantage, to get PowerPoints, to qualify for a state tournament, to get a better seat? Like, those things in the end matter. And the more data that you have, the more, like, decision making you can make for those type of things. I am completely enamored by performance data at this point, you know, and for Coaches to be able to utilize for phys ed teachers to be able to utilize like effort and training methods. As you mentioned before. Gosh, my, my little, my guy soccer player, like on the cleats, there's a tool that they can use to talk about like how many times did you use your left foot versus your right foot in today's game? What was your top rate of speed? How many times did you touch the ball? Like literally, you can track that. For my 11 year old, what you do with, what you do with it, right, Becomes like the good, the bad, the evil part of it, I guess you would say. But having that as a tool, it's crazy to me, man. I'll throw in like AI and utilizing stats to create articles. We've talked about that a little bit, right? Like, hey, let me use data and stats to create articles to post on social media, to post on my website. Max preps, right? Like player pages and player analytics and being able to maybe like figure out who are the best players. Do leagues and conferences start using some more metrics to decide on all conference, all state and stuff like that? Of course, those are the situations when I feel like just being informed is important because there's a lot of metrics you can't measure. But those are some of the things I see as trends and I'm really interested in seeing moving forward. How about you, man?
- [40:54]
A
I really like the stats piece, you know, because I think that that is going to continue to grow and evolve at a really rapid rate. Not only just for like the individual player stats and being able to, to help that student athlete promote themselves from a recruiting perspective. Additionally too, when you're looking at it from a rankings element, then you can really get a better idea of how, how teams are truly performing. I love the performance piece because that is something I'm just like you. I find it absolutely amazing because you've seen that, you see, we've seen it in the professional realm for some years now where it's like, okay, they have a mandatory rest day because they've been taking these analytics and determining like, okay, they're overworked. We need to get some recovery in there. We're starting to get in that red zone. We don't want to get them injured. And there's more and more companies that are coming out with that used to be way too expensive for even colleges at a certain point in time to engage in that. And they found ways to get the similar data points but not having to have as much expensive equipment. I saw one recently That I thought was amazing. It was for weight room and it was. Rather than assigning percentages and training loads, it was essentially like an app that was utilizing a camera on your iPads and iPhones and it was measuring the velocity of the movement itself. Like, how fast is the bar moving? Oh, it's too heavy for you today. We got to go down. You know, I think that there's more and more data points from a performance perspective that we're going to continue to see and more and more data points from stat collection, team rankings, everything like that. So it'll be pretty interesting to see in, in the coming years of how this all operates.
- [42:35]
B
I'm. I'm completely enamored by it. And I think your point of, like, pro level, you know, think about our ticketing and live streaming. Right? Like, everything started at the pro level.
- [42:47]
A
Yeah.
- [42:48]
B
Kind of came down to the college level. We've brought it to the high school level. We're going to be bringing it to the youth level. But it's crazy how like a youth or high school player can have a lot of that same data and analytics as the pros. And then safety. You mentioned safety. Right? Like, what could be more important than that? And so being able to utilize some of that data and make sure we're keeping kids safe, not injured, overuse, that kind of stuff is huge.
- [43:22]
A
I completely agree with you. You know, I think there's a lot of great things that you can take and leverage from data. I think this has been a fantastic conversation. Hopefully this has been helpful for athletic directors that are trying to lean in a little bit more towards data informed. I'm stealing that from you, Scott. I like data informed decision making processes, but really enjoyed this episode with you today, Scott.
- [43:42]
B
Me too, man. It's here. So let's figure out how to help people and share what works best.
- [43:50]
A
Absolutely agree. Well, folks, we really appreciate you tuning in, listening through this conversation on data points today. If you liked what you heard today, make sure you follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from so you don't miss any new material and episodes. With that said, from A.D. 360, I'm Greg Vandermayde.
- [44:07]
B
Scott Rosenberg.
- [44:08]
A
Until next time, folks.