As NFL Fandom Evolves, It's Turning to AI to Keep Up

When Chi Ogbuehi, vp of marketing technology and consumer products, joined the NFL in 2022, she was tasked with building its marketing technology team from the ground up. “I was a one-person team,” she told ADWEEK. Now her team consists of over 50 people who work closely with the league's marketing and data teams to deepen its relationship with its fans. The NFL’s martech strategy centers on driving and increasing fan engagement through digital channels like push notifications, SMS, email, and social media. Ogbuehi works closely with the league's innovation hub, a team architected by chief information officer (CIO) Gary Brantley that comprises technologists, data specialists, and marketers who use AI to scale content production for global audiences. Ogbuehi and the innovation hub have spent the past few years testing different uses of AI. As interest in the league expands beyond the U.S. with international games being played in countries like the U.K., Germany, and Brazil, they've used generative AI to combat language barriers and tailor content according to varying player interests. According to Reuters, this year's Super Bowl garnered 3.7 million viewers, an 18% increase year-over-year. Germany saw a 13% increase with 3.8 million viewers. More recently, the league's debut in São Paulo, Brazil in September amassed 2.6 billion viewing minutes per Nielsen. ADWEEK sat down with Ogbuehi to learn more about the NFL’s innovation hub and how it uses AI to fuel fan engagement in the U.S. and beyond.This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Chi Ogbuehi built the NFL's marketing technology team from the ground up. ADWEEK: Tell us about your role at the NFL? How do your two remits overlap?Chi Ogbuehi: I'm the vp for marketing technology and consumer products. Those are basically two teams. The marketing technology aspect of my role is responsible for how we leverage innovative emerging technologies and other types of technologies to merge that with our marketing strategy and our organizational goals and use that to enhance our fan experience. A lot of the things I do on the martech side is fan-facing. The consumer products and enterprise solutions aspect has a lot to do with revenue-generating solutions: rights management, brand protection, those types of solutions that we use to either generate revenue or [that] play a role in that process. AW: How is the league utilizing AI?CO: There's a lot of good AI can do, but a lot of caution needs to be placed around AI [like] IP protection and a host of other things. We do have an innovation hub as well [that] provides us the ability to do a lot of rapid prototyping, experimentation, and innovation around AI solutions. We can do this without disrupting our core operations. Within the innovation hub, we also have a cross-functional committee of technologists, data specialists, marketers, [and] security personnel so when an AI or innovative solution comes through the hub, it gets vetted by all these different team members. If that idea comes through at the end of the vetting process, we know that multiple experts within the organization had a chance to assess the viability of that idea. The other thing about the vetting process is that it also allows us to make sure that whatever AI or generative AI solution we're bringing in is something that can support our strategic objectives and our goals of enhancing the game experience and continuing to increase fan engagement. AW: What is the innovation hub currently working on right now?CO: The specific one we're doing, from a marketing perspective, is around how we use AI to scale content production [like] videos and so forth, but it doesn't end there. As the NFL continues to grow globally, there's more demand across different countries. What we're currently vetting as part of the innovation hub is how we can leverage AI and Gen AI to scale globally. When I talk about scaling content globally, it's content across all of our owned and operated digital channels, but also social media. It’s more of a holistic approach to generating content and being able to leverage it across any channel. For example, in the U.K., if a particular player is more popular, we can have an ad or something on social [media] with that person's image, but if in Germany, it's a different player, we can easily swap. [We’re testing] how can we do that in a way that helps us protect our brand, retain our authenticity, but also be able to scale across multiple languages. We have to also pressure test that, so we're looking at languages that are long text like German, or languages that go from right to left like Arabic and Hebrew, [and] non-Romance languages like Chinese. AW: What early results or insights have you gleaned from these initiatives? What else do you want to explore with AI?CO: We’re at this stage where we've identified some strategic partners that we can collaborate with, and then the next step is to start the actual experimentation. No results yet, but we're heading in the right direction. AW: How is the league using data to fuel and measure fan engagement?CO: On the martech side, we have a group of data scientists. We consume data from them into our martech ecosystem. We're then able to slice and dice our data for deeper insights to drive personalization and scale across different channels to our fans. Our martech strategy doesn't start and stop from a digital perspective, we've also integrated the experience into the physical. We did a quick test at The Draft, where [people] could scan their ticket and in real-time, we got that information and could use it to personalize their experience. AW: How are you using fan data to reach casual fans?CO: We have avid fans, casual fans, [and] people who may not be fans at all. We [also] have fans of specific demographics so trying to understand our demographic is one key thing, and I say this because our fans under 35 engage with us and consume our content very differently from fans who are over 35. Our fandom drivers are changing too. Once upon a time, it used to be that someone became a fan of the game because their parents were fans of a particular team, or they lived in a town where that team played. We're seeing a shift in people under 35 where fandom drivers are not necessarily historical, [referrals] are coming from segments like gaming, fantasy [football], and all types of virtual play. Understanding how the market and the industry is changing, and how it impacts different demographics is important to us, and with that knowledge, we can then figure out a strategy to engage them. Data plays a role because [it] lets us know who the casual fans are, who the average fans are, who are those who are likely to be engaged in this particular thing like fantasy, or what have you. AW: Have you identified any blindspots in reaching consumers using data?CO: I'm not sure I'll call it a blindspot, but there are areas we're under-serving. Even at the simplest form, a lot of our fans don't even know where to tune in to watch their favorite game. Is it on ABC? Is it on CBS? Due to the types of media partnerships we have sometimes understanding where to tune in can be a challenge. One of the things we're trying to do is drive frictionless experiences for our fans, and this is an area of fan friction where they want to watch a game, but they don't know how to. How are we solving for this? We have come up with different ways that we engage a fan and provide a platform for them to understand where their favorite games are being played, whether it's in-market or out-of-market. We had a “Ways to Watch/Tune In” campaign that we used. The ultimate goal was to remove that friction.

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As NFL Fandom Evolves, It's Turning to AI to Keep Up

The league is testing how the tech can help it bust language barriers and scale personalization

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