Stats Perform – Elevate digital engagement in stadiums and online

Please be kind. Transcribed by bots may contain some errors.

Sean Callanan (00:01.367)
Welcome to SportsGeek Amplify presented by SEAT. SEAT will be in Salt Lake City July 14 and 15 2023. Register at SeatConference.com. This episode will feature Stats Perform. Welcome to Michael Leon. He is the Director of Content Marketing and Strategy at Stats Perform. Michael, welcome.

Michael Leon (00:20.065)
Hey, Sean, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Truly appreciate it. I'm a big fan. I love listening to this program.

Sean Callanan (00:26.507)
Thank you very much and and really good to connect with another podcast host. You've also got your own podcast Can we please talk so if you're looking for for a new podcast, please check that out But we want to talk about all things stats perform and I guess what I want to get started is Is get a bit of an origin story and and how stats perform has got to where it's got to because there's a lot of Names and previous businesses and brands that people are probably familiar with that might not realize is under the stats perform umbrella

Michael Leon (00:54.206)
Yeah, well, I mean, stats perform came to me because I was a former customer of theirs. So I've worked in television and sports media for the better half of 20 years from Major League Baseball to Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks to the PGA Tour and working with their international property, Golf TV, that your audience may be familiar with utilizing it and watching Jason Day and Adam Scott take flight in some of those tournaments. So

They kind of came to me as I was a client at Massive Square Garden and we utilized Stats' APIs in our OTT platform. So when you're watching the Nick game or you're watching the NHL game of the New York Rangers, you could see the stats funneling in from Stats Performs API. When I was at ESPN as a producer as well, I utilized one of their older products called StatsPass. That's like a legacy tool where you can kind of query a bunch of different stats that you're looking up.

across multiple sports. So Stats Inc. was started decades ago. If you've ever read that Moneyball book from the Oakland A's, that's how we kind of got started here on the domestic side in the U.S. as Stats Inc. That was a legacy business. And then if you've ever been on Twitter and you're following Across Football, as we call it in America soccer, Stats and Insights and you go to Opta Joe on Twitter, that is run by Stats Perform. So we merged back in I believe 2018 with Perform Group.

that does all of the stats and insights for a lot of the major broadcasters internationally for a lot of the federations and leagues across the pond from anywhere from La Liga to the Bundesliga, English Premier League. So we've worked with so many different clients in the past and when the two companies merged, it really was now becoming the global leader in data, AI, stats, insights. I mean, we've do it for so many different broadcasters, content platforms. You could be watching March Madness.

You could go into Google and type in what's the score of this game. And most of the time that's coming from StatsPerform. So that's the business at a 30,000 foot overview. And like I said, I've been working with them for so long. They brought me in-house to kind of really talk about the products and services and how I leveraged them when I was a former customer.

Sean Callanan (03:02.791)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's the thing when I started doing some research for this, it was a bit of realizing that Statsync, Perform, Opta, all of these brands that people probably do know are all now under the one umbrella. So your focus now is across, you know, a lot of the properties that you discussed, media, big tech, professional teams doing a lot of work in the betting and gambling space. But today, what I want to discuss was some of that was two of the key products. The first one being Pressbox Live. Do you want to tell us about

Tell us about that, how it's being used, why it's being called by you guys, the comms team, the show producer's secret weapon. How are teams and venues using that?

Michael Leon (03:54.718)
or I think for those of you guys that comes to the game or the sharpness of the sinker with it, how are things and games being done?

Michael Leon (04:04.714)
A lot of folks in the soccer space are leveraging PressBox Live right now from broadcasters internationally. You've got game producers that are getting stats and insights from there, feeding it into the IFP of the on-air talent so that way they can go out there and disseminate that. If you're watching any contest out there across multiple different leagues and federations, a lot of the times the stats and insights are coming from PressBox Live. Now communication staffs have started to leverage this tool as well. And I was…

Once upon a time, and my alma mater here at Rutgers University back in the States, I was in the sports information department. So I worked directly for an SID, and I would be the person combing through all the different stats and insights that we have in all of our yearbooks or things like that, program guides, excuse me. So I'm looking up all these stats and insights. Well, now you have this true platform where you can kind of search for in-season stuff, you can hit up.

live chat support and talk to somebody that's an extension of the Stats Perform research team. You can download pregame insights and reports, postgame insights and reports, all of that you can download via PDF, disseminate that to whoever needs it. So now we've started to launch it across multiple sports. It's available for NFL and college football clients. It's coming this year for NBA and college basketball clients across men's and women's competitions.

so the WNBA as well. So we'll have a lot of data that's flowing through this tool and it has, at a high level, a bunch of different tabs from betting information to play-by-play data, automated and manual insights that are powering it. There's graphics like drive charts and rushing grids. So all of this information, all at a click of a button. You don't have to go to multiple different places to try to get this information. You've got the live game happening right there and then you've got the context around.

what has happened not only in season, but in the game itself. And again, the big thing is the combination of being able to talk to somebody. A live chat functionality, I can't tell you how many times as a producer myself looking up this stuff, if I could just quickly type it, hey, when was the last time this happened? And the chiefs did this, X, Y, Z for NFL fans out there. It's incredibly challenging to do that in real time and try to get that out to the public real quick, or at least get your announcer to say it on air.

PressBox Live was built to help in that case. So we're doing it for a bunch of different sports and a bunch of different broadcasters, communication staff, and it's growing and we're gonna keep adding more and more sports to it.

Sean Callanan (06:39.335)
And I mean, I guess a lot of the people who are listening have been in that press box and are part watching the game, part trying to cover the game, part trying to come up with unique items. You know, there's this real competitive tension around being first, coming up with something unique, getting out to the market. And we've all been there when at quarter time or at half time someone's coming around with a piece of paper. That's just putting that at your fingertips right now, wherever you might be, whether you're in the stadium or whether you're covering it.

remotely, which we've seen a lot of sports information and broadcasters move to remote models. It's available at your fingertips via press box.

Michael Leon (07:18.462)
Yeah, and that's really the key. Like you can just easily go into the platform, single sign on, and you can leverage all of the products and services that you would have at your disposal, at your disposal, excuse me, in the press box suite. But for the live portion of this, you sign in and you would see all of the games that are happening across whatever league or competition you're looking for. There's a dropdown so you can kind of sort by different sports. And then you can, like I said, you can kind of go back in time. So…

A key example would be during the Super Bowl, and as some of the linear networks here in the States are doing the Super Bowl and they have a rotation, we tend to help one big client, NBC Sports, with respect to all of the stats and insights that they get on their linear broadcast. So if a game producer was doing the game, the Super Bowl, and was going into Press Box Live, they would have all of this at a click of a button, just the insights that are coming in.

from the pregame level, you've got a report that comes in as well. All of these things, you can leverage it across multiple ways. We have the University of Maryland, for example, leverages this tool and their communication staff, shout out to Jason Yellen and the team over there. They'll be able to go in there on a Tuesday as they're getting ready to play a game on Saturday and they get all these stats and insights and they put this huge PDF packet together for the press corps that's gonna be covering the game. They set everything up Wednesday for the TV crew that's coming in.

to do the Saturday broadcast. And all of this stuff is really leveraged in a multitude of ways. They either take a stat and insight, push it out on social media to Terps fans everywhere, that's their mascot, the Terrapins, or they push it out via the graphics that are on the Fox Sports broadcast that's airing the game here domestically. So we've found that it's incredibly valuable. It's a time saver, which is something that, I mean, listen, anybody listening to this will know, you probably have seven or eight tabs right now open as you're listening to this podcast, right?

Imagine just having one tab that has everything all inside of it, and you can actually talk to somebody in real time to be able to answer your question. There's nothing better than that.

Sean Callanan (09:20.699)
And definitely, I think from a comms department and those that are producing those stats, we've all seen those, you know, now they're coming through as large PDFs in our email and are actually getting the, you know, we're saving trees, we're not printing them as much, but someone has always been producing those, whether they be, you know, interns, there's a lot of people in the comms department, that's where their first job was, producing those PDFs. But now that you can be, you know, punching those up, getting them out the door quicker, having a more informed broadcast and, you know, press row.

That will get you better coverage. It gives you uplift across things if they're getting more information. But then it also frees up those people to be able to tackle new things or provide more value across what they're doing in that role.

Michael Leon (10:03.082)
Yeah, it's true. Like, I always think about the times when I either was covering a game. I started, funny enough, I started at one of the companies that StatsPerform ended up acquiring, Sportsnetwork.com, and I was a sports stringer covering the Philadelphia sports teams from the Sixers to the Eagles to the Flyers. So going to those games back then, like you mentioned, somebody would always come end of quarter, bring around some, you know, the stat sheet, right? Here's the box score, here's how many points Allen Iverson has, et cetera, et cetera. Who's the leading scorer for the other team?

There was no added context around the game, right? So for example, if a team goes on a 15-0 run, no one's handing me a sheet that tells me, hey, in the last 15-0 run, here's who's been in foul trouble for the Sixers, here's who's been in foul trouble for the other team, here's who's made the shots, here's the key substitutions that happened during that. Now with PressBox Live, we're combining those pain points all into this platform. So…

the person that's actually spitting out that report that's walking around and handing it to the different people that are covering the game from press corps to TV and radio, now they'll be able to either leverage the platform themselves or that person can actually print out the five minute run that just happened and here's the timeout on the floor, here's the key stats, here's the key substitutions, here's everything that happened in that 15.0 run by the X team so that way you can tell a better story to your audience. Like it's, I'm telling you, I wish I was.

working back then using Pressbox Live because it would have saved me so much time from looking things up or trying to do things manually on my own and potentially getting something wrong. That's the other part of this. You don't want to be wrong. You mentioned it before. You want to be first, but you also want to be right.

Sean Callanan (11:39.023)
Yes, the internet is not a forgiving place if you're the one that gets the stat or the spot wrong. One of the things that I do love around the platform is the press box graphics piece. You gave me a demo recently and the ability, because there is a high demand for more content digitally and to be interesting. And there's definitely a sports hygiene that's required from most sports digital teams like…

Michael Leon (11:41.767)
No.

Sean Callanan (12:05.683)
When did the score updates, halftime updates, touchdowns, big plays, how do we get those out? How do we service all the platforms we might be using? Tell us a little bit about how Pressbox graphics helps, especially like all digital teams, under-resourced teams, deliver on that sports hygiene piece.

Michael Leon (12:23.762)
I mean, you just took the words out of my mouth. In terms of resourcing, right? Like that, PressBox Graphics is a true saver in that department. So let me give you some examples and I'll explain the platform as I'm morphing in this conversation here because what we do is we create these data filled templates and we work with your image database. So if you have a Getty Seat license, PressBox Graphics links with that. And what we do is we create these templates. They're kind of like a set it and forget it. So

Before the season starts, you have everything set up. If you're, let's say, a college basketball, you know, SID, or you're somebody that works around the team on the social media side, you have your pregame stuff. So you'll have your lineup card set up with the starting five for your team. If a player of the game, card for the end of the game, so that way you can just swap in an image. And the stats are being pulled in from our database. So you have all the stats funneling right through.

you have the sponsor ability stuff. So if there is a key sponsor for that school or for that radio broadcast crew, or whoever is pushing out these graphics to their either social audience, in stadium, whatever it is, you can easily insert the sponsor, creative and logo in there. So it's really a time saver because what it does is, holistically, you can link it up with your image database. You don't have to go searching for images. And also we have a locker function.

So you can actually, any images that you have stored locally, you can put them in this locker. So now let's say, Sean, you and I are working together and you sign in, now you can see in the locker what images are as opposed to asking me, hey, can you email me that off of your hard drive, off your computer there? I like that image that you got before. You don't have to do that anymore because now it's all centralized in there. And then the cool thing is, is like I said, we work in conjunction with your design team and your creative team. So before the season, the look and feel and the branding,

Sean Callanan (14:02.846)
Yep.

Michael Leon (14:15.858)
around whatever sport it is that we're covering from NFL, college, rugby, even networks themselves. We create all of that stuff and we really kind of ideate with the client what it is they want to build out. Like what are some things that happen during low periods that maybe you want to push out? Excitement, you know, overtime, fourth quarter, heat maps. So we're thinking of a multitude of ways with the client of ways they want to engage their audience for social media.

I think about some of the examples when I worked at Master Square Garden, we had four hockey teams on our linear network. We have the NBA team and then we have Major League Soccer at the time with the New York Red Bull. So at any point we could have five, six games going on and to try to engage audiences, it's a real manual effort because like you said, very lean team, right? Not that many people working on it and there's no thought out process of, hey, this is halftime right now. Let's push out the halftime stats.

in a template format, we can get that sponsored. I would have 100% used this platform prior to, because I know it really saved time and it saved the energy of trying to hit up a designer and say, hey, can you do this? Can you send me this image? Can you do this? Can you do that? Or everything's all centralized. And the big thing is the data's already flowing through it for a lot of the sports. So I don't have to sit here and try to figure out that I accurately put in Carmelo Anthony has 25 points, right? No, it's already coming in.

and it's funneled through and I can get it presented by Delta Airlines and push that creative out within seconds. So that's the real big thing with Pressbox Graphics. It's such a big time saver for those folks out there in the creative world that are trying to create compelling graphics, either social, in stadium, even on broadcast. We're doing it now on broadcast graphics displays and it's a blast and the tool is really easy to use.

Sean Callanan (16:04.967)
Yeah, I mean, that's the bit that I like. I'm a geek at heart and I'm always looking for how can we pull tools in to do more cool stuff more quickly? And it really fits in with what we do with digital $2. Just like we know our audience, we need to come up with these content pieces and that particular platform from a distribution point of view require different pieces of content. And the fact that you can be pulling the stats that are there and say, hey, we're gonna design a content thread and it might be.

for a touchdown or it might be for a drive or it might be, again, that hygiene stuff, the halftime score and the full time score and the player of the match and those kind of things. You can design those out, you can be working with your commercial team to say, well we know we're going to have the player of the match each week, this is what it's going to look like, these are the stats we're going to pull in. And yeah, for the people who are outside the world of sport, they don't realize the logistics of getting the stat, getting the picture of the player, having that player as the player that's been decided as the player.

and then which logos it goes into it. Being able to set that up, like you said, set and forget and execute it later is a weight off. And again, frees up the content team to keep having at bats if I'm using a baseball term because you don't know what's gonna be a home run. And so if they're out there capturing all this cool content because they've been freed up from the logistics of that piece, that's where I think the value really does come as well as

Michael Leon (17:19.438)
because you don't know what's going to be a home run. And so if they're able to capture all this cool content because they've been freed up from the logistics of that pace, that's where I think the value really does come as well as it's great to be going back to your commercial team with, hey, we just designed all this stuff in the preseason, these are all your commercial assets that we can sell.

Sean Callanan (17:30.971)
It's great to be going back to your commercial team with, hey, we've just designed all this stuff in the preseason. These are all commercial assets that we can sell, that we know what they do. They're ready to go. The piece that you did talk about there was also the demand across broadcast, but also in stadium. Like if we look at sports, you know, 15 years ago, yes, we were talking about servicing the Jumbotron or maybe, you know, one or two screens. Whereas now stadiums are filled with LEDs and they're all just as voracious.

How have you seen teams or stadiums leverage press box graphics to get some of that statistical information on the concourse around the stadium and start leveraging those displays they've got around?

Michael Leon (18:13.983)
Yeah, well first thing I wanted to mention just to piggyback on your last thought there was it's so easy for me to explain people.

what it is I do for a living because all I gotta do is tell them, hey, you saw that stat the other night on XYZ broadcast? Yeah, yeah, that came from my, did you see that graphic that Duke put out the other day? Yeah, yeah, that came from us. So like, it's super easy to explain to people because they're always, the comeback is always, how did they come up with that stat or insight? And then I can actually explain a little further on how we went through that process. But on the PressPots graphics front, I'm so glad that you mentioned about how are people leveraging it because that's kind of how they started the platform originally.

Sean Callanan (18:30.855)
Yeah. Yep.

Michael Leon (18:49.246)
was to kind of help in stadium crews that were trying to push out for track and field and get timely graphics out there. So when somebody just broke a world record, we wanna be able to put the time correctly, spell the name correctly, get the country, the flag attributed, and then push that out, right? So that it's appearing in the stadium. And right now, for the Bundesliga champs in Bayern Munich, we're helping them in their Allianz Stadium with graphics that are in the concourse that are available. So you'll be able to see the halftime statistics that are

flowing through there. If you're in Germany and you've been to a game there at Bayern, I'm dying to go there. One of my friends works for Bayern, so I would love to get out there. This is a note for him. He's got to get me tickets for next season, obviously. But they're leveraging press box graphics right now. And it's a similar format, like I mentioned before, where before the season starts, we work in conjunction with their team to talk about what are some things that you want to build out, not only in stadium, but to the Bayern Munich fans. And then obviously, you mentioned the latter part about

sponsor ability, right? Like everything has a sponsor associated to it, right? But also sponsors are gonna know that I wanna put my stuff behind the eyeballs, right? I want to be able to know that people are seeing my logo and saying, hey, what is that logo? Who is that? And so we're doing that right now for Bayern Munich. Like I said, they're leveraging the Press Box Graphics platform to create all of this cool immersive stuff that you'll see in their luxury suites, in their concourses. So anytime you're a half time,

and you're rolling around, or even in the stadium, and the game, excuse me, and you're walking around the stadium there, you'll probably see one of the graphics that were created in the Pressbox graphics tool.

Sean Callanan (20:26.319)
And the good thing is, if there is a positive to come over the last couple of years, everyone's now comfortable pulling out their phone and snapping a QR code. So all your LED stuff can be designed, have the sponsor ability, but it's also going to have easy QR code to sign up for the sponsor offer or to sign up to download the app. So you've got that extra, something to draw the eyes, it's the stat, but then you've got a few other calls to action there that make it really valuable.

Michael Leon (20:53.51)
Yeah, and one other thing too that's cool about Pressbox graphics is mobile interface. So you're able to access it from mobile, upload graphics within seconds. I think about all the times that I was in these various roles at a couple of these places and doing my job on the go from a mobile app to be able to just upload a graphic within seconds. Something's happening with my laptop right now. I can switch to my phone and upload a graphic.

So that's the cool thing about Pressbox Graphics. It's fully available on the mobile platform and you're able to just access everything that I mentioned before to be able to sign in with your Getty, seat license, or any image database. We can talk to any of those client lookup tools or you can access the images that you have stored in your locker and you can push out a cool graphic. Just like you said, stadiums are doing that now to drive the engagement, right? The hashtag, you'll see it on the screen, right? You get the kiss cam and stuff like that. So this is kind of a way Pressbox Graphics is.

really helping a lot of folks out there with their in-stadium venue stuff during the low periods of the game.

Sean Callanan (21:56.203)
Definitely, and again, most of your digital team is out there. Yes, they might have a camera, but there's still a really high proportion of the content that's just performed and created directly from the mobile. So be able to do that stuff from a mobile is really important. We talked a lot about the platform and sort of the tech behind it. You've got all the sets coming in into the portal, but it's but the press box platform is more than just a platform. Tell us about the research team and the and this, you know, and the smart folks and the people that are diving in the stats.

to give you some more information.

Michael Leon (22:27.923)
Yeah, well first off, without them, this stuff's lacking a little bit, I'll be honest. But our research team, I alluded to it, I made a joke before about when people say, how did they come up with that stat or insight? And then I kind of give people a little bit of the curtain, it's like the Wizard of Oz, right? I can't really show you who's back there. But shout out to our research team, Justin Einhorn, Rob Bateman, they do a fantastic job and the people that work under them.

Like I said, if you ever follow us on Twitter, stats by stats was the old handle now, it's Opta Joe and OptaStats, or follow us at OptaAnalyst as well on Twitter. And you can see all these cool stats, insights, information. A lot of the times after the NBA Finals, excuse me, after the NBA Western Conference Finals, and now the Eastern Conference that's still running on as of this taping, you're able to see, you know, all of the cool stats or insights that we're pushing out.

either about the Denver Nuggets or about the LA Lakers. And in our PressBox Live platform, the stats and insights, excuse me, the insights specifically that are manual and that are coming into the platform are done by our research team, right? So a lot of the times what you'll get is you'll get automated insights. So Aaron Rodgers has completed three straight passes, right? Or he's thrown for 300 yards in yet another game. This is his 11th of his career, let's say for example.

Sean Callanan (23:49.022)
Yep.

Michael Leon (23:49.182)
I know he has way more than that. Those are automated, right? That's just a straight lookup and doing a column lookup and saying, oh, he has 11, now it's 12, right? The manual insights are the ones that really get in-depth and granular and like where it's just so, so juicy that you're like, who came up with that? How did you think of that? I'm referring to a stat that came from our Super Bowl one where Jalen Hurts was, I think he's the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for.

more than 300 yards, rush for over a certain amount of yards and have a certain amount of touchdowns. He's the first one to do it. And the last person to do it like in a regular season game was him. So like that was a stutter insight that came into Press Box Live during the Super Bowl. And it just shows you like the level of not only the athlete reaching peak performance. And so that now the storylines developed there, right? Because on air crew can talk about how Jalen Hurts has emerged as

one of the premier quarterbacks in the National Football League. But then, on social media, the Eagles team could push that out easily in terms of how good this quarterback is, even though they lost the game, like how well he played in the contest. And the other cool thing is that with a lot of the research stats and insights that are coming here, we were talking about the University of Maryland before in Leveraging Press Box Live.

One of the cool things that they mentioned is the insights that they get right now from Press Box Live from our team, the athletes, because of the name, image and likeness now that is here in the US where college athletes can now profit off of their name, image and likeness, they're seeing the cool insights that come from this team and they can take that and now have a conversation with their NIL agent about, hey, sponsorability, right? Making money for my name, image and likeness. Hey, I just, according to stats perform, I'm…

one of the first University of Maryland quarterbacks to do XYZ. So now who's going to pay me for that, right? That's one of the cool things that came out of a case study that we did with them that you could check out over on statsperformed.com. But it was so cool to hear that come out of their mouth because I would have never have thought that somebody could leverage that stat or insight to profit off of how well they're playing. And there's a perfect example. So our research team just, they do so much great work. If you go to theanalyst.com,

You can check out a lot of our stuff that we do there from quizzes, we have podcasts, a few that I host on there. We have some prediction models and stuff that we do across different sports. Even during last week with the PGA Championship, we had some stuff with our fracas model there that kind of projects who will win the tournament based on a bunch of different simulations and key stats that are happening with the golfers across the major competitions now with PGA Tour and Live. So…

Check us out over on theanalyst.com or you can go check out all of the Twitter handles and see some of the cool research and insights that are being pushed out from either OptiJo, OptiStats, or OptiAnalyst.

Sean Callanan (26:45.919)
I mean, that's the thing, like I think it was when we were having the conversation prior to the interview, so many, you know, golden nuggets either for, either for the broadcast team or the digital team come from just jumping in the chat and asking your research team, is this a thing? Is this, you know, is this last four plays a thing? And they come back and say, here it is. And you're either elevating, you know, your special comments person that comes out with an awesome stat or.

Yeah, that opportunity for your digital team to have something that goes viral because it's a really great pickup. But yeah, I think that college piece around the NIL, the NIM image likeness, I can see more colleges creating some of that content to give to their players so that they can be using those stats however they want. I wanted to dive in on who your customer is. Like we talked about the product and press box and I guess the different internal customers that can serve across broadcast and.

Michael Leon (27:18.985)
I think that college banks around the mill, the name image like us, I can see colleges adding some of that content to give to their players so they can use it in a sense. I wanted to dive in on who your customers are. We talked about the product in Pressbox and I guess the internal customers that are concerned across broadcast and digital and information.

Sean Callanan (27:42.095)
and digital and information and press. Who are some of the key people that become, that are your sort of starting point or the champions internally for using a platform like Pressbox? You know, what type of roles are they playing in at say, at a sports team or a venue that might be attending SEAT?

Michael Leon (28:04.017)
Yeah, so I mean anybody who's really looking to add to the storylines or to tell a better story around their team.

is interested in the products and services, not only that I mentioned today, but other ones that are available under the Stats Perform banner. Like I said, you can go to statsperform.com to check that stuff out. But we have, the folks that I have talked to over the past few years that I've been working here range from VPs of communication, social media managers, actual game producers. We've done stuff with folks in podcasts. Yeah, Sean, you and I are both in podcasts. And now, as you see, more sports podcasts, more gambling podcasts.

are starting to emerge and folks wanna look up those juicy nuggets like you mentioned, and we have research tools, we have the research team, we have Press Box Live, and then, you know, this name, image, and likeness stuff that we were just talking about before, what I've noticed is, especially in the college space, there's so many people that are starting to capitalize a little bit on this, and not in a negative connotation, it's more of like, they're capitalizing it in a good way, where the student athlete is now starting to leverage

you know, the stuff that they've done in the game, but they don't know how to put it all together, right? And so there's a company that's either working in conjunction with the university, and that's where we kind of fit in, because with the Pressbox graphics platform, here, you don't have to just sit there and actually put your stats, you know, in the comments section, or, you know, and then hold up, you know, some type of sponsor. We can create a compelling graphic that you can push on social media that's gonna drive engagement and include that sponsor ability. So…

The customer ranges, for anybody out there that's listening that maybe you oversee a broadcast team or a production, or you oversee a site or an app, and you're trying to do push notifications and just enrich the notifications that go out. I used to do that for MSG Go and the app out there for the Knicks and Rangers, and just try to drive people into the platform when the game is exciting. But again, a lot of it is just basic score, where now you can actually leverage

a cool stat or insight and just say, oh, let me throw that out there and push that out, either in-app messages or a push notification for the folks that are opted into that. Like I mentioned, social media folks, and in stadium folks too are starting to leverage it way more now because game day production, right? Every place has a huge scoreboard with stats, whatever sport, from Major League Baseball, hockey, cricket, everybody's got something that's a display banner that's hanging.

in the arena and people are looking to it as opposed to also checking their phone. I mean you're gonna get it from us as well on the phone if you hit the Google, but now in the stadium as well folks can leverage these tools and push that out there. So the customer base is so wide-ranging. It's really anybody that's looking to tell a better story around the game or competition that they're covering and we've got products and services that can help with that.

Sean Callanan (30:58.287)
I mean, yeah, stats is your business. So anyone that is playing around with stats in presenting them in different ways, like we are all looking for that storytelling element. It's like, if you are looking to take it to the next level, that's where you can come in. Because yeah, it can come from the in-stadium that has a growing demand. As we've discussed, the digital team that wants to produce more content, that provides it. So yeah, so.

terrific in understanding who the customer is and understanding, you know, the people who will be there, the people who are running the digital teams or the people who are helping implement venue tech, they fit in those both places. I want to dive into the triple threat. A lot of the times I get asked by my clients, Hey, there's a new tool coming out. Can you please look at it? I apply this triple threat over it because it's all, it's all great. Once you get the shiny brochure, you actually want to dive in. Is it going to work for us? And one of the key ones for us is time.

How is the product a time saver? In what way? How does it help? We all know that a lot of sports, in the college scene, really small teams behind the scenes, and even in the pro teams, there's not massive departments and people to be able to do everything that you would like to do. How does both Pressbox Graphics and Pressbox Live save time?

Michael Leon (32:15.47)
How does first book, first book, first book, how you know, site for? Yeah, well, I mean, point no further than, I mentioned the case study before that you can check out on statsperform.com from the University of Maryland. And I wanna shout out their team over there, like I mentioned Jason Yellen and Ben as well, because the one quote that came out of the case study that they did with us, that's available online, was the difference between getting home at 8.30 p.m.

and getting home at 6.30 p.m. So a two hour time difference to be able to have dinner with the family because Press Box Live was able to save all of that lookup time and searching from different resources and not making sure that it's maybe verified or not. Can I trust this? Can I not trust that?

Like that's a huge thing. Again, as somebody who's done it before, as somebody who's looked up things before and has leveraged StatsPerforms tools and has done it the manual way, it's so much easier doing it with StatsPerforms too. I'm not saying that because they're paying me. I'll be honest. In all seriousness, like it's true. It's hard. You know, Sean, you were gonna say something.

Sean Callanan (33:21.627)
Yeah, I mean, and the thing is, you know, staff burnout in sports in particular, you know, is a real thing. And so if you can, you know, that thing of two hours back in your day, you know, be able to be home to actually have dinner at the, you know, on the kitchen table, you know, to see your children, you know, more than just on the weekends. Like that's a real valuable piece to be able to say, hey, you know, provide some work life balance because, you know, producing that

with all the stats is really important. Or the same goes for the digital staff that finished the game and are still working at 1 a.m. of game day because they've got to prep all these pieces. So I think that time saver is one, amazing for the team because then it frees them up to do more creative things on different places, but also just gives them some of those time back in their day.

Michael Leon (34:02.824)
Yeah.

Michael Leon (34:11.886)
I mean, again, attributing the quote to them because, you know, I'm thinking about the times that I always tell people this, like sports are on at inconvenient times. They're on in the evenings. I don't know if people know that, right? So like, you've got to think of the people that are working around this game. Their day doesn't start at 7pm. Their day starts probably at like 2, 3pm as they're starting the prep. And it may have started earlier in the week.

you know, when they're trying to prep or, you know, I'll give you the ESPN example for me as a producer when I did Sunday Night Baseball, my day started Friday, right? So I'm putting together things, the storylines around that game because they're gonna play, you know, a three game series and I'm covering the Sunday game. So I wanna on Saturday start compiling maybe highlights or stuff like that if there's a milestone with the tools that are at this disposal in the Pressbox platform, especially from the live standpoint, I can cover the game now and kind of look up things.

talk to somebody in real time. It just gives me faster time to be able to communicate to the announcer to say that in their ear. Whether they're coming back from commercial or there's a low period in the game right now, pitching change, whatever it is, I'm able to get that faster with the service. And then for press box graphics, like you mentioned before, I can only think about the times where I had multiple game nights and maybe something exciting happens in a few of these games.

and I'm scrambling to create some type of imagery that can drive people in. With Pressbox Graphics, we create this for you prior to the season. So you have this stuff ready at your disposal, at your disposal, excuse me. It's easy to use. Anybody can go in there, grab an image, crop it. I mean, I'm not even mentioning the full functionality of like the cropping engine of this, which is really, really good. I'm from the design folks that I've talked to in the industry, but like to be able to just have that ready at your disposal, to push out.

as a PNG or JPEG, push it out to whatever social channels. And that way you don't have to worry about whether or not you messed up the person's name, whether or not you got the stat right that's being pushed out. How many times have you seen somebody push something out and then they delete it later on because the stat was incorrect, right? Or the arena was wrong. And then the comments, right? Or the comments are killing them. You said it before, the internet is not forgiving. Pressbox Graphics is forgiving. We help you doing that. That's a big word I like to throw around, the help word.

Sean Callanan (36:18.635)
Hmm. Exactly.

Michael Leon (36:25.922)
These services help you and the research team, nobody better to help you get the correct stats or insights that you wanna push out to tell a better story to your audience.

Sean Callanan (36:35.247)
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And then one of the things, you know, a lot of times I am helping someone, whether they be working in the digital department or the comms department or someone in commercial, you know, you want to bring in a new platform, you want to bring in new tools that you want to level up, those kinds of things need to get approved. You know, you have to be pitching them to a CFO or a CRO and they really come at it from a money point of view. And they're either looking at how, is this going to save us money or is this going to make us money? So that's one of the ones I always look at. I think we've already discussed it, but.

I'll leave it, I'll still throw you the question. How does the Pressbox platform help on both of those fronts?

Michael Leon (37:12.394)
Well, I mean, I mentioned before about the saving time, right? And so, you know, when communication staffs are looking to do something, whether it be in the pregame window or they need help in the postgame window, here is a true time saver, accuracy, and a company that you can trust that's been in the industry, you know, for 40 plus years that has done this for a bunch of different conferences, broadcasters, digital publishers, whatever it may be. So when there are going back,

and pitching the product and saying, hey look, this is a real, and I can only take it from my lens, right? Like this is a real time saver. This is how many seats it comes with. This is the access we have to a research team that I don't have to go hire either staff or I don't have to go look it up myself, right? I can actually now save time and we can get better juicy nuggets than now we can put as full sponsor, like add that into the sponsor cart, right? So the times that I was at Madison Square Garden,

and I'm talking to the sales team about ways to enhance the offering that could drive in sponsor ability. Here's one cool way. I got an insight right here from this Pressbox Live platform that we can push out, whether it be CRM tool or in-app messaging, and we could get sponsors attributed to that. This stats presented by Lexus, right? Click on this for the all new 2018 Lex, whatever it is. So that is one way that you can kind of generate money.

And there's a bunch of different examples if you follow our Press Box Graphics Twitter handle, you'll see real client examples in real time. And I remember seeing one that was a carousel from a Major League Soccer club. And the carousel had five different sponsors as you're rotating through not only the match stats, the player of the match, the coach's press conference, and a clip from his press conference. I mean, a carousel on Twitter.

with five different sponsors, right? And you know you're gonna get a lot of engagement off of that and the sponsor's gonna like that because they wanna see what, page views? They wanna see engagement, whatever it is, whatever metric that they're valuing. And PressBox Graphics helps you do that. It saves you time and you can get that stuff out there. And it's higher quality. You don't have to worry about and whether or not this has been validated or whether or not you can trust the data because it's coming from StatsPerform.

Sean Callanan (39:30.291)
The thing I love is that you can design these deliverables for your partners. You can say, hey, we're gonna have these pieces pre-season, but have the confidence that they can be delivered without putting your team under tremendous stress. And it becomes, and then if you've got a great sales team and they just keep selling them, you're like, cool, we'll keep coming up with more stats. And it's actually not gonna be a burden on our graphics designer team or.

our digital team to produce them because you can say, oh, these are all gonna be coming out of the system. So, that's where the revenue uplift comes because it's like, we'll make sure we deliver these pieces, sponsors will be involved and you've got the option to be delivering them in multiple places. So, whether that's on your social, on your partner's social, through a name image like this, through the players, in the stadium, all of these different pieces, you can say, oh yeah, we can do all of that without having that.

Oh, we've got to hire two more people to be able to deliver that. And so that's the piece where it does the saving and the making money. So, you know, and then, you know, for me, I'm always wanting digital to be attributed with more revenue. And so this is a really good thing that makes, you know, the digital teams prideful in, hey, look at this, look at this. This is the money we're helping bringing in through those sponsor sponsor deliverables. We've talked a little bit about it because the last piece is always the resources. It's like, oh, we've got this great tool.

but what's required to deliver it, right? You still gotta have someone using the platform. What does it look like from an onboard and training to get your information staff, your PR staff, your comm staff, your digital staff, your game day presentation staff using the platform? What's the sort of like the normal up speed and what's the onboarding process look like?

Michael Leon (41:18.159)
Listen, you want to use PressBox Live tomorrow.

We can set you right up with a demonstration and credentials. It's super easy to use. And again, all you need is an internet connection. If you've got a laptop, you've got a PC, a CPU, whatever it is, any acronyms you wanna throw out there of computers, but it's very simple. It's a site and you just go on the site and you log in with the credentials that we've provided for you. And we've set up access so now that you have the ability to not only play around with Pressbox Live, but actually see.

all of the different components of the platforms. And so when you go to Press Box Live, easily as you sign in, it'll put you into the respective sports that are part of your package. So if you're a soccer producer, global football producer, you'll be able to see all of the games that are happening not only across the league that you're working for, the competitions, whatever it may be, same thing on the NFL and college front.

So you're able to really access all of these sports. It's super easy to use from a UI UX perspective. So if you're thinking about that on the Pressbox graphics front, same thing. I mean, there's a lot of different components. I didn't even mention how you can create some cool gifts out there and push that stuff out to social teams or even in stadium stuff. But again, a single sign on, you just sign onto the platform and then whatever image database that you have. This stuff is kind of set up prior to.

So that way, we can match your account and you can have your Getty's, whatever tier subscription that you have with Getty's, now that's linked up to your account. So when you are pulling for images and you're trying to upload this stuff to creative, you'll have that already done. And the onboarding process is not long at all. I was kind of semi being facetious about, you can hit us up tomorrow, but you really can if you truly wanna see not only a demonstration of this product or service, but also if you wanna get a free trial and kind of get in there and play around with some of the stats or insights.

and see what it is that people are leveraging from this. You can kind of go back over the last couple years and see some of the cool stats or insights that we've done around NFL college games. You can see live soccer matches that are happening as Europa League is wrapping up and so are some of the major European leagues as well. So I only bring up Europa because Sevilla is my team and we play in the finals there. But so that's one of the cool things. Like you can sign in there and you can kind of see.

the way the platform works and the searchability of some of the stats are inside. So from an onboarding perspective, super easy to use. I'm here to help you. You can reach out to me, but also you can go to statsperform.com and you can right away talk to somebody about getting set up with a trial.

Sean Callanan (43:57.811)
And so we've had a lot of people who have been stats geeks, the people that do dive into the Excel spreadsheets and for a lot of part of your research team, but we also got a lot of talented stats folk, working in teams, working in leagues. How have you found some of those people being able to strictly supercharge what they're doing because they've got access to the platform and they're not creating their own pivot tables and all of these things that they might've done in the past?

Are you seeing the superpowers that they've been given to be able to dive really deep and really being enthused and what they've been able to pull out of the platform?

Michael Leon (44:37.502)
You know, it's so funny that you asked that because I was thinking about this as we showcase this to folks that have been doing it forever, right? Hey, I got something I could really help you and a lot of the times you would think that it's a little adversarial, hey, I have my method, I have this. But once folks really start using the platform and the cool thing, again, the Pressbox Live part of this, and again, I say this as a former producer across a bunch of different sports, you know,

Leveraging that and not having six tabs open and being able to just keep this as my single because there's six columns there And it has betting information it has all the play-by-play stuff But then the extension part of this right the live chat I've seen I've noticed that now folks are starting to say hey This is great the response time from the research and insights team. That's covering the game is super fast the reports that are printing out here, I'm

adding that in addition to stuff that I started to accumulate, not only about the game itself or maybe about how the season's progressing. So now I can combine all of that and push it out to the press corps, TV, radio, whoever's covering the game. So the supercharge element that you just mentioned, it really has heightened the way people are doing things. That's what we want to do. We want to help. We want to add to the storylines.

You know, I've never had anybody say, that's that or inside, I can't use that. Why are they giving me that? It's like, as a fan myself of a bunch of different teams across leagues and sports, the one thing I always go to is the Twitter handle, the Instagram. I would love to know if a guy had a game, when was the last time this happened in franchise history? When was the last time he's had a game like this, right? And so with Pressbox Live, especially with Pressbox Graphics, we're able to combine the two and

push out some of these cool stats and insights that's coming into one platform and you can push it out via social, in stadium, whatever it is. It's just like the ease, right? And the comfortability of using this stuff. It's super easy to use and like such a huge time saver. And like I said, very friendly, the PressBox Graphics mobile thing is one of the cool things around because for folks that, you know, maybe their laptop hasn't charged and it's died, you can easily use your phone and push out a graphic.

And so that way your boss is not like, hey, did you do your work today? Of course I did. With PressBox Graphics Mobile, I was able to do that, so.

Sean Callanan (46:56.975)
Yeah, and I think there's a real opportunity. I mean, you've got all the Opta accounts, like Opta Analyst and Opta Joe and the like that are providing a stats insight for a sport. But there's, you know, and we've seen some real rise of some stats specific Twitter accounts that just share little nuggets around that people follow because the fan itself wants to know, you know, into a point where people are asking it. And I think there's a real opportunity potentially for.

you know, teams or universities to say, oh, this is just our stats channel. And it potentially then, you know, you can be start building an audience of people who want that data and what those stats, because you're creating all this information. And then it can easily become, oh, this whole channel is sponsored by a partner or different partners. And again, starts creating new assets. So once you start diving in, I really like some of the options that are available and it'll be great to be able to discuss these things.

with people like yourself and a lot of the Stats Perform team that will be at C conference, you can register at cconference.com. So I highly recommend that for the digital and the venue folk that are gonna be in attendance, that talk to people around getting more of that content out. And please, if you've listened to this episode and you've, you know, you run into me and you don't need to find people from Stats Perform, let me know. And please mention you listen to the podcast.

Michael Leon (48:14.83)
I mentioned you listened to the podcast, and Markham and I are always trying to find out who's listening to the podcast, how have you listened to the podcast? He knows the podcast is a podcast, and his boat of goals would say, hey, I listened to the podcast.

Sean Callanan (48:16.179)
Michael and I are always trying to find out who is listening to the podcast, how they're listening to podcasts. He knows as a podcaster the podcast listeners don't notoriously say, hey, I listen to the podcast. So we want to get we want to buck the trend here. So if you if you run into us at Seat, tell us that you listen to the podcast. So I really do appreciate looking forward to seeing you in Salt Lake City. This is the time where I do my best to condense our conversation in what I call the sports geek pitch. You can grade me both after the call, but this is my go.

You know how the demand for digital content in stadium and online continues to explode. What Stats Perform do is enable under-resourced teams to deliver high-quality graphical stats and a timely meta for fans to engage and amplify with the bonus of creating new assets for your partners. In fact, Stats Perform is keeping millions of fans worldwide connected via stats across multiple sports and stadiums. There you go. That's the Sports Geek pitch, Michael. You can use that anytime you like.

Michael Leon (49:11.792)
I love it and it's so true like I said we're here to help however we've got a bunch of different products and services and head to statsperform.com and you can find out more about all of these and you can get in touch with somebody on our team it'll probably come in to me so I'll be able to help you in real time and I can show you PressBox Live and PressBox Graphics whenever you want.

Sean Callanan (49:30.535)
Well, thank you very much, Michael, for coming on. Don't forget, check out sportsgeekamplify.com/statsperform. As Michael said, you go to statsperform.com or go to sportsgeekhq.com. And don't forget, go to SEAT Conference to Register. We'll see you in Salt Lake City. Thanks again, Michael, and we'll see you soon.

Michael Leon (49:46.198)
Thank you, Sean.