Mark Keaney: Chief Revenue Officer of Greenfly - Sports Business Conversations

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Mark Keaney: Chief Revenue Officer of Greenfly

Episode 57 • 8th October 2024 • Sports Business Conversations • ADC Partners

00:02

Mark Keaney

Hi, this is Mark Keeney, chief revenue officer for Green Fly, and I'm going one one today with ABC partners.

00:25

Dave Almy

Hey, this is Dave Almy of ADC partners. And many thanks for stopping by to check out this latest episode of the one one sports Business Conversations podcast. Now, the other day I was looking at all the digital photos and videos I have stored over the years, and let me tell you, I was a little overwhelmed. I bet you kind of know what I'm talking about, right? You know, you get things stored in different places, things aren't categorized correctly. I mean, it's total mess. Now imagine what that would be like if you're doing it for hundreds of thousands of people. You just throw up in your mouth a little bit. You know, that's kind of what I did. But that's what sports teams are dealing with right now.

01:06

Dave Almy

Think about all the photos, videos and other forms of content that are generated about leagues, teams and players on a daily basis. Hell, on an hourly basis. It's pretty staggering, right? Well, that's where Marquini and Greenfly come in. Greenfly shows teams not only how to organize all that content, but also how they can use it to effectively connect with and engage their fans. Using media effectively is nothing new to Mark. He's got a long history in the industry. In our conversation, we talk about the changing role of media in sports, what he's seeing in terms of best practices for using user generated content, how established teams and leagues are actually looking to the upstarts for advice on using new media and content, and much more.

01:56

Dave Almy

Mark, let's begin just by doing a quick review of your media and sales background, because there's some history here. You've worked for a number of companies in this particular vertical, and I'm really interested just to sort of set the foundation here is when you think back to what you learned as an account manager for iHeartRadio and what you're doing today for as CRO of Greenfly, where are the commonalities and what have you learned along the way? That really impact you today?

02:54

Mark Keaney

Man, that's an awesome question. And that kind of goes way back in, the way back machine there. But I think when you first said the question, I literally said, I'm doing the exact same thing. And I really did have the benefit early on. I got out of college. I got into sales. I sold mailing and shipping equipment for about nine months, and I was miserable.

03:16

Dave Almy

And it's hard to imagine why.

03:18

Mark Keaney

And someone said, you know, you've got great sales talent, but you need to sell something that you believe in, really care about, you're interested in. And a friend of mine worked at Kiss 108 in Boston, which was big radio station, and there was a job opening, and I interviewed for the job, and I was sort off to the races. I was successful immediately. And I'll say there were two things about that experience that kind of take me into where I am right now at Greenfly is that I really loved what I did. I was so passionate about the relationship between our customers and the benefit they got from advertising the right way on media. It was just awesome. I had so much fun doing it. So that passion translated, and I feel I have the same energy right now at Greenfly.

04:01

Mark Keaney

The second thing, and this just came from, like, keeping my ears open and having some good mentors is weren't necessarily selling radio. We were consulting on how you could build the right advertising program to deliver outcomes for your business. So were taught at a young age of selling, of, like, you got to ask the right questions, you got to keep your ears open. And I think now we just came from a great meeting. I'm in New York for the day, and we just came from this meeting, and I stopped down midway through because were kind of talking too much. And I just asked the right question. And I wanted to understand, like, the big challenges and the big goals that this particular customer had.

04:37

Mark Keaney

And it almost took me back, you know, 25 years, and the gold was in the answers because we actually do what this guy needs us to do. We could map our solution to his problem, and that's where the action happens.

04:52

Dave Almy

It's so, I hate to say this, but it's so trite, but so true from the standpoint of you talked about the passion you need to feel when you're selling and you're caring about that because your customers pick up on that. If you're mailing it in, they're going to mail it in the other thing. And thank God it's so valuable for people listening to hear that comment about, hey, man, we're talking too much. We're trying to sell versus trying to listen. And like that simple thing is the foundation of all effective sales, right? I mean, that's how people build careers in this particular part of the world, right?

05:38

Mark Keaney

That's exactly right.

05:39

Dave Almy

So talk a little bit about the evolution of content because that's green fly right now, and that's where you're really focused on. And, you know, he talked about being at Kiss 108 in Boston. It was just called radio back then, or it's just called audio right now we've got this larger category known as content. And similar to the first question, as you think back to how you started in media and how the idea of content has changed, how do you define it now and how are companies that you're selling to interacting with it and the priorities associated with it?

06:14

Mark Keaney

Yeah, that is a great question coming up in the media industry in the nineties, another century. But coming up immediately that we said that content is king and it was all about having the right content for the right audience. The advantage we had at the time, whether it was television or radio or even newspaper, but you had sort of this mindset of appointment listening viewing. So must see tv on Thursday nights Seinfeld that was a destination that we talked about on Friday morning around the water cooler. So that's kind of the old world of content. And I think when you think about the early two thousands, the Internet changed everything. Google gave us the ability to find whatever we want when we wanted it. That was complemented by the on demand world, where you could now get content on demand.

07:06

Mark Keaney

But then something interesting happened. Social media, Facebook was launched in the early two thousands, right before the iPhone put all of that searchability and connectivity into the power of our hands. And now we could really see and participate in content whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. So I think now when we think about content, and greenfly in particular, we are in the short form content business. Our goal is to be core infrastructure to help large scale sports organizations and entertainment companies deliver short form content across any channel.

07:44

Mark Keaney

And I think that what we're helping our customers do, and this is the difference between what was once appointment television, for example, is we're helping our customers become cross channel storytellers where they are basically taking that 30 minutes show and they're creating content alongside of it so that the show can live on Thursday night, but can be replayed on demand, but they can connect with fans on YouTube and also social in a variety of different ways with shareability and expandability to build that audience size.

08:18

Dave Almy

You've talked about, like, there's this immediacy now, right? If I wanna watch something, I'm gonna watch it. Like, you know, back in, you know, the Seinfeld days and, you know, must see tv on Thursday nights. It was, you know, only 26 hours to go. And I know some people are listening to this right now going like, oh, my God, it's like dinosaurs roamed the earth. Yeah, but that coincides with, I mean, there's no bigger consumer of content than a sports fan, right? And their expectations have changed dramatically very quickly that coincided with all this. Like, the device in the pocket and the means with which to find anything you want was that. I mean, there's kind of a chicken and egg quality to this kind of question, right?

09:07

Dave Almy

I mean, did the sports fan drive that needed, or did sports companies and properties and media start saying, hey, let's deliver up different kinds of content and see what sticks?

09:20

Mark Keaney

Yeah, these are great questions.

09:23

Dave Almy

I got a great question generator on AI. So we're going to use that thing.

09:26

Mark Keaney

I'm going to say a positive and negative about media, like old media things. And I remember in the early two thousands, I knew that Spotify and I, and Apple Music was about to destroy radio as I knew it, but I couldn't get people above me to kind of, like, connect to that. I was like, there's something coming. And I think that was kind of like, that was the darkest day. That was like the dumb old thinking. I think the new world thinking, when you think about the best of media people are very sophisticated and savvy at understanding the need to deliver to the audience.

10:01

Dave Almy

Right?

10:02

Mark Keaney

Stand.

10:03

Dave Almy

What are they clamoring for?

10:04

Mark Keaney

re's a game on every night at: 07:00

10:56

Mark Keaney

So what you're seeing is that the ability to not only take highlight clips are like, kind of like the foundation, right? You get these great happening in real time, but what we've seen is the evolution of what we call live content capture. So the having like, almost like sideline social media reporters, having influencers in stadium, capturing moments that, and I knew you're gonna ask about AI later, but capturing moments that good technology and AI can find and pull in and leverage in real time. You get a kid sitting in a bar, you get a person that's away at college, they're experiencing Fenway park firsthand. They're just not there and they're not watching the broadcast feed, but it expands the audience. And when you have a bigger audience, you can put commercials in front of them, you can put merchandise opportunities in front of them.

11:43

Mark Keaney

You can sell hats.

11:44

Dave Almy

I think you see also sports leagues and teams starting to look at the fundamental nature of the games they're playing. I mean, and the thing that immediately pops to mind is the pitch clock in baseball.

11:56

Mark Keaney

Right.

11:57

Dave Almy

that pretty wrapped up in the: 2100

12:29

Mark Keaney

And ironically, at a cross street in Manhattan yesterday, I was talking with the MLB. We were walking back to their offices from lunch. We were talking about the pitch count, and the guy I was talking to basically said, he's like, I was at a bar the other night and were ready to leave. And it was like one out left in the inning. And I knew with the pitch count that I could actually watch it right here. I didn't have to wait. Like, I could finish the inning. Then essentially I could pick up Twitter kind of live feed from the game. So I think there is a parallel between how they think about packaging the product and then the delivery points.

13:05

Mark Keaney

Again, that kind of cross channel storytelling, it's like you're making a better product for the viewer, but that viewer is watching in different ways. They're not sitting on a couch, right? They might be watching it on demand, they might be recording it with a DVR. They might be in a bar like this, catching a third of the game, but then picking up on a live stream feed on Twitter on the way home.

13:28

Dave Almy

It is amazingly stitching together all these different experiences into it really allows a consumer to consume. Boy, they're getting a little redundant to really take in these games in the way that they want. Ultimately, it goes right back to the beginning of the conversation that we just had. How are we listening to our consumer and providing them with a product that's going to solve the challenge that they find? And so with that in mind, you touched a little bit on it earlier, but can you break down green fly? So when you think about like the conversation you just said, you know, you're out with Major League Baseball, you're walking down the street. When you think about their challenges and what they're telling you they're trying to do, where does green fly slide in to try to help them with those with.

14:13

Dave Almy

I mean, it's just the idea of content is so huge. So how do you help them deliver on that?

14:21

Mark Keaney

I'm going to use one word and kind of a simple word. It's just organizationally, we help them organize all of the different mechanisms of content that are available to them in real time. And I can lens out for a second. We work with every major league in the US. We work with most major leagues worldwide. We just had our first foray into the college market with the Big Ten at the conference level. And the reason I frame it like that and bring the Big Ten into the conversation is that everyone has the same problem. There is no shortage of incredible content that is being created in real time from the actual broadcast feed that is broken down in the clips. And now you've got these great clips and highlights from social media reporters and live content creators in stadium, from fan UGC.

15:12

Mark Keaney

And then also when you think about archival content, so big moments in sports that happen, you got all these different content sources that if you're talking MLB or you're talking Big Ten, they live in a variety of different places and sometimes on someone's phone. What Greenfly does is we have the ability to bring all of those content sources into our infrastructure, this kind of core infrastructure model. All this content from a variety of different inputs, including Getty Images, including broadcast clips, including the live content capture. All of it comes in. And with the help of AI, it is organized. So at the league level, it's organized by team and by player. It might be organized by a sponsor, by brand, could be organized by action.

15:57

Mark Keaney

So touchdown, home run, Grand Slam, all of that is organized in a way that the endpoints, the outputs, can have it delivered to them directly in real time. And they can, a player can share it from their phone, from their mobile device or I was at the US Open and the NBC Sports was also, they work with Premier League. They were getting live content from the Premier League distributed to their broadcast feed from Greenfly. So it's that intersection of all that content, because the value of content, when you think about short form content, it's real time. And Caitlin Clark breaks the record, the first record of manure. But when we break happening in real time, a tweet about that three days later is not as powerful and invaluable as it's happening right in the moment.

16:48

Mark Keaney

And we have the ability to basically take that moment in an almost near real time.

16:53

Dave Almy

That's the differentiator here. Because you are talking about, it's almost hard to imagine the volume of content that's produced. I think as old school guys, we're used to growing up with, well, there's the high up camera angle and, you know, there's that camera angle. We get basically waited for the producer and the truck to change it. But you're now talking about a day when a 60,000 seed stadium has 60,000 different camera views and having to stitch that all together. So it's a volume equation and it's an immediate equation as far as how to help these sports organizations deal this onslaught of information coming their way.

17:36

Mark Keaney

Correct.

17:37

Dave Almy

How did they respond to it? Like, when you come to them, can you break that down of what their perception of it is and the need to provide, for lack of a better term? I've heard it use this quite like that bite sized content. Their revenue has traditionally been built on big, large form media deals. And you spoke a little bit about it earlier, like, are we going to sacrifice some of our audience associated with it? Is there, do you have to break through a certain amount of they feel threatened by this, or has that come a long way?

18:11

Mark Keaney

You know, it's funny, each quarter, and I would break my life down into quarters, every quarter it becomes more and more urgent. That is the thing, right? Like, I went back ten years ago, five years ago, three years ago. I think that, like having, you know, back then, if you go back in time ten years, it might have been, we need to have a Facebook page.

18:33

Dave Almy

Yeah, yeah.

18:34

Mark Keaney

Social strategy. We need to put some pictures up on social media. In the thought of using video highlights. Well, that takes away from the plays of the week, right? That takes away from the broadcast feed. I would say that 99% of the time, the conversations we're having with different parts of the organization, whether we're talking to the chief revenue officer of a major league or we're talking to the head of digital content or broadcast. Basically, when you think of this platform, it kind of explained the inputs, right? The contents coming in from all places. The outputs are where it gets really interesting, where we essentially feed the broadcasters, we feed the sponsors, we feed the partner ecosystem, we feed the social media feeds at the team level and at the player level.

19:20

Mark Keaney

So when you think about the broadcast piece, interesting example, but at the US Open a year ago, Scheffler had a. A sand trap shot that was unbelievable. I think it was on the 13th hole. I might be making that up, but the camera angles only really could catch the top of his club. There was no one capturing the actual live shot itself except this. You could see the sand iron come up and you see the after effects of it almost falling out. But there was a piece of fan content that would happen to be captured right behind the trap. And within 15 minutes, were able to get that to the broadcaster, and they created an interesting moment, a vertical video transposed into a live broadcast. And it's just the magic of, like, you know what, cross channel storytelling, right?

20:04

Mark Keaney

And so you think about some of the benefit. It could drive tune in, it could drive fan engagement. We can attach a sponsor to that. Like, all of a sudden, it's like building audience, building revenue. Short form content is a big part of what we need to do today and moving forward.

20:19

Dave Almy

And I think you also touch upon, I mean, people sometimes forget, I mean, this is a sports business podcast, so most of the people are listening to this. This is going to seem like a stupid statement to make, but you forget sometimes that sports organizations are money making machines. Right? They're in the entertainment business. And, you know, it's, you know, the game on the field is, you know, certainly entertaining, and it's compelling and it's emotional and all the things that go along with that. But every organization is always looking for what's the next way to generate revenue? How can we pull more dollars from a fan, from a sponsor, from a media partner, to generate the income that we need to compete with our peers? And you're kind of opening up a whole new door for them.

21:02

Dave Almy

It's just a new product, though, and maybe having a sense of how to sell it, how to monetize it was new. Do you assist them with that part of this equation, or is that. Here's the content. Go at it.

21:16

Mark Keaney

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think that. Is that. So the short answer is yes. And I think a big part of it is we've got a great customer success organization that provides a level of strategic service as well, and best practices and that sort of thing. I think from a business perspective, we as a company are actually starting to move into that strategic services model. We're not necessarily going to teach the NFL to do something better than the.

21:43

Dave Almy

NFL is doing, and you'll certainly never tell them that you will.

21:49

Mark Keaney

Amazing leagues like PWHL know professional Women's hockey league first year, not only as a league, but first year with green fly. And we're thinking about in what ways can we take the knowledge gained from working with the bigs and look at some of our mid, you know, our mid tier leagues and newer leagues and say, okay, here's a great, here are three things that we can help you do. Let's go in business together and work together on that specifically. And because a lot of these guys.

22:16

Dave Almy

Are undermanned, do you think that newer leagues, you just brought up the PWHL and like the major league lacrosse because they're new and they're not, quote unquote, burdened by legacy media and those requirements, do they actually almost have an advantage in the script? Yeah, they may have only a two person shop to help drive this kind of stuff, but because they're able to create this in this moment versus having 45 years of stuff, they also have to tag along with this. Is there an advantage for them there in dealing with how consumers want this stuff?

22:54

Mark Keaney

I think that is an astute call out because ironically, you say that, and I've actually been asked by a couple of big leagues like, hey, what are they doing? I think there's a little bit to that. I think that there is almost like they've got a clean whiteboard. Right. I think that they know that they're going to have lesser their broadcast deals and that opportunity is going to be lesser of an opportunity of growth for them in the near term. So how do they build audience beyond that? And I think PWHL had an amazing year this year. I think when you look at their ticket sales, it was incredible. The amount of coverage, the broadcast tuning, everything was great. But I think a big part of what they needed to do that is they needed to create a small but mighty pr machine.

23:42

Mark Keaney

And the loudest voice really is social. So the ability to get all of their players leveraging content, which they do through greenfly. Right. So you got like one of the pieces of that we call player distribution, where you get every single player within a league or on a team that has the green fly app and is getting content sourced for them that is either promotional on the league's behalf. So here's some ticket sale information. Here is a great highlight video of our season, that sort of stuff, or it's content that's specifically routed to them, that might be their highlights or their promotional videos. And they get it on their phone and in real time, they just select, I'm going to share this. Here's the social network on Twitter, click on Instagram, instantly post it.

24:23

Dave Almy

Yeah. And it allows them to flood the zone. Allows a two person marketing department to flood the zone with content. Right. So you can push out so much because of all the tools that you're bringing. You take what used to be. Jesus, man, I worked 30 people and now you can like hone it down to two. And they can just make sure that a new league, which traditionally has struggled to break through the clutter of the sports landscape, can now be anywhere at any time, with everything, with the moments that are compelling. That was always hard to reach anybody with because it just were invisible. It's just not the case anymore.

25:00

Mark Keaney

One other piece of that again, and not that we have too many arms and legs, I think we have the right amount of arms and legs as a platform. Like, there's a lot of elements to it. I covered the input and the output, all those different things. One element that I've not really brought into the conversation that most of our customers are getting great use out of, but it's the amplification of voice is what we call engage, which is a tool that allows them to. To aggregate fan UGC in real time. So when you think of user generated content or fan content, you would have to mine social media, you know, and find Mike from Boston, who loves the Celtics. You grab his post, but then you got to ask him permission to repurpose that content.

25:40

Mark Keaney

Engage essentially allows a league like PWHL to do an campaign around the playoffs. So they push it out on their social channels, they push it on their website, asking fans to upload a video into this little microsite. Thousands of people enter, and then they've got this great content they repackage and push out on their social channels. Now you bring the fans into the conversation, right? Total application of voice.

26:05

Dave Almy

I mean, it's kind of amazing to think about because teams have been running contests forever, right? And the intent was, how do we capture that fans information so that we can get them into our ecosystem and sell them to our products and everything like that. And yes, that's always going to be an important thing, and it's always going to be part of what sports teams do. But now, to think that the content these fans generate has equal value to who those fans are to help them tell the story is actually some pretty progressive thinking on the part of a lot of sports teams who tend to be pretty dot to dot as far as revenue. Like, if I do this thing, I want that thing to have that idea of, hey, man, we can build revenue off of this thing.

26:45

Dave Almy

The fans are providing for us in their personal viewpoint.

26:51

Mark Keaney

Yeah.

26:52

Dave Almy

Which is where it really starts to get interesting.

26:54

Mark Keaney

I'll send you some examples of this, too, because the videos are amazing, but I can imagine the asterisk is that the campaign is a clearinghouse. So we want you to give us content. When you agree to give us content, you give us the rights to use it, and we use it any way we see fit, including commercially. So did a great program with Big ten around Caitlin Clark's first record. And in that campaign, like send in your fan video, all these awesome kids, grandparents, women who played 30 years ago, fun videos, and they made a montage video celebrating Caitlin in her biggest moment presented by State Farm.

27:32

Dave Almy

Right?

27:32

Mark Keaney

So you got the commercialization piece and the rights to do it, but at the end of the day, as much as it was a huge value to State Farm and a nice win for the conference, from a commercialization standpoint, at the end of the day, all the fans got was this immersion in Caitlin's big moment, big night. And that's kind of awesome.

27:51

Dave Almy

We talk so much about sports and why it's effective for partners, particularly on the corporate side, because it generates emotion. And I think what you just described there realizes that in a unique and compelling way, right? Because it literally takes the emotion of the fans and bakes it into, for lack of a better term, a product that people can engage with, that sponsors can touch, that teams can then shop and things like that, but it's like distilled pure stuff versus, hey, look, we made a sizzle reel and it's kind of manufactured and things like that. This is how many times you've heard the word authenticity thrown around in the last ten years. But this sort of what greenfly is doing really allows for that to take place by accessing those kinds of video.

28:37

Mark Keaney

Right?

28:39

Dave Almy

You brought up the big ten. We talked about the PWHL and talk about organizations that are doing unique and compelling things. What else stands out to you as organizations that are really being effective in how they use green fly and short form content? What makes them effective and what can other teams learn from them?

29:02

Mark Keaney

One of our first. So we're going to talk about AI, I'm assuming at some point.

29:06

Dave Almy

Yeah, that's literally queued up.

29:08

Mark Keaney

Oh, perfect. We acquired a company a year ago that we did our homework and felt like we found one of the best in class AI companies specifically for sports. And I'll get into why after. But the NHL has really done an incredible job in the digital space at kind of bringing them like catching up, if you will, to the NBA, to the NHL, to the NFL, rather. You've got, when I think of NBA, NFL, you get these really mature digital brands and NHL is just different, right? You've got these sort of blue collar hockey player guys. Like, they don't love social. Like, they're just different. It's not the NBA.

29:48

Dave Almy

They are different.

29:49

Mark Keaney

But they were able to build an incredible program with the help of Greenfly, using aih and doing a player sharing program. So they've got this awesome live content capture happening in stadium and that content is being shared in real time with the help of AI to specific players and their handlers. And that is being leveraged across social channels kind of like instantly. So it's kind of taking the emotion of like, you know, a 28 seat stadium, a 28,000 seat stadium and the fun that you have in stadium, bringing it to life in real time and engaging true hockey fans at scale. We happen to, I say we in partnership with the NHL, we won a Clio award for that innovation in AI for short form content this past year.

30:44

Mark Keaney

So that's someone that I think, when I say, when I highlight them specifically, I think that their CMO and their organization that are really smart, I job at looking at where they needed to move the puck and they did that.

30:59

Dave Almy

You got to skate to where the puck is going to be, man, not where it is.

31:03

Mark Keaney

I think that's one of those things, if you looked at them three to five years ago, where that was the challenge, moving them forward at the speed of social. And I think they're a great example of a brand that's done a great job with that.

31:15

Dave Almy

Does all this new technology allow leagues that, and I hate to use this for the NHL. So hockey fans, just. No notes in the comments, please. The NHL has always sort of been the big three and the NHL, right? But with new technology coming so quickly and changes happening so fast, does this moment allow. We kind of touched on it earlier with the smaller leagues, but it does allow them to kind of, if we can just look a little bit ahead. It does allow you to get out ahead of where the market may move a little bit and allows you to play a little bit ketchup like the NHL did. The example that you just pointed out.

32:02

Mark Keaney

I think that's dead on. And it's funny because growing up, we talked about Boston. Growing up in Boston, you're kind of by. That is a strong hockey market. You're kind of hockey fan from the Northeast, but you've got a, the Patriots, you've got the Red Sox. You go to the Celtics. So it's always been a three in one sort of thing. Right? Like, in terms of fandom, I think. I think this year in particular, the playoffs for hockey were awesome. I had the opportunity to be a guest at the NHL All Star game, and it not only felt like the celebrity of like an NBA all Star game, like it felt like a celebrity event, like it was, but it also was an incredible hockey event and an incredible in the event.

32:43

Mark Keaney

They're doing a lot to sort of bring into the community because I think.

32:46

Dave Almy

For it had all the vibes.

32:48

Mark Keaney

A lot of sports, you know, you think of basketball or soccer is a great example. You need to give a group of kids a ball on a field and they can play soccer, but playing ice hockey, you've got a lot of gear. And one of the things I think.

33:02

Dave Almy

That the nice time is so cheap, as any hockey parent will ever tell you.

33:06

Mark Keaney

Four in the morning. There you go. Hey, but I think this year they're embracing street hockey kind of following with flag football, taking that model of like. So I think this is going to be the emergence of a big four. I think we're right there.

33:23

Dave Almy

All right, so let's have the AI question. Let's talk about it specifically as. Because it's changing everything. I mean, every conversation I have, I mean, I can have a hot. I can have a conversation with a concessionaire who's developing a new kind of hot dog. And using AI is to figure out how to get the snouts or something like that. It's in everything we do. I mean, but particularly for technology companies, particularly for those who are dealing with the volume of content that greenfly is helping generate, it is going to be fundamental in how it changes everything that sports organizations are looking at, from the moneyball type stuff to the business operations type stuff.

34:02

Dave Almy

So from your perspective, when you look at green flying content and artificial intelligence, what excites you about what you're doing with it right now, and where do you think the potential of that can head boy, there's a. There's a tough question right there.

34:18

Mark Keaney

Well, it changes every again, like I was living. It changes daily with AI. I think the only limitation on AI is just the world is trying to figure out how to put restrictions around it. Like how do you privacy and those type of considerations for content, short form content in particular, it is about speed of delivery, period, story. Because short form content is perishable. If it's not available in real time or near real time, the value diminishes. That Clio award. We talked about the NHL, a big part of that. What was the success of the program? They used AI to get content to the players in social heads, social media heads, immediately so that content would be used.

35:05

Mark Keaney

And what you see in the case study is like the amount of assets shared on a weekly basis, the amount of players leveraging content like multiple times a week. Like if you get an email or a text or a slack with a video three days after it happened, who gives a crap, right? Not really worth like, you know. And if you're someone, like in the NHL as an example, if you're not, you're overly comfortable just pushing out your highlights. Well, that happened three days ago. Like, it's not like big news. Keeping this on point. The speed of delivery is really where there's. Where the magic is because it is, that's where the fan engagement happens. And what you see is that these kind of authentic clips on social channels, we see it all across all our leagues.

35:51

Mark Keaney

They have about a seven to ten times like ten x engagement rate. Because it's not just a highlight the next day. It is something that is happening right now. And whether it drives tune in or whether it drives a livestream on Twitter, or just something that someone sees, likes and reshares, there's a connection to it.

36:11

Dave Almy

And it's totally changed the expectation of what fans want. And I'm laughing a little bit because I'm thinking about just yesterday, we're recording this the day after the England and Netherlands match in the euro 24 when England scored a goal in the last minute of the game in order to go up two one and win the match versus the Netherlands. And I saw an alert come up on my phone and I went to the Internet immediately and was embarrassingly irritated that I couldn't find the clip within the first three minutes of my search for it. But that's the way our brains are wired now. And as much as I would have loved to sit down and watch the game, I've got podcasts that need recording and stuff like that.

36:57

Dave Almy

So it takes me away from my passion projects, but that's where we are right now. And so I see what you're saying about. I love the comment about short form content being a perishable commodity. So that quick delivery and what greenfly is helping activate for companies using AI as it comes forward is really where the. Where the rubber hits the road here.

37:16

Mark Keaney

Can I tell you a little bit about the AI technology piece?

37:20

Dave Almy

Go.

37:20

Mark Keaney

I don't want to bore you senseless, but it's interesting, right?

37:24

Dave Almy

Should I. Should I pull up the chair? Everybody in the audience, just pull up your chair. Uncle Mark is going to walk us through a technology discussion. Make it lively.

37:33

Mark Keaney

Mark, when we picked this company and we had made the decision that this was the best in class AI for sports, you know, the skeptic in me was like, okay, come on. Like, that's the sales pitch. But what's the. What is that rooted in? What makes it better than anything else? Most AI, when you think about AI, it is facial recognition, right? They're using biometric data. It's facial recognition, and it's. It ranges from crappy to good.

37:58

Dave Almy

Yeah.

37:59

Mark Keaney

When we think about AI, we've really got, like, four main pillars where it does start with facial recognition. Then you layer in jersey and roster identification. So you're looking at name on the back, you're looking at number, you're looking at the team logo and colors. That moves into brand identification. So the ability to identify Adidas or Nike or Chevy, so we can bring in kind of that sponsor angle to part of the thing. And then the final piece we call scene detection, the ability to train our AI to understand that's a touchdown, that's a slam dunk, that is a tunnel walk. That is an arrival. So I give you that long, technical example to bring to an article that ran this week that I happen to see on social about the WNBA arrival.

38:46

Mark Keaney

Social, that's going off the charts, that's done through green flying, where they're identifying the AI, identifies the arrival. That's the concept. So you've got all these WNBA NBA players showing up in these great outfits, and it's being repurposed in real time in pictures and images from the arrival in tunnel walk. That's kind of like it allows. When you think about, like, if you're the WNBA or the NBA or MLB, I want to do something around the home Run derby. I want to do something around the buses coming in. I want to do something around tailgating in the parking lot. We can help sort that content in a way that can be used in a variety of different, both fan engagement and commercial opportunities.

39:32

Dave Almy

I'm laughing because I'm assuming there has to be one or two guys listening, people who are in sports who spent their formative years going through hours and hours of unbelievable, like, literally marking, like home run, like a grease pencil. They're absolutely crying right now because there's a whole automated system to be able to do it. I think the other thing that brings up ten years ago, like, the idea that the tunnel walk would be marketable content or interesting content, just makes you roll your eyes. Like, if somebody had pitched that to you'd be like, what are you talking about? But it goes back to the other part of the conversation we're talking about. Look, they're always looking for the next thing. How do we take this next thing and make it interesting and get people behind the scenes? It's a perfect example of that.

40:22

Mark Keaney

When I said they were good and bad, like, the examples of the media mind, like, moving from traditional to kind of like modern thinking, or even the sports media, when you think of that tunnel walk example, and you've got a smart, savvy commercial team. Well, now having a signage in the tunnel that would normally not be picked up in broadcast, but now has become part of the commodity magic. Right? Like, now all of a sudden, like, you're walking by, you know, american express for that tunnel walk, or, you know, and I think that, and the designers.

40:55

Dave Almy

Getting involved just to outfit the athletes as they do that kind of thing. I mean, it's. It's opened up a whole new realms. Now, we've talked about the technology, but I want to circle back to the first part of the conversation because you do have this incredible sales background, and I'm interested in your perspective about leading sales efforts for a company that's specifically focused on sports. So I think I know the answer. I think where you know where you're going to go, but I want to think, like, how does it differ from selling in other verticals? Right. And what skills do you have that you developed along the way? Did you find we're going to be like, oh, thank God I experienced this, because as I apply it to sports in particular, it's particularly valuable.

41:39

Mark Keaney

Wow. Actually, that it kind of goes back to the opening of this conversation about what I learned at iHeartmedia, you know, listening to the customer, I think sports is a vertical. You've got passionate career sports professionals, this small community of people who have come up the ranks and have worked for a very long time at a variety of different organizations and everyone kind of knows everybody. When I think about my best sellers in this space, you've got to have people that are smart, you've got to have people that are fans, you've got to have people that are passionate about what we do as it relates to the sports that we're selling into. You've got to be able to ask questions and listen. But I think the biggest thing is you cannot successfully sell into sports by over promising and under delivering.

42:33

Mark Keaney

And I think technology in particular, I think that it's very easy to say we do everything. These are the 53 things that we do. If you really focus in on the seven to ten things, you actually do better than anyone else and you don't over promise and you focus on delivering what you're going to say you're going to do. That's the key to success because ironically, we had a meeting today with a technology company and the person were meeting at this former MLB, so were reminiscing with him about the people we met with at Major League Baseball. And it's just that small community, wherever, you know, you say the wrong thing, you don't deliver. You under promise or you over promise and under deliver, you're probably dead in the water.

43:20

Dave Almy

Right? It is the biggest, smallest industry that I can think of. Right? Everybody's two degrees of separation. Right? Mark Keeney, he's chief revenue officer of Greenfly. This is a particularly fascinating discussion and I really appreciate you spending the time with us today, but before I let you go, I got to put you in the lightning. You don't. You don't know what's about to happen. I'm glad you're in the hotel room right now because after the trauma of this experience, just lay down and cool out for a little while. So, Marquini, are you ready for this?

43:51

Mark Keaney

I am.

43:52

Dave Almy

All right, let's do this thing. As has been alluded to over the course of this conversation, you're a big fan. You're a Boston sports fan. You're a Pat C's, bees and socks guy. As am I. So please take a moment and acknowledge that there is no better sports town than Boston.

44:10

Mark Keaney

Title ten USA.

44:12

Dave Almy

I mean, really, I mean, you can't. Who else would even come close to second? I mean, I. Listeners, I realize you're all tuning out right now, but don't care that it's. There is no better place in the world for it. Best, best sports town in the country. You live in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

44:28

Mark Keaney

That is correct. American Navy.

44:31

Dave Almy

Birthplace of the American Navy. Please pronounce your hometown in your best Boston accent.

44:38

Mark Keaney

Can I swear?

44:39

Dave Almy

Of course you could swear.

44:41

Mark Keaney

I live in fucking mobile head. Yeah, it's.

44:45

Dave Almy

How's the pocket in Maddlehead these days? That used to be awful.

44:49

Mark Keaney

Growing up with the name Mark in Boston. I really work on that because when my mom would call my college roommates, we had a phone, so they would answer, hey, Mark, it's your mother. So I slowly worked my way out of saying mark or Mac myself as Mark, properly Mac.

45:09

Dave Almy

That's really where it gets to be a problem. You apparently enjoy a good round of golf. What course is on the top of your bucket list?

45:18

Mark Keaney

Augusta national.

45:20

Dave Almy

Hard. Hard not to have that one be up on the top there.

45:24

Mark Keaney

Country club once a year as a guest of a kid who's a member there, which is embarrassing. I literally go once a year with my. My oldest kid's best friend is a member at the country club. So once a year I get an obligatory round. It's amazing.

45:38

Dave Almy

You know, you got to get it any way you can. There's no pride.

45:43

Mark Keaney

Exactly right. All right.

45:44

Dave Almy

ot least, please describe the: 07:00

45:50

Mark Keaney

so I wake up every morning at: 05:00

46:34

Dave Almy

Thanks for just awesome. Mark Keeney, chief revenue officer of Greenfly. Mark, can't thank you enough for spending the time today.

46:41

Mark Keaney

I appreciate it. Great conversation.