The following summary was created by Columbia student Kelly Carroll.
This post is another in a series from the Columbia University Sports Podcast, a 360-degree view of the sports business from the people leading it. Each podcast is approximately 35–45 minutes in length, and features industry insiders from all aspects of the business—from brand executives to startup founders to former MLB players—all talking about their work, the current state of the sports industry, and, more importantly, the future of the field.
Jonathan Bradley, a partner at R/GA Ventures, recently joined us for a discussion on his work with the Dodgers Accelerator, a partnership between the LA Dodgers and R/GA, with the aim of cultivating a raft of young tech companies to “usher in a new era for sports teams and their fans”. The Accelerator provides startup companies with the mentorship and access to resources, investors, and capital needed to help their businesses grow.
In 2015, R/GA partnered with the Los Angeles Dodgers organization to find 10 startups who could benefit from an accelerator program. (Their 2016 program is happening now). For Bradley, the ability to help companies realize their full potential is paramount. But he also gained tremendous insight into how much the sports industry can disrupt its strategies through acceleration.
Accelerators at work: At R/GA, Bradley works to build digital products that create new consumer behaviors—products that connect brands in a more significant way to their consumers and become an integral part of those consumers’ lives. He stresses words like “disruption” and “scale” when talking about the ways businesses should be thinking about their market fit and strategies. Bradley brings this vocabulary and mindset to startup companies through the accelerator program. “We’re trying to teach them how to fish with each of these projects,” he says, “because we know that the lifespan of an accelerator, which is traditionally 90 days, isn’t enough for us to do everything they’re going to need to do. We want them to be prepared to go out in the world and do that.”
Everything is connected: According to Bradley, the Internet of Things—or IoT, the interconnectivity of objects/products/devices to the internet—is becoming ubiquitous. Recognizing this allowed him and R/GA to work in many different verticals and industries, eventually discovering that sports is an industry with great potential in terms of market interest, growth, and underserved technology. That thinking evolved into R/GA’s partnership with the Dodgers, who were actively looking for options to engage in an accelerator program.
The tip of the iceberg: Bradley soon saw that the Dodgers were not only interested in using an accelerator program to find ways to enhance player performance and training—the opportunity for disruption in the sports industry is much more broad. The Dodgers were motivated to find ways to improve fan engagement—in and out of the stadium, during the game, between games, between seasons—and innovate their operations. One of the solutions was accelerator program applicant Appetize, Inc., a mobile point-of-sale system designed for outdoor festivals like Coachella. The system has a capacity to train operators within a short amount of time and do more than $2 million in transactions per day. R/GA and the Dodgers saw the broader use of this product, for parking, ticketing, and concessions transactions, seat upgrades, and the quick training of staff, and welcomed the wealth of the data it can capture. “That’s a great example of a company we knew could benefit from access to the sports industry,” Bradley says. “But we also knew that was only the beginning of their potential.”
If it sounds too good to be true, it is: As much as he touts the benefits of accelerator programs, Bradley is also realistic about some of their pitfalls. In fact, R/GA and the Dodgers altered their 2016 program to better address aspects of the model they felt were broken—like drawing a clearer delineation between creating value for companies and simply helping them gain investments. He also encourages startups to do their research before entering into an accelerator program—he advises them to look for recommendations from other company founders and look at the track records of other companies in these programs. “You would do that if you were choosing a dentist or you were choosing an accountant,” Bradley adds. “You would certainly want to do that here, where you’re looking at a strategic partner who will potentially invest in you.”
Engagement is key: Before arriving at R/GA, Bradley worked in theater production and corporate event production. For him, creating something that people were engaging with was a key aspect of these jobs. He continues to see engagement—with companies, at events and panels—as the best way to stay informed about the industry. And, he continues to lean on his days in the theater—what he calls “one of the biggest entrepreneurial experiences you can have”—as he moves through his career. “Whether you like it or not, that curtain will open on opening night,” Bradley says. “And you have to be ready for it.”
These were just some of the topics we discussed with Bradley. The entire podcast, number 19 in the series, can be heard here.
