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SBJ Unpacks

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SBJ Unpacks

Nearly three years after the public launch of ChatGPT catalyzed a groundswell of generative artificial intelligence adoption, levels of AI maturity within the sports industry vary widely.

Where most organizational leaders agree, however, is that reconciling this transformative and constantly evolving technology is a core business priority, particularly in investigating ways it can streamline operations. And this emphasis comes from the top down.

“One of [our five biggest company objectives] is master AI to boost efficiency and impact,” X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom recently told Sports Business Journal. “That is a leg on the stool, it’s not a peripheral goal or an afterthought.”

Internal efficiency-focused AI use cases are not always flashy, nor directly revenue generating. They run the gamut of areas such as segmenting fan data, drafting communications and employee onboarding, and are increasingly tapping agentic workflows, a class of artificial intelligence that is more autonomous — meaning minimal or no human intervention — and layered in its decision making than large language models, and can act on behalf of users.

The empirical benefits of AI in these contexts remain theoretical in some cases, but tech leaders center their efforts on increasing productivity and freeing understaffed departments to focus on big picture priorities, rather than mundane daily tasks.

Everyone is different

Enamored with the potential impact of AI on the sports industry, Josh Walker, co-founder and CEO of data firm Sports Innovation Lab, earlier this year launched a sports-focused AI education program called AI Advantage. With two of four planned sessions completed, the program has assembled hundreds of industry professionals — split evenly among teams/leagues, brands/agencies and media/technology companies, in Walker’s estimation — to learn more about AI and investigate potential use cases through presentations and product demos.

The biggest trend he has noticed with how sports teams and leagues are adopting AI?

“There is no pattern,” Walker said. “It would make perfect sense for the leagues to centralize the services that they are building for AI and roll it out to the teams. The teams never wait for that. You have some enterprising data science team or some enterprising CTO at the team level — they’re going to try stuff faster than the leagues do.”

Professional basketball is a hotbed of such enterprising teams.

The Cleveland Cavaliers, according to Michael Conley, the team’s executive vice president and chief information officer and president of Rock Entertainment Sports Network, began their generative AI discovery 3½ years ago. This started by consulting tech experts on the potential impact of generative AI and forming a cross-departmental generative AI committee. Eventually, they even transitioned one of their data quality analysts, Ben Levicki, into a full-time AI solutions architect, a first in the sports industry.

Cavs Rocket Arena
Ticket, food and beverage and retail data are among the areas the Cavaliers have deployed generative AI insights over the past 3 1/2 years. Cleveland Cavaliers

Since then, the Cavs have found success in initial use cases, such as building a semantic search function for the team’s basketball operations manual and a generative AI insights layer for their real-time ticket, food and beverage and retail data platform. At the direction of their C-suite, they are now focused on automating elements of their external communications, streamlining the processing of internal fan data and personalizing fan interaction.

During the NBA’s first Data Strategy Forum in July, the team presented the working prototype of a custom-built product that leverages a network of AI agents and fan information to distribute individualized emails to subscribers, down to details such as color scheme and emoji usage. After further testing using real fan profiles in September, the Cavs’ plan is for the product to be a part of email workflows by the start of the 2025-26 NBA season.

“Our goal is to be able to increase the amount of engagement that comes off a click action for those emails, to be able to eventually lead to better results down the funnel,” Conley said. “Is the messaging more effective, where we’re seeing greater open rates? Are we seeing greater engagement?”

Elsewhere, the Indiana Fever have seen potential in deploying AI agents (via Salesforce’s Agentforce platform) to comb through and segment internal fan data, which Joey Graziano, Pacers Sports & Entertainment executive vice president of strategy and new business ventures, said will help the team deliver personalized offers, content and experiences to fans and eventually be a resource for partners as well.

This is a massive potential use case in sports, given the multifaceted nature of fan data and ability for AI to scale the capabilities of understaffed data engineering departments.

“We are getting more sophisticated every day,” Graziano said. “And it’s not just the sophistication, it’s the speed and it’s the volume of segments you can create.”

The San Antonio Spurs, as a unique example, are using OpenAI to train models on previous years’ travel calendars (and other custom rules) to ingest the NBA’s overarching schedule and create deliverables such as team-specific master calendars, flight charters and email templates for outreach to preferred hotels and practice facilities on the road.

Human oversight is required, of course, but Charlie Kurian, the team’s director of business strategy and innovation, said tests have shown that first iterations of the deliverables can be produced in about 20 minutes, with the end-to-end, manual process of inputting information into Excel block-by-block distilled from three weeks to, at worst, one. He anticipates a version of the technology will aid the Spurs’ schedule-making as early as this season.

“This came directly from our CEO,” Kurian said. “[The message was], ‘Our people need to be focused on the higher ROI items. How do we use AI to deal with some of these tasks we’re bogged down with?’”

Culture matters

Kurian, at the head of the Spurs’ AI adoption effort, often says the first step of building a company’s “AI muscle” is enabling an AI-empowered workforce.

“We still believe we are very, very early on in the AI revolution. It’s hard to tell who is going to win, and what is going to stick,” Kurian said, comparing the current marketplace of competing AI platforms to the early days of social networking. “But what we can undoubtedly say is this technology will absolutely stick for the foreseeable future. [We’re] making sure we have invested in the most important thing we have — which is our people — so that, agnostic of what tool it comes to, we will still win.”

The team put this focus into action last year by piloting a generative AI learning program using ChatGPT, which has led to 90% of the 150 participants adopting the technology on a week-to-week basis, according to Kurian.

“We’ve crossed a threshold in people broadly using AI tools,” he said. “Now we’re doing discovery across every single department in our organization, understanding workflows, and, in the most positive way, blowing up the workflows to be able to integrate where AI can add value so that the real human beings can focus on the best use of their resources.”

Across its properties, TKO also is undertaking a hands-on approach to AI discovery and education, according to Alon Cohen, executive vice president of innovation. He and Melanie Hildebrandt, TKO and WME Group’s CIO, brought in an advanced prompt engineer for hands-on AI training with “natural early adopters” (e.g., TKO’s innovation and IT teams), and are now looking for other areas the technology can provide business value.

“The next version of almost every business application that we use has a heavy AI component to it,” Cohen said. “So, every team is identifying places where they think they can be successful, and when they go through their next upgrade cycle — or we consolidate to a new tool that’s also a good moment for an upgrade cycle — those tools become available.”

Jeremy Bloom X Games
X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom said the property’s employees are encouraged to spend 10% of their working hours experimenting with AI tools that could increase productivity. AP Images

X Games encourages its staff to dedicate 10% of their working hours to experiment with AI tools that could boost productivity, Bloom said. One particularly effective use case has been in training a model on droves of internal data to be a resource for new hires on everything from finding sales deck templates to signing up for benefits.

“The company that I founded before [joining X Games], we had 600 employees, so we had really big and built-out functions across all these specific areas,” Bloom said, referring to the software startup Integrate. “[At] X Games, we have like 30 full-time employees. Necessity is the mother of invention for us.”

Reason for optimism

Across virtually all corporate industries, there is palpable and understandable anxiety about the potential for AI to replace certain job functions.

Bloom, for one, noted that the AI startup he recently launched, Owl AI — which offers AI-powered competition judging, data processing and broadcast commentary capabilities, including for X Games — is leveraging AI agents for market research, effectively substituting for an internal team or expensive third-party consulting firm.

However, he views live sports as not just insulated from automation, but potentially a benefactor of it.

“AI is going to disrupt so many jobs and so many industries,” Bloom said. “But I think the tailwind for us, and for any sport, is humans are still going to want to watch humans play football, and not want to watch robots play football. I think that is a huge tailwind for X Games, for the NFL, for Major League Baseball, basketball. I think it’s one of the big reasons we’re seeing so much private equity want to get into sports.”

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Texas A&M tops Kentucky for first NCAA volleyball championship: ‘We sent a warning shot out to the world’

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With Texas A&M up 24-20 in the third set of the NCAA women’s volleyball title match, Maddie Waak set the ball for Ifenna Cos-Okpalla. Though Logan Lednicky and Kyndal Stowers had played bigger games for the Aggies, it was Cos-Okpalla who got the call for the championship point.

She elevated and slammed the ball in between Kentucky’s defenders at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. With that kill, Texas A&M won an improbable national title, 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-20).

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“They’re putting on t-shirts behind me. I can’t believe it. I’m still a little bit in disbelief,” Aggies coach Jamie Morrison said to ABC after the game. “We sent a warning shot out to the world about what we’re about.”

Kentucky, the No. 1 seed, started out strong in the first set. They built a lead as big as six points before Texas A&M started chipping away, eventually winning the set, 26-24. With that momentum, the Aggies owned the next two sets. Lednicky was the star of the match with 7 kills, 11 digs and 2 blocks. With every point won, Texas A&M’s confidence grew.

Kentucky was the third No. 1 seed that Texas A&M — a third seed — beat on the way to the national title, and every win from the Sweet 16 on was shocking. First, the Aggies came back from 2-0 to pull the reverse sweep against Louisville. Next, Texas A&M had to face undefeated, No. 1 overall seed Nebraska in Lincoln. In what was the best game of the tournament, the Aggies beat Nebraska in five sets.

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But their magic didn’t stop once the Aggies got to Kansas City. In the national semifinal, they swept No. 1 seed Pittsburgh, the first time the Panthers had been swept all season. And then in the first-ever All-SEC final, the Aggies came out victorious.

Unlike Kentucky, which won the national title in 2020 and has been one of the top teams in women’s volleyball for years, Texas A&M is a newcomer to volleyball’s elite. Though it had some good teams over the years that made it to the Elite Eight, this was the program’s first Final Four and their first national title.

Morrison took over the program in 2023, and held onto Lednicky and Cos-Okpalla. The Aggies turned the program around quickly, earning a bid to the tournament in 2023 and then making it to the Sweet 16 in 2024. This year, the Aggies went 29-4 and looked like a team on the brink. But with so many seniors, they had no time to waste and adopted the mentality of “Why not us?”

Lednicky, who played with the U.S. national team over the summer, was the heart of this team’s championship run, and the player who kept asking “Why not us?” Stowers’ comeback might be one of the best sports stories of the year. While playing for Baylor, she suffered concussions and medically retired from the sport. But after being medically cleared and deciding she had more to give to the sport, Stowers signed with Texas A&M and is now a national champion.

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Morrison has built a program that is not only a national champion, but is in a great position to continue to grow volleyball in Texas. While he will lose seniors like Lednicky and Waak, he can now show off a championship ring while on the recruiting trail.

But figuring out who will play for the Aggies next season is tomorrow’s problem. Today, Texas A&M gets to celebrate how it defied the odds to win the school’s first-ever national title in women’s volleyball.



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Kentucky vs. Texas A&M NCAA Volleyball Championship: How to watch, preview

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Kentucky volleyball will look to win its second national title in five years on Sunday when it takes on Texas A&M in Kansas City.How to watchSunday’s game tips off at 3:30 p.m. at the T-Mobile Center. It will air on ABC.PreviewKentucky comes to the game on Sunday with the edge. The Cats are No. 2 overall in the NCAA ranking, and they have previously beaten the No. 6 Aggies 3-1 in October. That game, an A&M home game, saw then No. 3 Kentucky face off against No. 9 Texas A&M, but since that meet-up, the Cats have not lost a single game, and the Aggies are right behind them with a single loss to home state rival Texas. The Wildcats have won 27 straight games, 30-2 overall, with their last loss in September to Pittsburgh. Texas A&M comes in 28-4 overall, with a five-game win streak, after their loss to Texas destroyed their 11-game win streak.Kentucky is no stranger to the NCAA championship. The Cats snagged their first title in 2020 after they beat Texas 3-1 in Omaha. Texas A&M has not made an appearance at the NCAA championship but has finished in the top ten four times in the last five years, finishing in fifth place in 2024.

Kentucky volleyball will look to win its second national title in five years on Sunday when it takes on Texas A&M in Kansas City.

How to watch

Sunday’s game tips off at 3:30 p.m. at the T-Mobile Center. It will air on ABC.

Preview

Kentucky comes to the game on Sunday with the edge. The Cats are No. 2 overall in the NCAA ranking, and they have previously beaten the No. 6 Aggies 3-1 in October. That game, an A&M home game, saw then No. 3 Kentucky face off against No. 9 Texas A&M, but since that meet-up, the Cats have not lost a single game, and the Aggies are right behind them with a single loss to home state rival Texas.

The Wildcats have won 27 straight games, 30-2 overall, with their last loss in September to Pittsburgh. Texas A&M comes in 28-4 overall, with a five-game win streak, after their loss to Texas destroyed their 11-game win streak.

Kentucky is no stranger to the NCAA championship. The Cats snagged their first title in 2020 after they beat Texas 3-1 in Omaha.

Texas A&M has not made an appearance at the NCAA championship but has finished in the top ten four times in the last five years, finishing in fifth place in 2024.



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Texas A&M volleyball beats Kentucky to win national title

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NATIONAL CHAMPIONS! – Texas A&M Athletics

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Texas A&M Aggies overwhelmed the Kentucky Wildcats in the final two sets of a 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-18) victory to claim the school’s first-ever NCAA Division I Women’s Volleyball Championship Sunday evening inside the T-Mobile Center.

 

Entering the tournament as the No. 3 seed in the Lincoln Regional, Texas A&M (29-4) completed a postseason sweep of three of the tournament’s No. 1 seeds, beating Nebraska (3-2) and Pitt (3-0) before dispatching of Kentucky (30-3). The last three teams the Maroon & White beat were a combined 93-6 before their respective seasons were ended.

 

The Aggies became the ninth team in the 45-year history of the NCAA Championship to sweep both of their Final Four matches.

 

The Maroon & White never trailed in the last two sets. The opportunistic Aggies took advantage of the Wildcats’ nine service errors and 16 attack errors.

 

Kyndal Stowers was named the NCAA Championship Most Outstanding Player. She capped off the tournament with a .304 attack percentage, 10 kills, six digs, two service aces and one block in the triumph over Kentucky. Ifenna Cos-Okpalla, Logan Lednicky and Ava Underwood joined Stowers on the All-Tournament Team.

 

Texas A&M claimed the first set despite not leading until 25-24. The Wildcats pounced on the Aggies in the first set for a 9-3 advantage. Kentucky led by six on eight more occasions, before the Maroon & White clawed back into the contest. An 8-2 run, featuring two kills each by Cos-Okpalla and Lednicky, tied the contest at 20-20. With the set seesawing, the Wildcats had its first set point at 24-23, but Stowers sandwiched two kills around a block assist by Cos-Okpalla and Maddie Waak for the smash and grab.

 

The second set was tied twice early before the Aggies broke away. Back-to-back kills by Lednicky and a service ace by Cos-Okpalla allowed Texas A&M to open a 5-2 lead. The Maroon & White suffocated the Wildcats with a 13-3 run to open its biggest lead of the set at 19-8. Kentucky would draw no closer than seven the remainder of the set.

 

After Kentucky opened the third set with a service error, Cos-Okpalla put aways two kills to start a 6-1 surge out of the gate. The Wildcats cut the deficit to 10-8, but 9-3 charge by Texas A&M widened the lead to 19-11. Big Blue was closed the gap to four at 24-20, but it was too little, too late as Cos-Okpalla uncorked a booming kill for the final point.

 

STAT LEADERS

Kills – Logan Lednicky – 11

Hitting Percentage (Min. 10 kills) – Kyndal Stowers – .304

Assists – Maddie Waak – 29

Aces – Ifenna Cos-Okpalla; Maddie Waak – 2 

Digs – Ava Underwood – 10

Blocks – Ifenna Cos-Okpalla – 4

 

GAME NOTES

  • Logan Lednicky recorded her 23nd-consecutive game with 10 or more kills.
  • Ifenna Cos-Okpalla set the Texas A&M career record for blocks, wrapping up with 566. She also inflated her single-season school record to 199.
  • Jamie Morrison joined John Dunning (first year) and Michael Sealy (second year) as one of three coaches two win an NCAA Division I Volleyball tournament in their first three years as a head coach.
  • The Aggies beat all four of the No. 1 seeds of the NCAA Championship, beating Texas (3-2) in the regular season and Nebraska (3-2), Pitt (3-0) and Kentucky (3-0).

 

FOLLOW THE AGGIES

Visit 12thMan.com for more information on Texas A&M volleyball. Fans can keep up to date with the A&M volleyball team on Facebook, Instagram and on Twitter by following @AggieVolleyball.





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Alumni Spotlight: Aviana “Avi” Goode ’20

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Aviana K. Goode ’20
Track and Field

Aviana, also known as Avi, is no stranger to success on the track. Before turning 18, Avi had already won three state championships and earned multiple bronze medals, along with a silver, while competing for her high school track team — and even added a school record in the process. Her winning nature carried over to Syracuse where she balanced being a student and an athlete, studying Communication and Rhetorical Studies at VPA and Sports Revenue Management & Operations at Falk College. This balance paid off as she earned top-six finishes at the 2019 ACC Indoor and Outdoor Championships in the high jump. She continued to add to her long list of track achievements during her graduate transfer year when she competed for The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) where she previously held the indoor program record for 60m hurdles and the outdoor record for the 100m hurdles and heptathlon. Although she no longer competes on the track, she has found a new way to stay involved with the sport she loves.

It was always Aviana’s dream to earn a trip to TrackTown USA in Eugene, Oregon. For those who may not know, TrackTown is a world-class track and field facility organizing events such as the 2015, 2022, 2023 USATF Outdoor Championships and the 2016, 2020, and 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Aviana’s dream to make it to TrackTown USA, also known as Hayward Field, came true when she was selected as one of four photographers to cover the 2024 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials as park of the Black Women Photographers and TrackTown USA creative team.

Noah Lyles coming out of the blocks at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Noah Lyles coming out of the blocks at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks

“It was surreal,” Aviana said. “My goal in life, in track and field specifically, was always to make it to Hayward Field. It was supposed to be as an athlete, but I guess God had different plans for me. I ended up there with a whole new lens, literally and figuratively.”

Aviana spent over a week at TrackTown shooting world-class athletes like Olympic champion and eight-time World Champion, Noah Lyles, Olympic long jump champion, Tara Davis-Woodhall, and even Olympian and World Record breaker, Sydney McLaughlin.


 

Tara Davis-Woodhall competing in long jump at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Tara Davis-Woodhall competing in long jump at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks

The unique part about the entire situation is that Aviana was just a newbie in the sports photography world at this point. She had started sports photography just two years prior to shooting on this world-class stage and had only shot one outdoor track meet before. Despite the lack of experience, Polly Irungu, founder of Black Women Photographers, loved her photos and style.

The opportunity to shoot the Olympic Trials allowed Aviana to grow tremendously as a person but also as a photographer. While covering the Olympic Trials, she noticed that not many women of color were working as creatives although the sport is predominately black. There were only five other creatives that were black women that she saw capturing the events at TrackTown. This realization inspired Avi to be a role model and a representation for young black women and women of color who want to step into the creative world. As a freelance photographer based in NYC, she continues to refine her craft, working with athletes, brands, and events to create high-impact imagery that resonates.

“Being a photographer allows me to go out there and still feel like an athlete. I can feel the emotion. I’m capturing everything to remember the moment and to show the love and passion for the sport that I think is the hardest sport in the world, Aviana said.

 

Stay connected with Aviana on Linkedin: Aviana Goode | LinkedIn & Instagram: @goode.flicks

Raven Saunders with her medal at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks
Raven Saunders with her medal at U.S. Olympic Team Trials. Credit: Aviana Goode/@goode.flicks



 

 



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Kentucky volleyball results, recap vs Texas A&M in championship match

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Updated Dec. 21, 2025, 5:16 p.m. ET

The Kentucky Wildcats volleyball team needed one more win to bring home a national championship, but the Texas A&M Aggies were the better team on Sunday afternoon, and it’s they who took home the trophy after winning the match 3-0 (26-24, 25-15, 25-20).

It looked like the Wildcats were going to take control early. They jumped out to a 6-1 lead in the first set, and led big as play progressed. However, some good Texas A&M serves, and some bad Kentucky passing led to an Aggies comeback.

After that first set, it seemed as if the life drained out of the Wildcats. The Aggies dominated the second set. They blocked nearly every Kentucky kill attempt, and dug out the rest. The Cats had no answers, and they fell behind 2-0.



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