In this episode
Ben Lewis, VP of Marketing and Growth at Infobip, joins Greg Kihlström to break down how sports franchises are building deeper, year-round relationships with fans by merging technology and creativity into a single connected journey. Drawing on Infobip’s work with the TGR Haas F1 team — including the AI-powered “RaceMate” fan companion — Ben lays out why franchises should start with the fan rather than the channel, unify fragmented data across ticketing, support, and merchandise, and treat first-party data as a continuous value exchange rather than a one-time capture. The conversation moves from strategic objectives to practical AI tactics, channel prioritization, engagement measurement, and where hyper-personalized fan experiences are heading next.
Key takeaways
- Fans want continuous connection, not constant selling. Infobip’s research found fans want off-season and race-to-race updates that make them feel part of the team — not a stream of “buy this jersey” messages.
- Start with the fan, not the channel. The channel is a subset of the customer; a single platform lets a franchise meet fans on SMS, WhatsApp, in-app, or social without operating in silos.
- Unified data is the foundation for personalization. Fan information is scattered across ticketing, support, and merchandise systems, and consolidating it into one platform is what makes personalized messaging and tone possible.
- AI enables authentic, personalized conversations. Infobip’s TGR Haas RaceMate lets fans ask anything — race details, quizzes, merch, even “what’s the weather in Miami and should I bring a jacket?” — and understands the intent behind it.
- Personalization must be empathetic and timely. AI should read the context of each interaction so a fan mid-complaint about a wrong-size jersey isn’t immediately pitched another product.
- Measure real engagement, not vanity metrics. Ben points to repeat and returning fans, session length with the AI agent, ad-to-competition conversion rate, and ultimately fan lifetime value and monetization.
- First-party data depends on a continuous value exchange. Fans trade data for real value — a competition, exclusive access — and the franchise has to keep delivering value afterward to keep that trust and that data.
- Respect cadence or fans opt out. A daily team update can be welcome where hourly messages become an annoyance, so personalization has to govern timing as much as content.
- The future is hyper-personalization and proactive AI. Ben expects AI to become the practical norm, with clubs proactively initiating conversational, intuitive interactions with fans rather than waiting to be activated.
Chapters
- 00:00 — Cold open: earning loyalty when the game isn’t being played
- 01:32 — Ben’s background and role at Infobip
- 02:19 — The core business objective beyond tickets and merch
- 03:32 — What fans actually said they want (research with TGR Haas)
- 04:38 — Breaking internal silos and unifying fan data
- 06:54 — Where AI is most effective today (the RaceMate example)
- 08:56 — Choosing channels: fan first, channel second
- 11:26 — Measuring success beyond vanity metrics
- 14:02 — The value exchange behind first-party data
- 17:59 — The future: hyper-personalization and proactive AI
- 19:26 — One year out, and staying agile
What fans actually want: continuous connection, not constant selling
Ben says the starting point is understanding that the team’s goals and the fans’ goals aren’t identical. Teams want to monetize through tickets and merchandise; fans, according to research Infobip conducted with an external company for TGR Haas, want an ongoing relationship — updates in the off-season and between races that make them feel part of the operation. That means communicating on the channel that matters to the fan with genuinely useful information (“here’s the race update, the weather’s challenging, we’re testing slick tires”) rather than another prompt to buy something.
Why you start with the fan, not the channel
Fans use whatever channel makes sense to them in the moment — SMS, WhatsApp, social, in-app — which is hard for any organization to support well. Ben’s rule is to start with the fan and treat the channel as a subset of that decision, then use a single platform to reach across many channels without being locked into just email. A unified approach also prevents the same message hitting a fan on every channel at once, which is exactly what pushes them to disengage.
How AI powers fan engagement today
The most effective near-term application Ben highlights is conversational AI that feels authentic. Infobip built RaceMate with TGR Haas as a companion fans can ask almost anything — specific races, gamification, quizzes, merchandise, or practical questions like whether to bring a jacket to Miami. Beyond answering, AI enables a more personalized and empathetic journey: reading engagement context so that a fan in the middle of a support problem isn’t hit with a tone-deaf upsell. Ben sums up the value as trigger, engagement, and behavior.
How to measure real fan engagement, not vanity metrics
Ben moves past directional vanity metrics to signals of genuine engagement: repeat engagement from a fan, how long they spend in a session with the agent, and whether they return. From there he adds conversion rate — for example, the rate between seeing a competition ad on Instagram or TikTok and actually entering it — and ultimately fan lifetime value and monetization. The right mix depends on the club’s size and how quickly it wants to monetize; TGR Haas, he notes, is currently focused on building a deeper, more sophisticated fan base before optimizing for revenue.
The value exchange behind first-party data
Collecting valuable first-party and zero-party data comes down to getting the value exchange right, Ben says. Fans hand over information to participate in something — a competition, exclusive content — but the entry point is only half of it. The organization then has to provide continuous value through personalization, sending the information a fan asked for at the right cadence. As soon as a brand starts bombarding people with “buy this” after a signup, it moves in the opposite direction of the empathetic, trust-based relationship the whole approach is meant to build.
Where fan engagement is heading: hyper-personalization
Looking a few years out, Ben expects hyper-personalization to define the space and AI to become the practical norm rather than an experiment. The shift he anticipates is directionality: instead of a fan activating a conversation with the club, clubs will proactively reach out through intuitive, conversational interfaces — a scaled, tangible use of the AI available today. He also predicts that a year from now the industry will be able to link fan engagement much more clearly to revenue and efficiency.
FAQ
What do sports fans actually want from a franchise’s communication? Continuous connection rather than constant selling. Infobip’s research found fans want off-season and event-to-event updates that make them feel part of the team, delivered on the channel that matters to them — not a stream of promotional messages.
How should a marketing leader decide which channels to prioritize? Start with the fan, not the channel. Ben’s rule is “fan first, channel second,” using a single platform to serve the right channel for each use case and market while avoiding repeating the same message everywhere.
What’s a practical example of AI in fan engagement? Infobip built RaceMate for the TGR Haas F1 team — an AI companion fans can ask about races, quizzes, gamification, merchandise, or even practical questions like whether to bring a jacket to Miami, understanding the intent behind each query.
How do you measure deeper fan engagement? Look past vanity metrics to repeat and returning fans, session length with the AI agent, ad-to-competition conversion rate, and ultimately fan lifetime value and monetization — weighted to the club’s size and goals.
How do brands earn first-party and zero-party data from fans? Through a genuine, continuous value exchange. Fans share data to participate in something valuable, and the franchise has to keep delivering personalized value afterward to retain their trust and their data.
About Ben Lewis
Ben Lewis is the Vice President of Marketing and Growth at Infobip, a global cloud communications platform, appointed in December 2022. Based in Israel, he leads global marketing, aiming to increase brand awareness and market share. He previously held roles at OpenMarket and has extensive experience in omnichannel communications and strategic commercial innovation.
Ben Lewis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-lewis-082b7915/
Resources
Infobip: infobip.com
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Greg Kihlström: In a world of infinite entertainment choices, does a sports franchise earn a fan’s loyalty when the game isn’t even being played? Agility requires meeting fans where they are, with the right message at the right moment, whether they’re on their couch or in their seat. This means adapting communication strategies in real time to create a conversation, not just a broadcast. Today, we’re going to talk about how sports franchises are navigating an incredibly crowded calendar to build deeper relationships with their fans. It’s no longer just about what happens on the field or the court, it’s about merging technology and creativity to design a seamless fan journey that extends from their living room to the stadium and back. This means looking beyond traditional
[00:00:45] Greg Kihlström: broadcast and email to create interactive, personalized experiences that add real value.
[00:01:32] Greg Kihlström: To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Ben Lewis, VP of Marketing and Growth at Infobip. Ben, welcome to the show.
[00:01:40] Ben Lewis: Hey, Greg. Nice to meet you.
[00:01:41] Ben Lewis: Thank you very much to have me well.
[00:01:43] Greg Kihlström: Absolutely. Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at Infobip?
[00:01:50] Ben Lewis: Sure. So, I mean, as you said, I’m the VP of marketing at Infobip. so I look after the global marketing team, which covers brand, growth, partnerships, communication, and really the whole host of the spectrum of marketing within the company. So, I’ve been here for about five plus years, and previously to that, I was doing a similar-esque role in a company which actually Infobip acquired, which, I was also there for just under five years as well, so within the space for, for a while.
[00:02:19] Greg Kihlström: Nice, nice. Love it. Well, yeah, let’s, let’s dive in here, and I wanna start, talking about this from the, the strategic standpoint. And so, you know, beyond selling tickets and merchandise, what’s the core business objective that sports franchises are trying to solve by investing in a more connected omnichannel fan experience?
[00:02:42] Ben Lewis: It’s, it’s a really good question. I mean, to start with, you know, you have to understand the goal of what the teams are trying to, trying to do. So, let’s take Haas, TGR Haas, who, who we’re working with as an example. their goal is to, to build a closer relationship with fans. They, they understand sort of where they sit within the market. they’re, sort of a, a newer team maybe on the grid, not the newest team anymore, but, certainly a newer one.
[00:03:09] Ben Lewis: and they have to build that fan base, really, from, from, you know, start. So, fans, what do they want, what do the team want? And those two things may be slightly different. the team obviously are looking to maybe monetize relationships and to try… or as you said, there’s, like, where there’s tickets, there’s merchandise and things like that, which they’re obviously trying to get them to, to encourage them to.
[00:03:32] Ben Lewis: and through research that we did, with an external company, we actually highlighted that fans want to have continued relationships, in the off season, even, during, between a match or match, or, or race to race. and they want to have that sort of a feeling connected to the teams. They want to feel part of that, as opposed to the team always looking to, try and sell something-
[00:03:55] Ben Lewis: … they actually wanted to receive that information, you know, what’s next up, what, how can they sort of, get sort of the sneak preview or sneak glimpses in the, in the paddock, or in other places within the team as well.
[00:04:08] Ben Lewis: So they really wanted more communication, but continuous communication around the actual sort of operating model of the team. So not directly sort of saying, “Hey, we’ve got a new, jersey to sell,” or something like that. They actually wanted to have that, here’s a update for the race to come, you know, we see that the weather’s gonna be, you know, slightly more challenging, we’re gonna be testing, our slip tires. And they wanted to really feel, more information coming to them, on the channel that’s actually important to them.
[00:04:38] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. And so to create that more seamless experience, or e- e- it almost, I would almost say, more organic experience, you know, I, I don’t work as much in the sports world, but I, you know, in the, in the enterprise orgs that I work with, one of the things that tends to get in the way of that is, is internal operational silos, things like that. So I’d imagine, you know, ticketing, marketing, in-stadium ops, you know, all those kinds of things, these are different teams with different priorities and, and all that. So, you know, from a strategic standpoint, what, what’s the biggest hurdle to uniting kind of all these, these disparate parts, which are important in and of themselves, but from the fans’ perspective to
[00:05:23] Greg Kihlström: what you were saying earlier, they just want a good and consistent experience and, and that relationship, right?
[00:05:31] Ben Lewis: I mean, that, that, that’s the, as you said, it’s, it’s not just sports teams. Enterprises have it as well, but there’s a, a lot of disjointed journey which happens, so information is kept in different locations. So whether it’s the ticketing, it’s the support, it’s the merchandise store, it’s the… you name it, there’s different sort of, channels-
[00:05:52] Ben Lewis: … that people try and connect to, across those journeys. And, and you see it from, you know, connecting with enterprises as well as sports teams. So it’s a real, struggle, especially within the sports world, because, data is key. … you know, the stronger the data, the more pri-, you know, personalization of the messaging and the tone can actually be to the fan. so it’s about sort of unifying into a, a single platform, which allows you to be able to sort of take that sort of insights that come through, be able to personalize messaging and, and tone of voice to that person.
[00:06:25] Ben Lewis: so that’s one of the… It is a, it’s a massive issue within sports clubs, but it generally, as you said, just, across enterprises globally, when you go into a large organization, you know, the way how organizations typically evolve is they, they take on different products at different times, and-
[00:06:41] Ben Lewis: … those products are very sort of, integrated. So you have to sort of almost take them a little bit out of their comfort zone, start small, with the small integration, start to migrate things over, which is sort of what we’re doing with, Haas as well.
[00:06:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about, you know, the tactics of how this gets done. And, you know, certainly, you know, we talk a lot about AI on this show. certainly there’s a lot of hype around it, but there’s also increasingly practical ways of, of implementing it. So, you know, in the context of fan engagement, where are you seeing the most effective tactical applications of AI right now?
[00:07:22] Ben Lewis: I mean, so to start with, AI is, is, a very common discussion topic at the moment. (laughs)
[00:07:27] Greg Kihlström: Yes. (laughs)
[00:07:28] Ben Lewis: but I, I think that from a starting point, it allows you to, to really have a, like, authentic conversation with something. So we, we created a, a RaceMate, with, TGR Haas. so you can actually ask the RaceMate anything around the race activity. So it actually…
[00:07:45] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:46] Ben Lewis: Yes, we provide the menu which, sort of covers to, you know, specific topics, whether you wanna know specific races, you wanna… Gamification, quizzes, merchandise, whatever. But actually, if you just wanna say, you know, “What’s the r- weather gonna be in Miami and should I bring a jacket?”
[00:08:00] Ben Lewis: the, the RaceMate actually sort of understands that, and that’s a, a big characteristic and a, and a big sort of, a win for AI in this space.
[00:08:07] Ben Lewis: So I think it, it covers a few different things. It allows you to, have much more of a personalized journey. So the more information that, is being captured, the more sort of personalized actually the approach can be.
[00:08:19] Ben Lewis: so if you’re having a bad experience, let’s say you, you bought a jersey and you receive it in an actually wrong size, and you’re having an argument with the support, you know, the support-
[00:08:29] Ben Lewis: … you know, for them to sort of then send you another email saying, “Hey, you know, like, how about you purchase something else?” You know (laughs)-
[00:08:35] Ben Lewis: … it’s the wrong, wrong time and the wrong place, you know. So it allows sort of much more personalization, much more of a, empathetic approach, to the triggers that are being made about sort of at different engagement levels. So I think it allows… If I were to sum it up, I would say sort of trigger, engagement, and behavior would be sort of key sort of takeaways.
[00:08:56] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, and, you know, that becomes a challenge because fans are… They use the, the channels and the apps that they, they wanna use at the, you know, at the moment that, they, they make sense to the fan, right? which means, you know, everything from SMS, WhatsApp, social media, in-app, and, and many, many more. For the, the brands and the, the, the companies that need to support that, that, that can be challenging, right? I mean, it’s, it’s hard to support every- even for a very large organization, it’s hard to support everything. You know, how does a, how does a marketing leader decide which channels to maybe prioritize and, you know, without alienating customers?
[00:09:41] Greg Kihlström: You know, how do you, how do you find that right balance where it’s- you’re, you’re emphasizing the right things and you’re also maintaining consistency?
[00:09:51] Ben Lewis: I mean, I mean, the typical sort of point here is you’re gonna start with the fan, not the channel.
[00:09:56] Ben Lewis: You know? So it’s the same, same with, with, you know, enterprise and, and sort of connecting to, to anyone. You start with the customer and, and, you know, the, the channel is, sort of subset of that. And so I think different channels serve different, roles within this space, and specifically within this fan engagement layer. You know, it’s, it’s much more current and live and, and, you know, maybe sort of faster communication. So-
[00:10:22] Ben Lewis: … I would say start with the fan, and, and then channel sort of comes. we look at the different markets that you’re in. So different channels, appear in, and obviously, scale to different markets at different times. So, and again, having this sort of, I guess, maybe one-platform approach allows you to, go into many different channels, without having to sort of be silo-ed and say, “Okay, we can only use, you know, email,” and to-
[00:10:46] Ben Lewis: … because you can actually sort of connect on, on different ways. So, one channel, one platform allows multiple different channels, understanding sort of the different use cases of where things work. so again, if you’re trying to, you know, maybe support tickets or something like that, services, or different needs as, as maybe an update, or a team update. So having that unified approach, stops, repeating messages, and that’s also what fans do once, you know, they don’t wanna receive the same message on, on every single channel they have. So-
[00:11:17] Ben Lewis: … you know, fan first, channel second, and knowing the market as well that is- you know, that’s being sent in.
[00:11:26] Greg Kihlström: And so measuring success on that, certainly there are some superficial- the, you know, the vanity metrics that, that are directional, let’s say, but they’re, they’re- they don’t measure true engagement. You know, what, what are some of the, the key performance indicators that would demonstrate a deeper level of, of fan engagement and, you know, even a positive return?
[00:11:51] Ben Lewis: So I, I think it starts with, understanding maybe the, the sort of repeat engagement from a, from a user, so-
[00:11:59] Ben Lewis: … let’s say from a fan. how long they’re spending on a session with the agent that they’re actually talking to. So if they’re, they’re using RaceMate, so you can measure it on, the length of their sort of engagement, within the, the RaceMate itself. You know, that’s one. Two, if they’re sort of returning, fans. So I think that these are some initial metrics. you can also track, sort of conversion rates. So, you know, if you’re trying to sort of engage your, your audience in getting more fans in or getting them to sign up to a specific competition, you can advertise on these com- competitions on Instagram or TikTok or something like that.
[00:12:33] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:33] Ben Lewis: And then the conversion rate between, you know, seeing that ad and actually coming into that competition is, is another sort of a metric which is a relatively good one to track, ’cause then you can look at it from spend on ad to conversion to actually sort of the execution or completion at the end. And then ultimately, where you wanna get to is, you know, I guess that monetization piece, for the sports club or the team-
[00:12:58] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:59] Ben Lewis: … which is in, in… you know, depending on the size of the team, it will depend on, on what they’re looking or how fast they’re looking to monetize within that space. So, you know, specifically if I take ƒrHaas as an example, you know, right now, they’re actually looking to, to engage their fans on a, a deeper way, than, than other F1 teams, on the market. They, they really wanna sort of, build a more solid and sophisticated fan base, y- using these channel metrics and, and channel discussions.
[00:13:29] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:29] Ben Lewis: Later, and they don’t even have a timeline to this, they, they want to then st- look at different ways on, on utilizing that, but at the same time, right now, it’s all about sort of building that fan base up. so depending on, I guess, the size of the organization, the size of the sports club will have different goals and objectives that they’re trying to hit. Um-
[00:13:47] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:47] Ben Lewis: … so I think from this standpoint, I would look at, you know, conversion rate between ad to channel, and then sort of the, lifestyle, the, the lifetime, lifetime value with that, that fan-
[00:14:00] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:00] Ben Lewis: … within that network as well.
[00:14:02] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, and you touched on another thing there too, which is, you know, it, it certainly is not… I mean, lifetime value is certainly not a short-term, you know, goal either, but, you know, a lot of this is building long-term relationships with those fans and them growing over time, ideally, you know, bringing their family, friends, others into the, into the fold as well. That requires collecting, you know, some valuable first-party, zero-party data, thing- things like that. How are you seeing successful organizations doing this? I mean, you know, co- being able to collect this in a meaningful way, where the fans want to provide it because, you know, I assume they, they provide it because they get something back. Like, what, what’s, what’s the,
[00:14:47] Greg Kihlström: the best practices you’re seeing there?
[00:14:49] Ben Lewis: Listen, it’s a trade-off. Um-
[00:14:52] Ben Lewis: … you know, with, with, with anything, you know, and anything in marketing, you, try and show some type of value, (laughs) which you’re-
[00:14:59] Ben Lewis: … which you’re creating, whether that’s a whitepaper document, research paper or anything, or in this case, maybe a competition or, or something-
[00:15:08] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:08] Ben Lewis: … that a fan, or a user, us, feels that they want to part with their information in order to participate in-
[00:15:17] Ben Lewis: … whether that’s a competition or something. And so it, it comes down to the fact that, you, you have to get the value right, the value exchange. some people will find the value exchange, just to participate in something. Some people want it to be a, a bigger, bigger prize, and, and for that value, I’ll, I’ll be willing to sort of give X for. Um-
[00:15:37] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:37] Ben Lewis: So that, that’s, I guess that’s the entry point, and I think that once you’ve parted with your information, then it’s up to the team and the organization to actually provide you with the value, the continuous value to actually show, you know, “Okay, I’ve given my information over. Yes, I’m participating in a competition, but actually, there’s a continuous”-
[00:15:58] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:15:58] Ben Lewis: … “value which, actually, the team is providing me in order for me to keep my data and dataset there.” And in order for that to happen, it comes down to personalization, so actually thinking to, you know, what is important to me, as a fan? You know, what do I want to hear? Sort of, what does this team present to me? And I think that that’s… if I think of what’s the most important thing that I have as a, as a sports fan myself, it does come down to I want to receive information which I’ve asked for-
[00:16:25] Greg Kihlström: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:26] Ben Lewis: … in, in the right sort of span of time. So if I started receiving from my, my soccer team on a, on a hour-by-hour basis, it would annoy me a little bit, and I probably would try and opt out. But if it’s, a daily update which I, I generally receive, that’s, for me, the right time. So it also depends on the personalization that’s received. So I think that that’s the key thing-
[00:16:48] Ben Lewis: … that there has to be a value for the exchange and then the continuous level of personalization post.
[00:16:54] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, I think… I mean, I think that continuous part is an important point to, to underscore, because I, I think a lot of brands get it, that, “Okay, I need to give something in return for getting, getting the customer data,” but I think it’s they… those brands also need to continuously prove that they’ve-
[00:17:13] Ben Lewis: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:13] Greg Kihlström: … earned that information and the trust of, of their customers. It’s not just a, “Okay, once I get this stuff, I can start just selling stuff to them-“
[00:17:22] Greg Kihlström: … you know, with, with, with abandon or whatever. So I, I think that’s a great point to, to, to emphasize there. (laughs)
[00:17:28] Ben Lewis: I mean, as, as soon as you sort of provide something, and then you start getting sort of bombarded with, “Buy this,” y- you know-
[00:17:33] Ben Lewis: … that’s the complete opposite direction of, you know, this, maybe sort of empathetic environment that, that I think that-
[00:17:41] Ben Lewis: … if you have this, this environment of, sort of one platform and, and understanding there’s personalization, and actually sort of future trends is hyper-personalization, so really sort of proactive approach from, from a sports club, you know, to the person. So that’s sort of almost where it goes to, um-
[00:17:58] Ben Lewis: … sort of in future.
[00:17:59] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit more about that, that future, state as well, you know, looking out a few years. What are the emerging technologies or trends that you think are gonna potentially, whether it’s significantly reshape or just evolve over, over time to kinda change that relationship or evolve that relationship between fans and sports franchises?
[00:18:24] Ben Lewis: I mean, I mean, I mentioned just a minute ago, I mean, hyper-personalization is, is, is key.
[00:18:28] Greg Kihlström: Yeah.
[00:18:28] Ben Lewis: I think that has, you know, AI is actually maybe w- we’re on a test space at the moment where everyone’s, you know, it’s moving so fast and we’re, we’re using aspects of it. But actually, you know, if I think about sort of more future, setup, you know, my, I would sort of envisage that AI would just become the, the practical norm. So-
[00:18:51] Ben Lewis: … you know, being able to have, conversations on, on different interfaces, which can hold and are intuitive and, and actually proactive, from the sports club to the, to the fan directly. as opposed to it being the other way around, which is a sports club or the fan sort of activating it to the sports club. So I think sort of more focused on AI actually in a tangible way, for that communication. So I think that that’s generally where it’s going, so you can have sort of more conversational interfaces, and a practical use of maybe scaling, AI as we have it today.
[00:19:26] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, yeah. Love it. Well, Ben, thanks so much for joining today. Got a couple last questions for you as we wrap up here. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:19:40] Ben Lewis: I think that if we, captured it again in a year’s time (laughs), you know, one of the points that we discussed earlier, which is like sort of this like monetization environment, but I think maybe having clear links to, to this revenue and efficiency, from the, this fan engagement, aspect. So, you know, at the moment, I think it’s all quite new and I think that, you know, teams and sports clubs and even enterprises ex- exploring this, this landscape, especially with the use of AI, and I think from a year from now, let’s make the date-
[00:20:10] Greg Kihlström: (laughs)
[00:20:11] Ben Lewis: … we should be able to actually sort of link it back to, you know, revenue and efficiency for the organization.
[00:20:16] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, love it. And last question for you, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:20:24] Ben Lewis: this is a tough one. I, there, there’s so much happening around AI at the moment and, I think as a, as, someone posted on LinkedIn at some point, which I saw a couple of weeks ago was, ask, ask ChatGPT or Claude, you know, if you could give me, if I asked this six months ago or something, you know, give me advice from, from knowing me six months past or something. and it basically said that my, I use AI and I use it on a, on a practical level, but n- you know, the advice that it sort of gave me was like, I should have been harder and, and pushing it much more aggressively. And, and I, and I think that what I’m using today, I’m really trying to use many different aspects of it from, you know, so I’m really sort of advocating it with my design team. I can sort of say to them and show them, this is something I’ve built- you know, with a, you know, with, you know, maybe Claude Design and, and, you know, have you explored it? Have you experimented? And so I’m really trying to every tool that’s sort of available, I’m using it, aggressively so I can sort of advocate it to the team and sort of show them, you know, that th- these things are available to us. And looking at efficiencies, looking at sort of, you know, different practical ways to, to, l- you know, move faster. so I, I think that that was a, a tough learning for me, but equally something I, I’m, I’m really pushing very hard now.
