Insights from the Experts: A Q&A with Gary Warech, Head of Sports & Entertainment, and Jay Bailey, Vice President of Content Licensing & Operations
Summary:
- Gary Warech discusses the growing use of AI in sports and entertainment, noting its impact on player analytics, fan engagement, and the exploration of AI for internal efficiency and monetization of media content.
- Jay Bailey highlights AI’s role in making vast content archives accessible and searchable, facilitating the creation of new content forms, and enabling significant revenue generation through content licensing.
- Veritone’s Digital Media Hub helps categorize and manage content efficiently, turning it into a revenue-generating asset, with Veritone Content Licensing enabling organizations to monetize their content.
For almost a decade, Veritone has served the media & entertainment industry, including sports organizations and leagues. The common thread uniting these organizations is the importance of content that fans consume. In reality, the spotlight belongs to the creators, or the people at the center of developing and disseminating content, as they are the ones who capture and create the moments that inspire the world. To better understand how Veritone supports these creators, we caught up with two Veritonians who understand this industry well. Hear from Gary Warech and Jay Bailey as they discuss the top trends in this space.
Gary Warech Q&A
Q: What is the biggest trend you’re seeing right now in Sports & Entertainment?
It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) has become more than a buzzword. Everyone knows about ChatGPT, even people who weren’t previously thinking about generative AI. The impact has forever changed the way we look at the world. The challenge is how to responsibly leverage AI technology for good.
In the sports world, we’ve seen small points of AI take hold, such as player analytics and AI voice for new fan engagements. However, that is the tip of the iceberg as the entire industry is exploring AI more seriously. Whether that is technology to create internal operational efficiencies or monetization vehicles leveraging proprietary media content. The conversation has expanded to include all aspects of an organization, both internal and external.
Q: What is the key challenge organizations face in adopting AI?
The biggest challenge facing AI adoption at the enterprise level is a need for more education and understanding of how to use the technology effectively and ethically. AI adoption can be a big investment, so understanding its benefits and how it can positively impact your business is critical. Some efficiency adoption comes with a cost; other usage can include revenue-generating opportunities.
Perhaps the most valuable revenue-driving asset a sports organization has, outside of the live experience, is its captured content. However, to fully realize the potential of their content, organizations need to be able to access it efficiently. Knowing where content lives, what is within the content, and the breadth of the inventory is critical to generating revenue. In other words, their content can be a revenue-driving resource by leveraging AI. However, we have found that organizations’ content archives are often outdated within manual and cumbersome content management systems, making them difficult to find and use effectively.
Organizations can efficiently and effectively categorize their content by adopting AI-powered solutions like Veritone’s Digital Media Hub to prepare for activation and revenue-generating strategies.
Q: How should organizations approach adopting AI?
Sports organizations must rethink how they manage their content and how AI can enhance the process. Start by building a workflow to ingest content into a cloud-based environment. Next, activate AI against your content to correctly tag and catalog your assets to create an accessible and intelligent library. Storing content in a single, cloud-based location allows teams to search for content quickly, create new types of content, and drive revenue, which Jay will discuss.
Jay Bailey Q&A
Q: Why is AI so important for driving business impact with content?
The most valuable asset an entertainment organization has at its disposal, whether you’re a news organization, movie studio, or a sports entity, is the compelling content you have created. These memorable moments are how you engage with your audience.
What many folks fail to realize is that often, these moments will have a second life. Creatives want to feature these moments in their projects. A perfect example would be the Apollo Moon Landing. Walter Cronkite covered this magical moment for CBS News. His reporting is synonymous with this historic event. As time has gone on, countless projects have wanted to document or even recreate this moment in history. You would be hard-pressed to produce a project without using Mr. Cronkite’s words to tell the story effectively.
Now, how does AI help with this process? The simple answer is many of these content archives are massive. They go back years and years. Oftentimes, these assets are not cataloged. The ability to search and discover content has always been one of the biggest hurdles in the industry. AI has become the solution to many of these problems. What used to take a researcher hours upon hours, days upon days can now be resolved in minutes.
Q: How can organizations generate revenue using artificial intelligence?
It all starts with technology like the Veritone Digital Media Hub, which provides a central, cloud-based location where content can be ingested and processed with AI. At Veritone, we have countless cognitive engines that can tag your content and make it readily accessible. With content creation at an all-time high, creatives are constantly looking for defining moments that can elevate their projects, whether it be a film, documentary, TV series, or advertisement. Certainly, they can create moments on their own, but including the actual moment can really separate a creative from their competitors.
Veritone Licensing has a long history of representing premium archives from the world of news, sports film studios, and user-generated content. We market their content to the creative community and ultimately hope to create a significant revenue stream for them.
Now, if you take AI out of the equation, the ability to truly activate your archive can be a daunting task. I have been in content licensing for over fourteen years. I remember the days before AI. These were frustrating times. You often knew there were hidden gems within these archives, but finding those moments was near impossible. The time and cost to manage your archive seemed unsurmountable. AI has revolutionized our business. It can turn a cost center into a revenue generator in a very short time period. You can have a secure, organized archive of all your assets. Then, a group like Veritone Licensing can take those assets to the countless creatives looking to produce compelling content. Quickly, you can be generating significant revenue through content licensing.
Interested in chatting with Gary or Jay about how AI can help generate revenue for your business? Connect with Gary or Jay on LinkedIn.