The AI Obsession is Real: And It’s Going to Win the Next Five Years in Sports Business
For the last couple of weeks, I've been consumed. Not by a new podcast or a binge-worthy show, but by a new "sickness": AI.
My obsession isn't with the "ooh, this is neat" factor. I’m not making AI videos of dogs surfing. It's an operational one. It's about a fundamental question: How can we make AI work with teams and operators to make them better at their jobs and make decisions faster?
Right now, AI in sports lives on one of two extremes: all-hype ("AI will change everything") or skepticism ("we can't use AI"). Most operators I talk to are somewhere in the middle—curious but overwhelmed, using tools like ChatGPT like a glorified Google search, unsure of where it fits into their day-to-day.
Moving Beyond the Hype: Practical Application
I'm not a tactical person who can build massive apps. My focus has always been on practical application. That's why I've been heads-down for the last few weeks, building, testing, breaking, and rebuilding workflows using 19 years of my own operational data—from pre-COVID notes to first-week internship insights.
The goal? To take all our normal game-day information—attendance, promotions, staffing notes, ticket sales, F&B numbers, walk-up patterns—and turn it into usable operational insight.
This is not another dashboard. This isn't a report that sits in a folder you email to the owner every Monday. These are insights you can get the next morning, the week before, or even a month out to:
Project Revenues: Based on your schedules and historical performance.
Identify Opportunities and Shortcomings: Highlighting revenue growth areas and operational gaps.
Perform Post-Event Autopsies: Understanding why a game performed the way it did—beyond the final attendance number. Why did walk-ups spike? How did a specific promotion influence buying behavior? Was staffing aligned with demand?
AI is Decision Support, Not Staff Replacement
Let me be clear: None of this is about replacing staff. We are not going to replace sales reps, customer service reps, or your promotions team with AI. That's a huge misconception.
This is about automation for the sake of efficiency.
It’s about removing guesswork from environments that have historically relied on experience, memory, instinct, and "gut feel." Those things matter—they will always matter—but they are exponentially more powerful when paired with fast, clear feedback loops.The Real Problem is Translation
The reality is, most teams don't have a data problem. We have ticketing systems, F&B systems, CRMs, and staff with data in their heads.
We have a translation problem.
The information is all around us, but it’s fragmented. It lives in five systems, three spreadsheets, and in someone’s head—institutional knowledge that is instantly gone if that person walks away. By the time we pull it all together, the moment to act has passed. You cannot adjust your season at the end-of-year retreat; it’s already too late.
AI, when used correctly, becomes the translator. It connects:
What happened
Why it happened
What are we going to do next
Not in a theoretical sense, but in an operational one.
It helps the Sales Director know which upcoming games deserve focus today.
It helps the Ops Team justify staffing adjustments to avoid sunken costs.
It helps the GM answer the owner’s "What are we learning?" question with something better than a guess.
It helps organizations move from reacting to iterating.
My belief, reinforced over the past couple weeks, is this:
The teams that are going to win in the next five years will not be the ones with the most data, the best videos, or the flashiest Facebook posts. They will be the ones that turn the data from yesterday's game into tomorrow's decision faster than anyone else.
Speed of understanding will beat the volume of information.
Clarity will beat complexity.
Actionable will beat impressive.
Minor League Sports Properties are uniquely positioned to benefit here. We have smaller, leaner staffs, and departments that often sit next to each other. When insights move quickly, behavioral change moves quickly. That’s where the competitive advantage lives.
AI is early and it is messy. There will be iteration, experimentation, and a lot of "that didn't work." But the direction is clear:
AI should not be your side project. It is becoming an operational layer—something that sits between your raw information and your daily decision-making.
For teams willing to engage with it now—not perfectly, but practically—the upside isn't hypothetical. It’s measurable, it’s immediate, and it’s bigger than most people in our industry realize.
To schedule a thirty minute conversation on how GameDay Advising can help you begin to insert AI into your daily decision making, click here.
