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Speaker 1: Since you're a subscriber to this Bloomberg podcast, we thought

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Speaker 1: you'd be interested in a new four episode sponsored podcast

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Speaker 1: called The ROI Rules of Ai, produced by IBM and

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Media Studios. It explores how business leaders are thinking

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Speaker 1: about the return on investment of artificial intelligence projects. You

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Speaker 1: can subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Here's

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Speaker 1: a recent episode. Imagine you're the head football coach of

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Speaker 1: a major college football program. It's third down and five

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Speaker 1: yards to the goal line, with the game clock winding down.

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Speaker 1: There are one hundred thousand spectators in the stands and

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Speaker 1: millions more watching on TV. Your whole season, and potentially

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Speaker 1: your job, rests on what happens next. But in fact,

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Speaker 1: the game may well have been determined months before when

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Speaker 1: you recruited this roster of players. What if you could

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Speaker 1: have used AI to help determine which players to select.

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Speaker 1: That's the challenge a startup called Edge three dot AI

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Speaker 1: is trying to address.

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Speaker 2: We have called his amateur sports for a long time.

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Speaker 1: It's a business that's Kenya and Rashid, a co founder

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Speaker 1: and CEO of Edge three, a former co captain of

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Speaker 1: the Oklahoma Sooners, and a running back for the NFL's

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Speaker 1: New York Giants and Jets. Rashid has spent the past

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Speaker 1: two decades developing and commercializing emerging technologies for the sports industry.

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Speaker 1: For the past three years, he and his partners, who

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Speaker 1: include CBS college football analyst Brian Jones an NFL Hall

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Speaker 1: of Famer Warren Sap, have been using AI to build

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Speaker 1: a product that will help college football coaches find the

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Speaker 1: right place players and assist high school players in finding

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Speaker 1: the right college team. From IBM and Bloomberg Media Studios,

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Speaker 1: this is the ROI Rules of AI and I'm your

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Speaker 1: host Edward Adams. On this podcast, we're exploring how companies

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Speaker 1: of all sizes are using AI to remake their operations,

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Speaker 1: increasing their return on investment and that of their customers. Today,

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Speaker 1: we're investigating how to apply artificial intelligence to athletic intelligence

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Speaker 1: remaking top collegiate football programs nationwide. Like a lot of industries,

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Speaker 1: college football is being disrupted, but rather than being challenged

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Speaker 1: by a competitor, the disruption is coming from within, with

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Speaker 1: both student athletes and some schools pushing back against the

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Speaker 1: status quo. In twenty twenty one, the US Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: ruled in favor of students, finding that the NCAA violated

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Speaker 1: antitrust laws because it prohibited compensating college athletes. That same year,

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Speaker 1: the NCAA dropped the requirement that players had to sit

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Speaker 1: out a season if they transfer schools. So suddenly players

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Speaker 1: were unrestricted free agents and could be paid by groups

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Speaker 1: of alumni, supporters or advertisers. The NCAA has even proposed

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Speaker 1: that top schools should be able to pay athletes directly.

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Speaker 1: With some of the best players now jumping from one

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Speaker 1: school to another in search of more compensation and more

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Speaker 1: playing time, Rashid says that increasingly the scholarships that used

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Speaker 1: to go to high school recruits are now being given

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Speaker 1: to more experienced transfers that have a better chance of

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Speaker 1: making an immediate impact on teams. With fewer scholarships available,

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Speaker 1: high school recruits are left to their own devices to

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Speaker 1: find a college program that best values their talent and abilities.

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Speaker 2: Never in the probably the last fifty years, have we

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Speaker 2: seen such a paradigm shift in this business model and industry.

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Speaker 2: You have both sides trying to react to it in

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Speaker 2: real time, and so what Edge three is doing is

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Speaker 2: providing efficiencies on both sides to help them adapt to

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Speaker 2: this new way of recruiting.

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Speaker 1: And the business of college football. Recruiting is big business.

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Speaker 1: The average college spends one point four million dollars a

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Speaker 1: year on recruiting, and costs have shot up fifty one

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Speaker 1: percent since twenty twenty one, according to Client estimates. Today,

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Speaker 1: lots of companies rate high school players, but they're comparing

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Speaker 1: them to each other. What EDGE three does is quickly

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Speaker 1: compare them to current and prior college players, using new

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Speaker 1: predictive models to determine their odds of success playing at

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Speaker 1: each program.

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Speaker 2: AI allows you to create new recruiting models that don't exist.

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Speaker 1: To After crunching the data on more than fifteen thousand

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Speaker 1: college players, EDGE three has found some surprising results. For instance,

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Speaker 1: it's the conventional wisdom in high school sports that the

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Speaker 1: best players should play only one sport, both to maximize

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Speaker 1: their focus and to avoid injury in the secondary sport.

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Speaker 1: But the data says that's wrong.

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Speaker 2: What we found is that most of the successful athletes

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Speaker 2: at the next level, let's say at a quarterback position,

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Speaker 2: are two sport athletes.

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Speaker 1: Take Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the three times Super

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Speaker 1: Bowl champ. He's well known for his ability to throw

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Speaker 1: sidearm while scrambling away from tackles. It's what coaches call

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Speaker 1: a quarterback's arm angles. Gotchrill.

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Speaker 2: Mahoone's dad was a baseball player, and so he grew

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Speaker 2: up playing baseball, and so he developed those arm angles

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Speaker 2: from playing baseball.

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Speaker 1: Edge three can predict the odds a high school player

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Speaker 1: will train ansfer from a certain program.

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Speaker 2: There are certain kids that come out of certain programs

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Speaker 2: in high school that have a higher risk of transferring

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Speaker 2: if they go to certain geographical areas. As a coach,

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Speaker 2: I start weighing those probabilities when I'm deciding on where

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Speaker 2: to give this money and this scholarship.

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Speaker 1: To EDGE three isn't just aggregating a high school player's

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Speaker 1: on field stats.

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Speaker 2: We're also looking at social data. We're looking at digital

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Speaker 2: mentions and sentiments based on each individual athlete to start

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Speaker 2: to give you an overall value of what he is

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Speaker 2: to the actual program.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately, EDGE three calculates the dollar value of a player

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Speaker 1: to a college team. How do you go about predicting

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Speaker 1: what a high school player ought to be paid in college.

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Speaker 1: It seems like it would be almost impossible to figure

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Speaker 1: that out.

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Speaker 2: Well, they figured out in the NFL all the time

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Speaker 2: using the same type of data points.

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Speaker 1: After Edge three uses AI to aggregate mountains of player

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Speaker 1: data from both structured and unstructured sources.

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Speaker 2: We then are using AI to run predictive models against

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Speaker 2: it to notice patterns against baselines.

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Speaker 1: The software also uses conversational AI to allow high school

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Speaker 1: players to ask the database about the best schools to attend.

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Speaker 1: Schools can input their own data into the system. Limiting

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Speaker 1: data access between competing parties is part of what's known

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Speaker 1: as data governance and it's crucial.

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Speaker 2: I don't think a coach would trust Kenya a Rashid.

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Speaker 2: What is data? And the first question we're going to

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Speaker 2: get from teams is if I give you any part

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Speaker 2: of my data, how do I know it's safe. The

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Speaker 2: biggest reason why this partnership with IBM was so important

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Speaker 2: because there's a lot of data companies out here, but

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Speaker 2: IBM has been around for years. The reward of working

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Speaker 2: with IBM is they have enough resources that we can

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Speaker 2: find the right people with the right products and services

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Speaker 2: that can help us at the stage that we're at.

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Speaker 1: Working with a company of IBM's breadth and experience is

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Speaker 1: enabling Edge three to go to market faster than it

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Speaker 1: could do on its own.

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Speaker 2: The time that it would take us to get these

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Speaker 2: pieces together and actually just even put them in predictive

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Speaker 2: models would be astronomical for a startup in our position.

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Speaker 2: So we needed an IBM to help us accelerate these

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Speaker 2: things and really tell us things that we didn't know.

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Speaker 2: We didn't know how to go get the data, and

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Speaker 2: we knew it was there, we didn't know how to

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Speaker 2: pull it in, we didn't know how to configure it.

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Speaker 2: And so really the guidance and some of the consultants

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Speaker 2: around IBM have been able to help us kind of

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Speaker 2: understand how we need to formulate that.

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Speaker 1: The sales pitch to schools boils down to helping reduce

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Speaker 1: the constraints that they and all businesses face, reduce expenses,

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Speaker 1: increase productivity.

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Speaker 2: I can go to a coach and say I know

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Speaker 2: how much time and effort I can save you, and

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Speaker 2: I can equate that to dollars because I know what

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Speaker 2: you're spending in recruit and no coach wants to spend

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Speaker 2: more money and waste more time.

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Speaker 1: While Edge Three's product has a targeted market, its experience

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Speaker 1: with IBM holds lessons for other companies AI.

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Speaker 3: Is a technology that can be applied to every size

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Speaker 3: of company, even if you are a startup. You can

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Speaker 3: make a difference in the market. You can disrupt what's

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Speaker 3: already in there using AI.

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Speaker 1: That's Marcella Viro, vice president of Data and AI at IBM.

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Speaker 1: While where Sheid has worked in sports marketing, he's new

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Speaker 1: to artificial intelligence.

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Speaker 3: First of all, they know a lot about their business,

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Speaker 3: but they are not technology experts, so they relied in

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Speaker 3: our partnership to build a successful, unique solution using AI.

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Speaker 3: They were aware the data is available from different sources

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Speaker 3: all the time, but they had to find the tool

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Speaker 3: that would help them to manage that data and to

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Speaker 3: trust that data. Governance is related to your brand, to

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Speaker 3: your reputation. This is fundamental to any size of company.

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Speaker 3: It's important for a company not only to start a business,

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Speaker 3: but to stay in the business.

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Speaker 1: For Rashid, the parties bringing different strengths to the table

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Speaker 1: is key to building a successful product.

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Speaker 2: This is a bunch of athletes who have gotten together

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Speaker 2: with a technology company and said, let's go build something

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Speaker 2: that works. And that's what this partnership with IBM represents.

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Speaker 1: Edge three dot AI is scheduled to become available to

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Speaker 1: both schools and players in August. We wish Rashid and

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Speaker 1: his team all the best. This has been The ROI

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Speaker 1: Rules of AI, a podcast from IBM and Bloomberg Media Studios.

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Speaker 1: If you like what you're hear, subscribe and leave us

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Speaker 1: a review. I'm Edward Adams. Thanks for instin