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Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business of Sports. The world changing and

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Speaker 1: what are things we can do to transform our business

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Speaker 1: and engage our fans globally in different ways. People are

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Speaker 1: using their name and likeness to create more opportunities, more

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Speaker 1: states and companies. In order to turn the organization around,

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Speaker 1: we had to turn it around not only gets on

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Speaker 1: baseball operations side, but other business operations side well, and

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Speaker 1: any other sport is very difficult, but I like to

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Speaker 1: blub my horizons and be able to expand. Sports need

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Speaker 1: to be consumed a lot and not to the big

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Speaker 1: competitive advantage for intual property holders of sports content in

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Speaker 1: the media landscape. Bloomberg Business of Sports from Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hello every one, I'm Mike Lynch, I'm Scarlet Food and

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Speaker 1: for Jason Kelly. Over the next hour, we're going to

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Speaker 1: explore the big money issues in the world of sports

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Speaker 1: and talk to some of the biggest players in the industry.

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Speaker 1: And today I'm pleased to say we're going to be

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Speaker 1: speaking with the VP of Basketball Operations and Team Council

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Speaker 1: of the Boston Celtics and the Assistant GM Mike Zarin

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Speaker 1: and the Sea of Huddle Matt Mueller. Alright, So, I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna jump right in. Uh, this is Mike to Mike.

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Speaker 1: Mike Szarin and I grew up in the great town

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Speaker 1: of swamp Scott, a few about ten miles north of

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Speaker 1: Boston and a great place to be in the summertime

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Speaker 1: and year round. Mike, Uh, welcome to the show, and Matt,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the show as well. It's an honor to

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Speaker 1: be on with the swamp Scott legend. You're too kind, Matt.

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Speaker 1: Let me start with you, the CEO of Huddle. I've

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Speaker 1: been familiar with it for years, dealing with high school

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Speaker 1: athletes looking for specifically football, looking for highlights. It made

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Speaker 1: my life so much easier. Tell me about this marriage

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Speaker 1: with the NBA. Now you get twenty nine out of

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Speaker 1: thirty teams I think involved in huddle. Yeah, you bet so.

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Speaker 1: I think most people's first experience with huddle is really

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Speaker 1: through high school American football, whether it's you know, using

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Speaker 1: it themselves as an athlete or coach, or you know,

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Speaker 1: even more often you know, seeing their son or daughter,

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Speaker 1: or a nephew or a neighbor, you know, working through huddle.

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Speaker 1: But the beauty of what we built with huddle was

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Speaker 1: and solution that really helped teams find value out of

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Speaker 1: the combination of video and data, and as we grew,

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Speaker 1: we look to grow into more sports than just American football,

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Speaker 1: and basketball was a natural logical step for us. And

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Speaker 1: when we worked with basketball teams at all levels, NBA's

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Speaker 1: obviously and naturals are off for us, and so we

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Speaker 1: really put a strong focus on finding tools that would

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Speaker 1: help us deliver a lot of value for for NBA teams.

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Speaker 1: So it started with the product called sports Code, but

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Speaker 1: it's expanded to be so much more from there into

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Speaker 1: helping them find content from across the world, but also

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Speaker 1: you know, automate capture, look at instant replay, uh and

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Speaker 1: continue to find more value out of data and video.

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Speaker 1: And it's been it's been exciting for us to reach

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Speaker 1: that kind of level of interest in NBA teams and

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Speaker 1: we're excited for what we continue to build for them.

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Speaker 1: And Huddle started off as a basketball specific product and

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Speaker 1: it's kind of really expanded to cover all kinds of

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Speaker 1: different things. Mike Sarin explained to us how the Boston

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Speaker 1: Celtics uses Huddle in the most basic form and in

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Speaker 1: the most complicated form. Well, I mean it's both basically

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Speaker 1: complicated at once, it's pretty easy to describe. On our bench,

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Speaker 1: we've got a guy who's coding the game and in

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Speaker 1: our video room and just same time, and they've got

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Speaker 1: you know, Huddle Sports Code software and we've been using

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Speaker 1: that for I don't know how long now, ten fifteen

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Speaker 1: years as our main video capture, recording and distribution platform

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Speaker 1: for NBA games. And you know, you can imagine all

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Speaker 1: the different kinds of video edits that we might need

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Speaker 1: to do, that we give to the players after the

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Speaker 1: game on iPads that we show in the locker room

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Speaker 1: at halftime, or even you know, more recently with some

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Speaker 1: NBA rules changes, that our coaches are looking at on

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Speaker 1: the bench to see if we should challenge a call

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Speaker 1: in real time. So that software platform has been hugely

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Speaker 1: useful for our coaching staff for a long time, and

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Speaker 1: they continue to innovate and provide great support for it.

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Speaker 1: So we're happy to be great partners of theirs. So Mike,

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Speaker 1: let me follow up on that. So, when Brad was

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Speaker 1: the coach, now he's SE's in the front office, obviously,

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Speaker 1: would he signal into the locker room? Look, I want

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Speaker 1: to look at when when they went to a zone here,

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Speaker 1: I want to look when they went to a full

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Speaker 1: court van demand press at halftime, I want to make

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Speaker 1: a demonstrate how we need to fix and break this

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Speaker 1: press or this trap or did he just walking there

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Speaker 1: and half time and just hit fast forward and go

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Speaker 1: to wherever he wants to go? No, no, no, They've

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Speaker 1: got it all cued up. So during the game, you know,

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Speaker 1: the coaches will be taking notes about which place to tag,

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Speaker 1: and you can sort of live tag those um on

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Speaker 1: the bench in that software. And then you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: not in too many coaches meetings at halftime. You mostly

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Speaker 1: want to let them do their jobs, but you know

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Speaker 1: they'll have it narrowed down to ten clips and then

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Speaker 1: cut out five or six of those so that they've

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Speaker 1: got the five or six to show at halftime. And

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Speaker 1: it's all pretty seamless. You don't really have time, you know,

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Speaker 1: at halftime to suddenly be editing the video then. But

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Speaker 1: one of the beauties of this product, um, and I

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Speaker 1: want to be too much of a sales pitch, but

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Speaker 1: one of the beauties of the product is how easy

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Speaker 1: it is to video and pick the particular edits that

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Speaker 1: you need to show in really quick time. Yeah, customize

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Speaker 1: things very quickly. Matt Mueller, Um Lynch, you was just saying,

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Speaker 1: how twenty nine out of thirty NBA teams use Huddle.

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Speaker 1: Who's alone hold out and what are they using instead? Well,

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Speaker 1: there's there's a team in Dallas that that doesn't use

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Speaker 1: this for their game analysis from sports Code, but they do,

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Speaker 1: they do actually buy a variety of other products from us.

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Speaker 1: You know, Mike is talking about Huddle sports Code and

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Speaker 1: how you know teams canna use it to code events

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Speaker 1: and they use a you know, a different piece of

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Speaker 1: software for that, but they do buy other software pieces

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Speaker 1: that allow us to help their front office analyzed players,

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Speaker 1: you know, whether it's draft respects or free agency that

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Speaker 1: allow them to you know, more effectively bring together content

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Speaker 1: pieces and make decisions in that world. So when we

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Speaker 1: talked about, you know, that core piece of software that

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Speaker 1: that lynchment of what they do every day, it's a

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Speaker 1: sports co software and you know, we're excited about, you know,

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Speaker 1: the twenty three NBA teams that do use this. Hey,

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Speaker 1: Mike Zara and I when I think analytics, I think

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Speaker 1: of baseball teams, and I think of theo Epstein and

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Speaker 1: the basement over at Fenway Park. You know, fifteen years

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Speaker 1: ago with his little crew there, how does basketball use analytics?

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Speaker 1: And how's it marriage with huddle work? So, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's amazing how much our world has changed since I

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Speaker 1: started as an intern in two thousand three. There wasn't

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Speaker 1: anyone really doing full time basketball statistics work then, and

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Speaker 1: I was one of those luck enough to be one

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Speaker 1: of the first. Danny really took a chance on me

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Speaker 1: back then, and you know, for a long time we

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Speaker 1: just sort of had the box score to go off of.

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Speaker 1: Basketball is really different from baseball. You know, I've had

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Speaker 1: a few conversations with Bill James, and every time I

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Speaker 1: tell them how easy they have it, he laughs at me.

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Speaker 1: But you know, they baseball, it's all a sequence of

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Speaker 1: individual events. The guy throws a pitch, it goes somewhere

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Speaker 1: that someone either hits the wings are not and they

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Speaker 1: hit it or not, and then it goes somewhere. The

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Speaker 1: players interact occasionally on the base pass um, but it's not,

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Speaker 1: you know, particularly complicated the way the players interact for

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Speaker 1: each other. In basketball. There's just so many more things

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Speaker 1: happening at every moment during the game, and the players

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Speaker 1: are crashing into each other and interacting with multiple other

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Speaker 1: players and any given play. And so when you look

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Speaker 1: at the set of things that coaches talk about in basketball,

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Speaker 1: you can't look at a box score of a game

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Speaker 1: and know what happened in the game. Right. You can see, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, Ason Tatum had points, but that doesn't really

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Speaker 1: let you picture anything about what happened in the game.

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Speaker 1: And so when I started, it was really difficult to

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Speaker 1: you know, really have a made you know, there were

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Speaker 1: some low hanging fruit, but it was hard to have

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Speaker 1: a major impact just because you know, I thought I

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Speaker 1: knew a bunch of about basketball, and my dad had

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Speaker 1: Celtic season tickets growing up. I would watch, you know,

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Speaker 1: either Lynchy or Bob lo Bell every night to see

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Speaker 1: what happened came um. You know, there's great wars between

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Speaker 1: the Boston TV stations back then. But I showed up

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Speaker 1: at my first practice as an intern, and the coaches

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Speaker 1: were speaking the language. I played high school basketball, but

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Speaker 1: for a weird little school, and I barely knew what

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Speaker 1: was going on watching the practice all the things they

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Speaker 1: were talking about. So one thing that we've done that

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Speaker 1: I think we're actually ahead of baseball and doing this.

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Speaker 1: Although they're catching up to us now is we were

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Speaker 1: the first team in the NBA in two thousand ten

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Speaker 1: to install a system of cameras and the rafters at

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Speaker 1: the garden to track the players movement X and y

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Speaker 1: at thirty frames a second and the ball X, y

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Speaker 1: and z. So we have up and down on the

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Speaker 1: ball and just the thoughts moving around the court for

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Speaker 1: the players. And now we actually know when someone sets

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Speaker 1: the screen how good they are at it, where it was,

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Speaker 1: what was the outcome. You know, before we the coaches

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Speaker 1: would talk about that stuff and the data we had

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Speaker 1: just didn't keep track of all those things. So the

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Speaker 1: world has really changed drastically. And what's come with that is,

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Speaker 1: you know, a single season of that data is like

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Speaker 1: three billion cells of data across the whole NBA. Every

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Speaker 1: team has it now. The league put it in for

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Speaker 1: all the teams in all the arenas in two fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and we get the data from every game and we've

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Speaker 1: got to process it overnight and you know, have it

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Speaker 1: available for our coaching staff the next morning or our

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Speaker 1: front office whenever we need to make decisions. And so

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Speaker 1: that level of complexity is just a whole new world.

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Speaker 1: You can't just come out of college with the basic

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Speaker 1: statistics degree and know how to deal with continuous motion

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Speaker 1: spatial data thirty frames a second over two thousand games

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Speaker 1: a year. So yeah, no, there's some colleges that do

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Speaker 1: teach that now, but it's a more rea sin thing.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, NBA teams that weren't hiring PhDs

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Speaker 1: in machine learning when I started, and now that's not

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Speaker 1: so uncommon, as odd as that may seem, but if

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Speaker 1: you want to have the best information, you've got to

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Speaker 1: be able to deal with that data. Now, it's really

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Speaker 1: the world has really changed drastically with regard to basketball stats,

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Speaker 1: and we still have so much we can learn because

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Speaker 1: we still only have five or six years really of

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Speaker 1: the whole league of this data. And you know, we

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Speaker 1: don't have full careers for a lot of guys. We

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Speaker 1: don't have anything from college or overseas of this complexity,

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Speaker 1: and there's a lot of guys, you know, everyone entering

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Speaker 1: the NBA comes from one of those places. So there's

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Speaker 1: still a lot more we'd love to do. But the

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Speaker 1: basketball stats world is drastically, drastically different than it was

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Speaker 1: in two thousand three, and I think it will continue

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Speaker 1: to get more complexed and I think that's interesting, this

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Speaker 1: idea that things have gotten more complex over the last

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Speaker 1: ten twenty years. That you guys work a lot with

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Speaker 1: high school teams with college teams, so you have a

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Speaker 1: lot of student athletes who are familiar with what huddle

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Speaker 1: does and the software and being able to break apart

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Speaker 1: plays and do some analysis on specific place. How do

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Speaker 1: you see those student athletes graduating to college athletes and

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Speaker 1: pro athletes kind of requiring and needing that level of

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Speaker 1: analytics and that level of technology as they further their careers. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think just the it's it's really similar short of

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Speaker 1: what Mike said, the baseline of an athlete that's come in,

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Speaker 1: it's just changed in terms of their technological needs or

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Speaker 1: technological needs or their expectations of what of what a

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Speaker 1: team should have. When you when we talk to basketball

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Speaker 1: teams now, um, you know, ten twenty years ago, an

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Speaker 1: athlete may watch video, They may watch a VHS tape.

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Speaker 1: Right if for anyone who watched, uh, you know the

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Speaker 1: last dance you saw Michael Jordan watching, uh, you know

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Speaker 1: VAHS tapes and just think about now, an athlete would expect, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, playlists specific to their upcoming opponent UH delivered

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Speaker 1: to their cell phone oftentimes you know, on you know,

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Speaker 1: on their drive home, and they want to think about,

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Speaker 1: you know, how can they start preparing right away for

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Speaker 1: their upcoming opponents and and you're right there. You know,

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Speaker 1: the technological needs are bigger and the data needs are

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Speaker 1: also bigger. And our whole job with Huddle and as

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Speaker 1: we partner with teams is to find, you know, how

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Speaker 1: do we deliver actionable insights that are simple and digestible

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Speaker 1: from that data. Because your players aren't going to be

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Speaker 1: a PhD in machine learning and you can't just give

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Speaker 1: them positional data. You need to give them data and

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Speaker 1: digestible chunks, you know that that can tell them what

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Speaker 1: to do when they see something happen on the court,

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Speaker 1: and how they can react to you know, what their

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Speaker 1: opponents are doing and UH and the opportunities that are

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Speaker 1: available to them. And and really that's where we target

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Speaker 1: and how we think we can deliver a lot of

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Speaker 1: value for you for the back office is helping simplify

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Speaker 1: that data and turn that into solutions for them right away.

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Speaker 1: On the you know, on the court, we have so

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Speaker 1: many players now who who are are shocked. Um, well

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Speaker 1: they're not shocked. They want this data instantly after the game,

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Speaker 1: and that was definitely not the case when I started.

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Speaker 1: They've been conditioned by Huddle to need it. That's really good.

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Speaker 1: That was gonna be my question, how recept of other players.

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Speaker 1: The Usually nobody wants to see themselves on film because

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Speaker 1: it always looks worse than you would even imagine it

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Speaker 1: was when you are actually playing on real time. But

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Speaker 1: now you're throwing these this, this data and this analytics,

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Speaker 1: and that's a lot for them to digest. You know.

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Speaker 1: One thing I think that's a relatively common misconception about um,

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Speaker 1: you know stats, uh in basketball, is that everybody has

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Speaker 1: to become a statistician to understand them. I think most

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Speaker 1: of our messages to the players sound very similar to

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Speaker 1: the messages we would have delivered twenty years ago. They're

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Speaker 1: just better informed, right, so we're more sure that we're

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Speaker 1: right about telling you someone to go under a screen

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Speaker 1: or send someone to his left hand. Um, it's still basketball.

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Speaker 1: The rules are still the same, they're still playing the

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Speaker 1: same game, and so you know the types of messages

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Speaker 1: haven't changed that much. Now there's some players who are

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Speaker 1: more interested in more advanced things, and for them, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, Bryan Scalabrini is a good example. He was

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Speaker 1: one of the first guys to really want more numbers

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Speaker 1: on the team. And maybe it's because he had more

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Speaker 1: time on his hands because he wasn't playing as much

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Speaker 1: out there happens, But with guys like that, you just

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Speaker 1: have to make sure that what if the guy's taken

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Speaker 1: five three, you know, and he hits three of them,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't mean he's a six three point shoot. So um.

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Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time actually teaching coaches who

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Speaker 1: also aren't generally staff guys and players what information not

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Speaker 1: to look at. That's almost as important as knowing what

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Speaker 1: information to look at. I think that's fascinating because you're right.

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Speaker 1: You can you can drown and go drown in all

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Speaker 1: the data and you can go down rabbit holes really

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Speaker 1: quickly if you don't distill it to what is the

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Speaker 1: most relevant. Um, Matt, I want to get a sense

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Speaker 1: from you as well. Obviously you have these relationships with

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Speaker 1: twenty nine out of thirty NBA teams, and and these

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Speaker 1: are are steady clients. But um, in terms of your

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Speaker 1: business with high school teams and college teams, many of

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Speaker 1: which canceled or truncated their seasons over the last few

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Speaker 1: years because of the panic, What was business like overall?

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Speaker 1: You know, the realities COVID was really challenging for people.

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Speaker 1: But um, looking just across you know, the high school landscape,

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Speaker 1: seventy of high states played sports on a slightly modified schedule,

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Speaker 1: uh and played you know, in the normal season. So

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Speaker 1: football happened in the fall. It may have started a

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Speaker 1: few weeks later than normal and ran a little longer,

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Speaker 1: but almost everyone played uh and really across the US, UM,

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Speaker 1: what we saw is most most um high schools ended

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Speaker 1: up playing their season again. It might have been in

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Speaker 1: a different, different time window. Right if you look to

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Speaker 1: California when they were playing football in March, it felt

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Speaker 1: different for a lot of those athletes, but they did it.

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Speaker 1: Um and UH and really we saw that same thing

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Speaker 1: at most most of our teams across the world. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're not just in the US. We serve um, you know,

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Speaker 1: teams across we serve forty different sports across eighty different countries.

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Speaker 1: So we got a really good feel for what it

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Speaker 1: looked like. And while there were some teams that you

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Speaker 1: know canceled or short in their seasons, most teams across

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Speaker 1: the world, especially in the elite level of sport, right

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Speaker 1: the professional teams across the world, they found a way

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Speaker 1: to play uh And so huddle was really important for

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Speaker 1: them in terms of staying connected to their team when

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Speaker 1: they were at home, when they couldn't have team meetings

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Speaker 1: in person or wouldn't there you know, the facility was closed,

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Speaker 1: being able to stay connected with their athletes and find

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Speaker 1: ways to communicate around you know, upcoming opponents or just

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Speaker 1: offseason training schedules. Huddle took a whole new form of

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Speaker 1: communication for them. And so Matt, let me follow up

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Speaker 1: in that, can high school teams monetize I assume you

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Speaker 1: have some fixed cameras at some places that they don't

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Speaker 1: even have, they don't even have to be manned, and

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Speaker 1: that people can just sort of it's live streaming, is

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Speaker 1: that right? Yeah? We actually provide that at all levels, um,

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Speaker 1: but at the high schools, we provide them the ability

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Speaker 1: to live stream and they can choose to monetize that

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Speaker 1: if they want, or they can make it free to

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Speaker 1: connect to their fans. Again, that was really important over

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Speaker 1: this last year is you know, many many fans weren't

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Speaker 1: able to attend games. We trund a different version, but

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Speaker 1: the same type of automated system for you know NBA teams, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know. And it's funny we actually provided in the

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Speaker 1: French basketball leagues where the Boston Suffic you know, just

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Speaker 1: drafted someone over this last year. And that content isn't

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Speaker 1: something you'll just you know find biosmosis, so being able

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Speaker 1: to automatically stream it, not have a camera person. They're

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Speaker 1: available for you, but haven't immediately dropped into your tools

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Speaker 1: and get analysis from it right away, or make it

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Speaker 1: available for you know, the scouting platform or just you know,

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Speaker 1: for your fans. It's been something that's been really popular

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Speaker 1: for us over the last last couple of years. Final

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Speaker 1: question here to Mike Sarin, and I'm gonna you know,

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Speaker 1: touch upon the Boston love that you and Lynch you

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Speaker 1: share here as a native of swamp scott and you

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Speaker 1: mentioned how you grew up a Celtics fan. You start

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Speaker 1: off as this in paid intern fourteen years ago. Um

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Speaker 1: season tickets. I mean I imagine that you're not the

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Speaker 1: first person that you won't be the last person to

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Speaker 1: work for the team that you grew up rooting for.

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Speaker 1: But I wonder was that transition hard for you to

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Speaker 1: to to work for a team that you grew up

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Speaker 1: loving and needing to use your head, not your heart,

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Speaker 1: to make decisions that might be painful in the short

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Speaker 1: term but are good in the long term. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know what's funny. I've I've kept my dad's had

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Speaker 1: these tickets, you know, before I was born, at the

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Speaker 1: old Arena and then at the new Arena, and um

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Speaker 1: I've been insistent that during home games and some one

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Speaker 1: of the worst things about this past year was not

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Speaker 1: being able to do this. But but during home games,

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Speaker 1: um I sit up in the balcony near the back

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Speaker 1: with him, in the same seats we've always sat in,

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Speaker 1: and I probably shout something to get me in trouble

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Speaker 1: with the NBA. Um U up there, we know everyone

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Speaker 1: and it's all friends and UH, and that sort of

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Speaker 1: enabled me to continue just being a big fan of

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Speaker 1: the team. Um I got myself in a little trouble

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Speaker 1: this past year just because I was the only Celtics

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Speaker 1: fan in the arena for some of our games, because

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Speaker 1: there weren't any fans and I'm sitting their courtside like

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Speaker 1: the strain. But you know, I think that the beauty

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Speaker 1: of being a sports fan is, Um, you want a

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Speaker 1: team to do well. And I think you know, Danny

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Speaker 1: and and Doc and Brad, Um, I've all sort of

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Speaker 1: realized that I'm a crazy fan, but I am also

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Speaker 1: wanting the team to do really well. It's not about

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Speaker 1: me ever, and so um. You know, if you think

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Speaker 1: you're doing what's right for the team's success, and we've

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Speaker 1: had some success, Um, it's not hard to be a fan. Also, Um,

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Speaker 1: you know the championship rings up from a wage has

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Speaker 1: got my dad's last name on it too, um. And

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Speaker 1: so you know that that moment um made anything I

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Speaker 1: had to give up. You know, any naivete I had

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Speaker 1: about about from being on the outside giving that up

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Speaker 1: wasn't so hard because I got to be a part

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Speaker 1: of the team's success. And it's just been I've been

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Speaker 1: so lucky. Um. I can't believe our our owners and

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Speaker 1: and Danny took a chance on me when I wasn't

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Speaker 1: really a basketball guy, and so um it's I I

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Speaker 1: feel totally blessed every day to have this job. I

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Speaker 1: love that answer. And staying true to yourself. And I

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Speaker 1: wish we could have one of the Huddle cameras captured

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Speaker 1: you up in the rafters making those comments. All right,

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Speaker 1: I want to thank our guest Mike Sarin, Assistant GM

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Speaker 1: VP UH Basketball Operations Team Council of the Boston Celtics,

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Speaker 1: and Matt Mueller, CEO of Huddle. You have been listening

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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Business of Sports. We are here every week

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00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:16,000
Speaker 1: at the same time, and of course we're online wherever

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00:19:16,040 --> 00:19:18,800
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. You can catch those Mondays, Wednesdays

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00:19:18,880 --> 00:19:22,320
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. I'm Scarlet Poo and on Twitter, I'm at

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Speaker 1: Scarlet Pooh and I'm Mike Lnch. You can follow me

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Speaker 1: at got Swampscott. By the way, at Lynch e w

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Speaker 1: c VB. You're listening to Bloomberg Business to Sports from

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio around the world.