Texas Athletics Turns to Tech Partners for Help With Its Data

Welcome back. Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte opened the Business of Sports Summit in Austin by announcing a sports analytics lab built with the McCombs School of Business. Today's feature comes from the panel that followed and from Nike CEO Elliott Hill's talk later that day.

AUSTIN, Texas - Kirk Goldsberry took the stage at the University of Texas’s Business of Sports summit with executives from Dell Technologies, Google Cloud and SHI International, the three founding sponsors of Bevo Lab. Texas Athletics and the Business of Sports Institute at McCombs, which Goldsberry runs as executive director, launched the lab to build AI and analytics tools for the department's 21 varsity teams and more than 500 athletes. Under the plan laid out in the school's announcement, students will build the models with technology and engineering help from the sponsors.

Goldsberry spent part of the past decade as vice president of strategic research for the San Antonio Spurs. In the NBA, he told the audience, teams spend millions of dollars on PhDs and computer scientists to give coaches better information. When he returned to Texas, which has won the Learfield Directors' Cup as the top overall athletic department in five of the past six years, he asked why the university had nothing like it. "When I came back here, I saw 21 silos of data," he said. Bevo Lab will take on as many as 40 student researchers a year, working in the Innovation District next to campus.

The Sponsors' Jobs

Dell, the premier founding sponsor, is the lab's Official Technology Infrastructure Sponsor and has been the department's Official Technology Sponsor since 2021. That year Longhorn Sports Properties, the Learfield division that holds the school's multimedia rights, signed a multiyear agreement that put Dell systems in charge of game-day stats at every Texas venue and made the company a founding partner of Moody Center. Dell hardware also runs Texas Studios, the department's production operation, where more than 100 students have worked on 140 series, according to Gerri Tunnell, Dell's chief marketing officer. Tunnell noted that Michael Dell started the company in his dorm room at the university with $1,000.

Tunnell also brought up the virtual wind tunnel Dell built for McLaren, which lets the Formula 1 team test car designs before building expensive physical models. With F1 in Austin for the U.S. Grand Prix that weekend, Goldsberry turned the example into a pitch to the companies on stage. Tech companies have spent heavily on making race cars faster, he argued, and a Texas athlete chasing an SEC title in the 400 meters deserves the same attention.

Google Cloud, the Official Cloud Provider and Enterprise AI Provider, will run the lab on Google Cloud Platform and its Gemini models. Google Public Sector staff will work directly with Texas coaches and students, and an ambassador program will place students with Google engineering teams. Early work with the group has already saved Texas coaches more than 15 hours a week in game preparation, the school said. Chris Hein, chief technology officer for Google Public Sector, said a program can't get "unprecedented results with the same technology that everybody else has." He wants data from all 21 sports in one place because a finding in one sport can carry over to another, which AI researchers call transfer learning.

SHI, a technology solutions provider with about $16 billion in annual revenue, is a founding sponsor and the integrator responsible for making the other companies' systems work together. Jack Hogan, its vice president of advanced growth technologies and a former Division I athlete, said he hopes the lab's students become "the next Michael Dells."

Nike CEO Elliott Hill described a similar approach in his own Q&A at the summit later that day. Nike signed a 15-year, $250 million apparel and licensing deal with the school in 2015. Hill said Texas pushes the company to show up for more than games, and he summed up the school's question: "What are you doing for the fans and what are you doing for the students?" Nike calls its answer Six Days to Saturday. In October, Nike trainers led a student workout in the athletic department's weight room, and the company held a running event.

The Student Researchers

Lab researchers will build predictive models, including one the school calls "transfer AI" for evaluating potential roster additions, along with apps that let athletes, coaches and executives ask questions in regular language. Goldsberry compared the lab's output to the president's daily intelligence briefing. Coaches will still make the decisions, he said, and can ignore what the lab hands them. Hein predicted that a student, possibly a 19-year-old, will find something in the data that changes how Texas runs a program.

Drew Martin, Texas's deputy athletics director for external affairs, moderated the panel and asked the sponsors how they plan to keep up with AI tools that change every year, noting that "what it looks like in '27 is not what it looks like in '28." Tunnell said Dell starts from the outcome Texas wants and designs a custom setup that can be rebuilt as students bring new ideas, including ideas for new companies.

The first project is the Bevo Lakehouse, a single data warehouse that will combine game film with readings from athletes' wearable devices. It starts with football and will add the other 20 varsity sports. Hein said he hopes that in 10 years Bevo Lab will be the model for how companies partner with universities to prepare students for work.

Our Fan Sentiment Index rose 7 points this week to 105, above its third-quarter baseline of 100. Concession prices drew the most praise. The Phoenix Suns cut the price of hot dogs from $9 to $2 and water from $8.50 to $2, and fans in Atlanta keep pointing to $2 sodas and $5 draft beer at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Soccer fans liked what they saw in ticket prices. Among NFL and golf fans, merchandise drew the best reaction.

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Brian Gordon → Executive Producer and Head of Live Content, PGA Tour Studios
PGA Tour Studios hired Gordon to run live production for more than 4,000 hours of PGA Tour Live on the ESPN app, PGA Tour Champions and the Korn Ferry Tour. He came from Motorsport Network, where he was global head of programming and audience. As senior vice president and executive producer of the NWSL, he produced more than 300 live broadcasts for partners including CBS and Prime Video. The studio named Ryan Holcomb head of original content in September, a month before Gordon arrived.

Jenn Sylvester → General Manager, Fort Wayne TinCaps
Sylvester joined the TinCaps as an intern in January 2015 and moved to full-time group ticket sales later that year. Promotions followed in 2020, to ticket and corporate account manager, and in 2023, to assistant director of corporate partnerships. She is one of 16 active female GMs in Minor League Baseball. Mike Nutter, who had held the job since 2008, remains president of the club, the San Diego Padres' High-A affiliate.

Josh Turner → Senior Deputy Athletics Director, Iowa State University
At Iowa State, Turner will oversee commercial strategy and revenue generation, along with revenue sharing and NIL. Florida State hired him as deputy athletics director and chief financial officer in February 2025, and he managed its $243 million consolidated budget. Before that he had two stints at Georgia Southern, with two years in Miami's athletics business office in between, and left Georgia Southern as senior associate athletics director for business operations.

Randy Stephens → Senior Vice President and Executive Producer, Local Media Production, NHL Productions
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James Boatwright, Rachel Lindstrom and Amy Winter → Director of Corporate Partnerships, Director of Marketing & Promotions and Manager of Creative Services, Peoria Chiefs
Boatwright worked six years as an Air Force aircraft mechanic and earned a sports management master's at West Virginia. The Oak Island Loggerheads, a summer collegiate club, took him on as an intern in 2025 and made him general manager in 2026. Lindstrom ran marketing and promotions for the Frontier League's Down East Bird Dawgs this past season, a year after finishing at East Carolina. Winter graduated from Illinois State in May and spent this season as the Chiefs' digital media intern. The Cardinals' High-A affiliate opens its 2027 season at Dozer Park on April 2 against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.

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Kalshi × Philadelphia 76ers: The Philadelphia 76ers signed Kalshi to a multiyear deal as their official prediction market partner, becoming the first NBA team to have one. The announcement came four days after the league's own agreements with Kalshi and Polymarket. Kalshi also agreed to fund postgame SEPTA rides after the Oct. 30 game against the Knicks, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Nike × Ohio Athletics: Nike and BSN SPORTS signed a five-year agreement to become the Bobcats' official apparel, uniform, equipment and accessories provider. Nike will exclusively outfit all 16 athletic programs starting July 2027. Director of Athletics Slade Larscheid called the level of service from BSN SPORTS "a game-changer" for Ohio's teams.

World Wide Technology × Missouri Athletics: Mizzou Basketball's new jersey patch partner is St. Louis-based World Wide Technology, already the university's Official Technology Solutions Partner of Athletics. The WWT logo will go on men's and women's uniforms this fall and on Norm Stewart Court at Mizzou Arena.

Go.AI × Loyola Athletics: Go.AI, a Chicago company that builds private AI infrastructure for regulated industries, is the Ramblers' first jersey patch sponsor. The patch will appear on competition uniforms for all 15 Loyola varsity programs under a multiyear deal that Learfield facilitated. CEO David Moscatelli took COO Lisa Gillespie's accounting lectures at Loyola, and the two co-founded what is now Go.AI in 2018.

adidas × Melbourne Storm: Under a new agreement, adidas is Melbourne Storm's Official Apparel Partner and will supply technical kit for the NRL squad, the elite male and female pathways and the academy programs. Players will debut the new jersey in the opening round of the 2027 NRL season, when the club plays its first regular-season match in the U.S., in Las Vegas. Club stores and international adidas storefronts will carry a fan merchandise collection.

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See you next Wednesday.