Hi, this is Dan Morrell, host of Skydeck.

Angela Ruggiero (MBA 2014) is cofounder and CEO of the market research firm the Sports Innovation Lab, and when we spoke in May, it was the week after the Bundesliga—Germany’s premier soccer league—began to play without fans in the stands. Outside, that is, of some cardboard facsimiles of fans that were purchased as part of a pandemic relief program.

It’s an imperfect—albeit necessary—set up for fans. And Ruggiero, who is a four-time women’s hockey Olympian and gold medalist, knows it’s also not an ideal situation for athletes, who feed off of a crowd’s energy.

But for the sports leagues and the related startups that can survive this transition period—and not all of them will—it could provide an opportunity to assess and invest in the kinds of infrastructure and tech upgrades, Ruggiero says, that will make live sports both safer and more engaging on the other side.

Angela Ruggiero (MBA 2014)

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Dan: You said recently that this lack of live sports due to COVID, while it's had this tremendous negative impact, obviously, has been a really important moment for the industry. That this has been a period that's also been helpful for them. How is that so? Make that case.

Angela: Well, innovation happens usually out of necessity. We're seeing that across the board with every business, with every industry—and sports is no different. I believe sports is one of the last industries to truly be off-the-grid in some ways: Not digital-first, not adhering to regular market forces—because it's sports. It's live.

And I think now the silver lining for this industry is that opportunity to move away from calling it a sports industry. This is a media property at the end of the day. We're selling entertainment. And so we have to act more like you would see traditional entertainment doing, which is creating a really elevated experience, personalized, digital. Whether it's in the venue, so you feel like you're paying for that premium, or at home.

Dan: Yeah. Can you talk about some of these, I guess I broadly call them sort of infrastructure investments, that leagues and teams could or should be making that are not only going to be useful now, but could be useful in the post-COVID era.

Angela: The quote unquote, "nice to haves" we used to talk about, and we still talk about, if you think about something as basic as wifi, or connectivity in a venue, laying that groundwork now is necessary to ensure fans feel safe, because there's a whole host of infrastructure investments that need to be made in order for your contactless payments, and your digital ticketing, and your wayfinding app, and your digital and mobile alerts.

Fans need to know there's contact tracing and there's a way for them to know if someone was infected with COVID and they need to figure out who they interacted with, there's a lot of technology applications and infrastructure build-outs that need to occur so that fans feel safe and trust the property that's bringing them into that venue, so that they'll come back.

And we've already seen some fans who are like, "I'm never coming back." And some fans are saying, "Well, if you do the right things, build that trust. I will come back." And so even when we get out of this, laying that groundwork for safety reasons today will pay dividends tomorrow in terms of fan engagement. This fluid fan wants to have that personalized experience in the venue. They want you to know what kind of beer they like. They want you to know who their favorite player is. They want to be able to come in and out seamlessly. So there's all these, again, engagement opportunities that are missed because the infrastructure isn't there. For us the big takeaway is well, now it's not a nice-to-have to engage your fans. It's a must-have to get them even to come into the building. And I think in the long run, that'll be a great thing for the industry.

Dan: Most Americans in surveys have said that they don't think sporting events should have crowds without more testing, or even a vaccine. What do you think we're going to need to see in place to see a return to stadium crowds cheering live sports?

Angela: Well, I think you're one going to see sports played without fans first, then we'll see the six-feet-apart model where we'll go down to 20 percent capacity and maybe the private booths are available, but if you're sitting in the stands you need to space yourselves out, or be just your sort of inner circle. That's some revenue. And it depends on the league, but it could vary anywhere from next to nothing to half of the revenue of that league if you're thinking more minor league.

THE WAY FORWARD

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THE WAY FORWARD

See more from the online-only June Bulletin’s coverage of the path ahead for education, health care, management, and the hotel and restaurant industries.

Return to June Bulletin

And then the question around packed stadiums. To get there, we're going to need, again, I mentioned trust. So you're going to have in place a dedicated group—call it a task force— focused on safety. Focused on then investing in the right technologies that provide that safety. But then you could communicate to your fans, "This is what we've done. This is what it'll look like. This is the expectation to come back, and what we'll do to protect you." So I think it's a whole host of things in terms of your internal staffing, and then your communication strategy to get that out to fans so they know, "All right, if I'm here in Boston and I'm going to TD Garden, or I'm going to Fenway—am I going to be sitting in long lines?" Maybe no. Maybe there’s waves. Maybe your ticket says you’re wave three and you have to come between these minutes. So what are the ways that you can get people in the stadium, seated safely together, and then out of the stadium in a very thorough way? This is all again, pre-vaccine. Because I think once we get a vaccine people will feel safe again, in my opinion. But I'm not a doctor.

Dan: But, Angela, a lot of that stuff you're talking about is process stuff. One of the things that I was seeing recently is tech used in interesting ways, where in, I think it was Las Vegas,where someone would approach a little monitor and it would take their temperature. And it would say they were okay and they could go on.

Angela: Oh yeah, if you're talking about the tech, yeah. No, that's already happening. In Asia, where privacy isn't an issue, we're already seeing that. And they're already past some of the early COVID challenges. Your point of temperature checks, absolutely. Every venue is investigating touchless payments. What are the ways from a process perspective, keep distance. What's the digital signage that you need or the mobile messaging that will let you get alerts out quickly if something's happening or you need to contact trace. Yeah, the idea that you won't touch people through technology, that you'll be able to still order what you want—think food, merchandise, experience without touching anyone.

Can you pay with your face? Can you pay with your fingerprint? Maybe if you just want to be scanned. That technology exists in a lot of cases, it's quickly trying to come into sports, or in the North American and European market, figure out this debate of privacy. Because it's definitely happening in some Asian markets and some Asian venues.

Dan: But I want to touch on that example of frictionless payment and the larger idea that this era of no live sports is sort of pushing innovation, or will push innovation, or that the pandemic itself will push innovation. Relevant to mobile payments. No more passing hotdogs up the row at Fenway and then sending a few dollars back down the row. You know what I mean?

Angela: Yeah.

Dan: But also there's value in that technology beyond this. And I think that goes to your larger point, right?

Angela: Yeah, I mean pre-pandemic, I want my hot dog hot and delivered when I want it. I want it to be a link to my mobile pay. All of these things. Yes. This is fan engagement. This, to us, is the core of our research. Fluid fans want more, they want better; they want a different, better experience.

Newer fans, younger fans perhaps do things differently. Do you have a cable subscription? Maybe you're thinking about cutting it. There you go. So how is sports reaching you? So we always look at what are the trends outside of the sports venue, the sports industry, and just apply those to here. This is what the consumer wants at the end of the day. If I can order bird seed with three clicks because I just feel like it and my mobile app on Amazon allows me to do that and my card's connected, why can't you do that in sports?

So those are the questions we ask. And again, the opportunity in the future to have a better ecosystem, a better environment for sports.

Dan: Why are sports important in this moment? What do they give us as a society, as a culture, that we need?

Angela: It's a great question, and why I'm in this industry. Obviously as a four-time Olympian, an athlete that represented Team USA more than any other woman, I played on the national team for 16 years, I firsthand saw the impact that I had as a role model. I saw the impact that my team had, that Team USA had to be a part of the conversation, shape the conversation. Think about what's happening with gender equality and everything that the women's national teams are doing to shape that across society. Not just for sports.

Sports brings people together, it provides a great platform to talk about current issues. It shows what's possible in human performance. It shows what's possible in peace. I was in Pyeongchang a couple years ago where the North and South Korean women's hockey teams played on a joint unified team. If that doesn't send a message to the world, I don't know what can. So I believe we need sport for those reasons. And it's going to be a long path to get to the old normal, but the new normal hopefully will be something we can all be proud of and get behind, and not just for entertainment's sake, but for all these values that at the end of the day, are part of our society. And sport creates role models. It does things that almost nothing else can do. Maybe music, maybe art, but sport I think is one of those few things that every society understands and is part of that cultural fabric.

Skydeck is produced by the External Relations department at Harvard Business School and edited by Craig McDonald. It is available at iTunes and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. For more information or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.

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