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New Data Strategy Accompanies New Stadium for Texas Rangers

A lot goes into creating a memorable experience for fans, and most of it happens behind the scenes. Shifting their data strategy enabled the Texas Rangers to keep tabs on where the hot dogs might run out as well as critical details like medical response times to keep fans not just fed and happy but safe.

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Setting the Stage

The Texas Rangers business operations team has collected data and performed analytics for the past five years. With a new state-of-the-art stadium on the horizon, they knew their existing systems and manual processes weren’t equipped to handle the massive amounts of new data that would be coming their way.

In the old stadium, data came from disparate sources—many not consistently updated, causing inaccurate analysis and an overall mistrust of the data. Meanwhile, the new stadium would produce data in categories that didn’t even exist yet.

The Problem

The business operations team knew they needed to develop a robust and scalable data and analytics environment to support their new stadium operations and didn’t have the in-house expertise, nor the bandwidth, to undertake this initiative solely on their own.

“We needed guidance to be able to think about the future,” said Texas Rangers Business Operations Analytics Systems Manager Machelle Noel. “Bringing in Resultant to help us do that was a no-brainer because of our existing excellent working relationship.”

Having worked with Resultant on a smaller data visualization project, Noel and her team turned to our team for assistance in developing a data strategy that could deliver their vision in these key areas:

  • A foundation for growth
  • Scalable systems
  • Real-time access to data
  • One single source of truth
  • Automation of manual processes
  • An executable roadmap, budget, and action plan
  • A deadline of systems fully functional by the MLB season opener

The SDA framework helped the Rangers business operations team get the entire organization on board with their vision and its delivery.

Our Approach

To assist the Rangers in developing a plan to scale and implement a data and analytics solution, we introduced our strategic data assessment (SDA) framework.

The SDA framework is an approach to thoroughly understand a client's data challenges and systematically evaluate areas of the organization that will lead to a more impactful transformation. Areas we cover in the SDA framework include:

  • People and Processes
  • Data Models and Structures
  • Data Architecture and Platforms
  • Visual Analytics and Reporting
  • Advanced Analytics

About the Client

The Texas Rangers business operations team has collected data and performed analytics for the past five years. With a new state-of-the-art stadium on the horizon, they knew their existing systems and manual processes weren’t equipped to handle the massive amounts of new data that would be coming their way.

Outcomes and Impact

  • Brought multiple stakeholders to the table in a collaborative, productive way
  • Envisioned a comprehensive roadmap
  • Developed a realistic, executable plan to build confidence and bolster support
  • Identified quick wins at key milestones to ensure continued commitment
  • Proved out the ability to support new data volume and sources through a proof of concept
  • Identified points of automation to enable scaling
  • Demonstrated a clear ROI and better time to value
  • Implemented the recommendations and built a robust, scalable data foundation for the new stadium

Duct tape doesn’t scale. Resultant’s SDA framework enabled us to put together a comprehensive data strategy that ensured we could scale to handle all of the new data we would be receiving from our new state-of-the-art stadium.

Machelle Noel

Analytics Systems Manager,   Texas Rangers Business Operations

Recommendations

Upon completion of the evaluation, we provided the business operations team a comprehensive presentation and detailed report with the following recommendations.

Infrastructure

Not every system upgrade project must include a move to the cloud. The larger IT landscape in the new stadium had a brand-new, state-of-the-art, on-prem infrastructure that would handle the Rangers’ needs beautifully when everything connected to it was optimized.

Manual Process Automation

Streamlining and automating the majority of the Rangers’ daily prep processes will facilitate faster data analysis and open up scaling capabilities.

Modern Data Architecture and Structure

The new stadium would bring major changes in types and volume of data. New, modern data architecture and structure will capture, process, and store data in an efficient, effective manner, ensuring scalability for future growth.

Comprehensive Roadmap

Co-developing a comprehensive roadmap, project plan, and budget with the business operations team within an understanding of their objectives and constraints will enable them to get initiative buy-in, articulate success criteria, and outline a feasible multi-year investment schedule.

Data Lakes

Data lakes provide stakeholders a better way to manage data reliability, accuracy, and timeliness while ensuring streamlined access.

A COVID Interruption

The planned inaugural season of the new Globe Life Field was interrupted by the global pandemic—not quite the off-with-a-bang beginning everyone had planned. Because Noel’s team had the data foundation in place, they were able to pivot business operations and make the most of an unprecedented situation. While the stadium wasn’t being used for its original intent, they were able to conduct tours and other smaller-scale events.

Data from those and other operations led to season ticket sales, DoppleRanger sales, and foundation donations. And, when a little event called the 2020 World Series rolled around and the stadium was allowed to host fans at 25% capacity, Noel’s team was well prepared for them.

Actionable Insights

The business operations end-of-game report in the old stadium with the old data systems could be arduous and time-consuming. Baseball isn’t a timed sport; the game ends whenever it ends. But post-game, the entire business operations team would get to work pulling data and preparing a report for executives—a task that could take hours. Today, not only does that report generate automatically within an hour of game completion, but near-real-time updates are generated and shared while the game is happening.

These insights help maximize revenue and build a better fan experience. The operations team can zero in on which entrances are the busiest at what times of the game to better distribute staff, promotional items, and concessions resources. Things that fans rarely think about like spill cleanup, broken seats, and medical assistance now have their own metrics and visualizations so employees can view hotspots and improve response times.

The Texas Rangers’ business operations team has opened up a world of possibilities for their organization by building a solid foundation for their data strategy and continually asking what else is possible.

Departments can see accurate, near-real-time updates on everything from the top selling t-shirts to how many paper towels are leftin which restroom to how many hot dogs are sold per minute.

When the new and improved end-of-game report was first presented in an executive meeting, the owners asked to be included. Other departments have started coming to business operations for help with their own initiatives—something that’s only possible because of the new systems and the reduced time spent on the end-of-game reporting tasks.

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