When Bill Schlough became the San Francisco Giants’ chief information officer in 1999, he looked around for peers. There were none.

He determined that he was the first CIO in sports at the team or league level, occupying a foreign position in the landscape. It’s a fact he shares modestly even now, hoping to not aggrandize but simply highlight the rarity. “Here in Silicon Valley, where technology reigns supreme, the consultants that they brought in said, ‘You’re building a new ballpark, you need a CIO,’” he said. “The leaders were like, ‘What’s a CIO?’”

Schlough has spent 27 seasons with the organization, reporting to the CFO during his first few seasons before getting a direct line to the CEO over the last two-plus decades. While Schlough’s role was initially outside of the norm, it did help in trailblazing the growth of tech’s presence in the boardroom — be that by CIO, chief technology officer, chief innovation officer, senior vice president of technology or similar — that’s taking hold today.

Tech leaders have kicked through the server-room doors en route to the C-suite, occupying seats with growing impact on team and league bottom lines. They’re looked to as the go-to problem solver in an industry full of emerging brain teasers and ever-hastened deadlines. They’re handed some of the most difficult problems: making the fan experience more frictionless; boosting cybersecurity in a data-intensive world; and determining just what to do with artificial intelligence, to name a few of many.

“Here in Silicon Valley, where technology reigns supreme, the consultants that they brought in said, ‘You’re building a new ballpark, you need a CIO,’” he said. “The leaders were like ‘What’s a CIO?’”

—  Bill Schlough, CIO, San Francisco Giants

It’s a job description that continues growing and looks different from one gig to another, but one that also grows in impact across all verticals. Sports Business Journal spoke to 22 lead tech executives from a range of teams, leagues and governing bodies. Their collective insights demonstrated how drastically their responsibilities have changed, the profound nature of their potential impact and the solutions they’re chasing for forward-leaning issues.

“A few years ago, CTOs, CIOs — whatever you want to call us — we were behind the scenes. We were basically viewed as we did infrastructures,” said NHL CTO Peter DelGiacco, who has led tech at the league since 1996. “That’s what the job was way back then. Not so much now. Now, it’s a much more exciting time. There are two things that we do that make my day, actually. We co-architect business strategy. We align technical road maps and revenue targets for fan experiences and market priorities.”

It’s what MLS CTO John Nicastro describes as “marrying technology as an enabler but also as an innovator.” NBA CTO Krishna Bhagavathula offers his own hypothesis about a three-phased evolution of tech leadership. A decade ago, the predominant requirement was as a service provider offering IT support. Over time, CTOs were offered a seat at the table as a business partner — involved, but not proactive.

“The ultimate nirvana, in my book,” he said, “is what I call ‘trusted adviser,’ and I differentiate between business partner and trusted adviser the following way: As a trusted adviser, business units come to you, not just for tech problems, but for advice or brainstorming on anything. As a business partner, you have a seat at the table. As a trusted adviser, you have the option to make the table.”

Technology is now interwoven across so many business units that the dynamic Bhagavathula speaks of has become table stakes for success.

SailGP CTO Warren Jones said when he was hired in 2017, founders Larry Ellison and Russell Coutts gave him a “blank sheet of paper,” so he built the league’s entire data and broadcast infrastructure in the cloud. That infrastructure now underpins insights that improve performance and the award-winning LiveLine augmented reality graphics package that helps educate new fans of the sport.

Monumental Sports & Entertainment CTO Charlie Myers said that when he was hired, Ted and Zach Leonsis similarly told him to make the multiproperty ownership group and media company into a technology company. Myers’ purview now touches the entire enterprise, including venue infrastructure, broadcast, data systems and cybersecurity — all of which will figure into MSE’s ongoing $800 million transformation of Capital One Arena, and represent a remit that is not atypical for the modern sports tech head. (Note: SBJ and Monumental are partners on a monthly television show, “SBJ: Inside the Industry,” that airs on the Monumental Sports Network.)

“I am an agent of change,” Myers said of his role. “And I am going to thrust myself and my team into conversations to help drive that.”

The job of a sports tech leader is a big one, and with big jobs come big opportunities.

Artificial intelligence, of course, is a hot topic. Sports tech leaders see the opportunity to use AI to streamline internal processes and accelerate fan personalization, but many preached a cautious, practical approach to implementation. Multiple executives, including USTA CTO Paul Maya, have established AI working groups within their organizations to investigate use-cases and manage training and implementation with cross-departmental support, particularly from legal.

“We started with some very specific training and then continued to add prompt training and others to get more folks into that,” Maya said. “We’re seeing adoption within our legal space, technology space, in our customer care using bots and agents — and seeing real change in how we do business.”

Perhaps no organization, for sure at the team level, has figured out AI deployment as effectively as the Portland Trail Blazers. Christa Stout, chief strategy and innovation officer, received a nudge to figure out how generative AI could affect the entire franchise. That started a dive into every department that’s spanned a year-plus, progressing from fact-finding to impactful deployments of technology: custom GPTs that can comb budget codes in seconds, provide branding guidelines and even filter fan feedback for quick customer service response.

Problem solving, especially when affecting the entire workforce, requires a foundation of trust. Stout builds that by leaning on vulnerability and curiosity to produce buy-in. “I don’t know the best solution to a problem until I get more people involved,” Stout said. “I don’t even know what the problem is until I talk to the people closest to it.”

External expertise is sought, too. MLB Chief Operations and Strategy Officer Chris Marinak, the league’s de facto tech lead, pointed to partners Google Cloud, Adobe and Apple. A huge priority for MLB is harnessing AI to personalize the fan experience at home and at the ballpark.

“We have a lot of resources — engineers and smart people that are doing great work — but at the end of the day, the scale that we can generate in baseball is less than the scale that some of the world’s best technology companies can deliver, just given the scope of their businesses, the size of their operations,” Marinak said.

Saving employee time isn’t the only potential bottom-line benefit, as CTOs are playing an active role in driving revenue. Oscar Fernandez, New York Mets senior vice president of technology, pointed to a recent digital transformation with Samsung at Citi Field. By installing not only a larger video board but also ribbon LEDs, the club is now offering sponsors a more compelling package with synchronized messaging.

“It changed the way we did the business side, and how we did ‘digital domination,’” Fernandez said. “Instead of selling static signs, we’re selling a whole experience where you own the moment.”

There is also a broad impetus to modernize data systems. One of the biggest items on ATP Tour CTO Christopher Dix’s plate, for example, is the upcoming launch of a comprehensive identity management solution, which he says will help the tour know its fans better and thus connect with them more directly.

“It’s not about giving everybody the same information,” Dix said. “It’s giving you the right information at the right time, and making sure that tennis is relevant and relatable to your experience.”

John Martin, vice president and CTO at NASCAR, meanwhile, highlighted an initiative that might affect how his sport is viewed. He said that precise car location is communicated by as many as five systems during a given race, and that tracking info creates compelling possibilities. “That data is just so rich, if I can use that term,” Martin said. “We’ve got a lot of AR/VR applications that people may not be able to even fathom just yet.”

More leagues are also formalizing research and development through accelerators and pilots, which can lead to equity stakes in startups and jointly created products. There’s NBA Launchpad and Investments, MLS Innovation Lab and Emerging Ventures and the NFL Innovation Hub.

Scott Harniman, UFL senior vice president of technology, said one goal of the league’s FAST (Football Advancement through Sports Technology) program is to investigate: “Can we create our own IP out of this? Are there rev-share opportunities with some of these partners?”

UFC technology head Alon Cohen, whose title is senior vice president of research and development, added that his league’s R&D arm views it as important that their work “not be seen as doing something innovative, but to be doing something innovative in the service of the business.” The computer vision-derived metrics UFC uses on its broadcasts, for instance, took nearly a decade to trial and develop, but Cohen sees no need to crow on that.

“Where [a statistic] came from doesn’t actually matter to you [as a fan], in the same way that we don’t think about the yellow line in football or the strike zone in baseball,” he said. “You don’t sit around going, ‘Man, it’s so cool that they do that.’ It just becomes part of the furniture of the sport.”

There is, however, a balance to be struck between diving full-bore into innovation and ensuring one’s organization is equipped to do so safely and effectively.

“They’re kind of opposing ends of the world,” said Sasha Puric, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment CTO. “One is growth. ‘Hey, let’s go forward with new ideas and trying new things.’ And the other is, ‘Whoa, hold back. We really have to be focused on security and all the audits we have to go through and everything else.’

“That’s the yin and the yang. The two shoulders. The devil and the angel.”

David Michael has served in top tech roles for the former XFL and the Madison Square Garden Company. Now, as the CIO for LA28, he’s riding a three-year on-ramp to one of the largest events in the sporting world. Not surprisingly, the protection of data and infrastructure is the predominant concern for Michael in planning an international event with 40-plus venues and an expected 15 million fans.

“Top of my list of worries is cybersecurity, by far and away,” Michael said. “And the challenge of being in the sports industry is that you have a spotlight on you — and we have a very big spotlight on us — and so that attracts all sorts of people.”

“I am an agent of change. And I am going to thrust myself and my team into conversations to help drive that.”

—  Charlie Myers, CTO, Monumental Sports & Entertainment

Michael is not alone, as cybersecurity serves as a steady drumbeat of anxiety for tech leaders when considering their day-to-day lives. Multiple leaders cited cybersecurity standards developed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as guiding their strategy. Some lean on partners for critical response systems, such as Monumental with Verizon, or private networks, such as SailGP with Oracle.

But the consistent theme was the importance of staff training and education. Even the most airtight cybersecurity framework, from a systems standpoint, is not immune to employee error, particularly as phishing campaigns become more scalable, realistic and multimodal.

“Everybody thinks it’s malware. It’s the people that are the risk,” said Myers, adding that Monumental conducts internal ethical hacking sessions through a third party every year to test their cyberawareness. “I worry about a wire transfer or something like that through a high-level exec. … Those are the pieces where I get concerned with people having fatigue about keeping their guard up.”

Tech leaders also mentioned keeping up with the pace of innovation and fan expectations, fan accessibility and the health of their respective sports properties as key issues that keep them up at night. It’s a list as long as the sports CTO/CIO’s list of responsibilities, putting them under an ever-growing magnifying glass of attention.

“The world knows when I have a bad day,” said Kimberly Rometo, Hawks/State Farm Arena chief technology and innovations officer. “And I’m very fortunate I don’t have bad days very often. But that was something I just didn’t expect at all.”

When Michael Conley first stepped into the Cleveland Cavaliers’ CIO role in 2017, an industry colleague asked if he knew what the abbreviation actually stood for. The answer? “Career is over,” the person deadpanned, because there is no way to meet the expectations of the job.

“I scratched my head a little bit,” Conley said. “Now I realize, you’re wearing many hats and trying to do many things, which is really, really good.”

While it’s a joke about potential workload, it can also be a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement about the possibilities of ascending past the tech label and into higher organizational roles. Conley highlighted the start of a shift in that aspect of the job, too, saying that he sees the CTO role becoming more transferable to COO responsibilities because “the entire operation now is running on a foundation of complex technology.”

It’s not just an aspirational thought either, as teams and leagues have looked to their tech leaders for more responsibilities. Schlough once served a year as the interim president of the Class A San Jose Giants, working 10 more as chairman of the team’s board. On top of her strategy and innovation role, Stout oversees the Blazers’ G League affiliate, the Rip City Remix. LPGA Chief Legal and Technology Officer Liz Moore is leading the organization as interim commissioner until Craig Kessler takes over full time on July 15.

Schlough contends that the team level still has work to do regarding tech’s seat at the top table. Since he started, he’s kept a running list of MLB counterparts, and approximately a third of the teams have a C-suite-level tech representative. “Many teams don’t feel that technology warrants a C-level role,” said Schlough.

It’s a sentiment that Kari Escobedo, former Seattle Mariners senior vice president and CIO who is now serving as a tech adviser (fractional CIO/CTO) for the Sounders and Reign, aligns with. There’s still a need for long-standing industry figures to see the real value that a tech-infused mind can bring. “There’s not enough appreciation or understanding of all of the complexities that we have to deal with from a lot of our business partners,” Escobedo said. “Especially ones that have maybe been in their roles a long time, and maybe not in multiple organizations, to really recognize that the impact can be huge if allowed to be just another business group, not a support firm.”

The purview is massive, and the margin for error at times nonexistent — it has to work — and yet tech can’t be a roadblock to corporate progress.

Soon after joining the NBA in 2017, Bhagavathula crystallized the role. “It’s a one-sentence mission statement,” he said, “but I think it captures everything that I strive to do within the organization: It’s to drive innovation through tech to empower our colleagues, delight our fans and safeguard the brand.”