The Business of Baseball – How America’s Pastime Drives Innovation with Bill DeWitt of the St. Louis Cardinals

The speed of innovation and technological advances over the past decade has been transformative for all businesses, 100-year-old companies and growing startups alike. Baseball’s storied history in America has played a huge role in its popularity, but like any other business, it’s had to evolve to keep up with technology and customer expectations. 

St. Louis Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III and the MLB understood that their audience and their expectations were changing, and competition for entertainment was mounting due to smartphones, among other catalysts. This presented a unique challenge and opportunity for the game of baseball to adapt while remaining true to its beloved traditions. 

But Who’s Counting? hosts Dave Hartley and Missy Kelley sat down with Bill to discuss his tenure with the Cardinals and what prompted changes to the game in 2023. They dig into the impact of technology on the game for fans and players, as well as:

• The role of data analytics in driving a better fan experience and operational improvements
• Why it’s important to experiment with big changes before implementing
• Why diversifying, both to cater to different audiences and in revenue streams, ultimately creates more satisfying experiences
• How technology has affected the game and the business
• The link between creativity and innovation

“That’s what baseball’s insight was: how you frame the problem and how you communicate with fans who are so passionate about the game so that they understand that we’re trying to create a better version of the game. It was a goal, a North Star, to find the best version of the game itself, and that appeals pretty much to everybody.”        – Bill DeWitt III

Resources to Count On

Check out these additional resources for more insight into the conversation:

• View the Cardinals’ 2024 schedule
• Connect with the Cardinals community online 

Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing on Spotify, Pandora or Apple Podcasts and let us know what you think by rating and reviewing. Keep up with more Anders insights by visiting our website and following us on social media:
Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

Transcript

Intro: 0:00

You're focused on making important decisions to take your company to the next level. But who's counting? We are Counting on trends and insight to move your business forward operationally and strategically, focused on helping executives achieve their highest potential. But who's Counting is a podcast shedding light on and breaking down critical issues and opportunities for businesses Brought to you by Anders, cpas and Advisors.

Missy Kelly: 0:28

I'm Missy Kelly and I'm Dave Hartley. And today we interviewed Bill DeWitt III, president of the St Louis Cardinals, and it was a fascinating conversation.

David Hartley: 0:39

Yeah, Missy, I didn't know how much of the discussion around the business of baseball would be relevant to all of our listeners, and I think there's a ton of things in this episode that people will take away baseball related, but more so business focused.

Missy Kelly: 0:52

Yes, we talked about creativity and innovation, technology, how you make big decisions and how they balance the history of baseball and preserving that with the needs of the audience today, which is a very high tech audience. It's a fascinating episode. And hey, by the way, did you know, dave, that Phil DeWitt is an artist?

David Hartley: 1:17

I did not know that, but it sounds like I need to go check out his Instagram.

Missy Kelly: 1:21

It is. It's super impressive. It's a lot of fun. Enjoy the show. Welcome to the Anders but who's Counting podcast. I'm Missy Kelly here with Dave Hartley, and today we are talking to Bill DeWitt III, president of the St Louis Cardinals. Bill was named President of the St Louis Cardinals in March 2008 and in this role, he oversees all aspects of the team and its affiliates. Throughout his career with the Cardinals, bill has led several notable projects, including the development of Ballpark Village, which is a mixed use project adjacent to Busch Stadium, and in addition, he oversaw the design and construction of the new Busch Stadium, which opened in 2006, and was involved in the planning for Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter, florida, where the Cardinals conduct spring training. Bill studied art history and architecture at Yale University and got his MBA from Harvard Business School. Welcome to the podcast, bill.

Bill DeWitt III: 2:14

Thanks for having me.

Missy Kelly: 2:16

Well, there are so many things that we could talk to you about, bill, given the depth of topics related to baseball, past and current, but we're going to focus this discussion on innovation and creativity as it relates to the business of baseball, and there were significant changes made to the game in 2023, and I was reading about the history of changes to the game since its inception and there have been several in the long history of baseball, but they don't happen often and I imagine they don't happen lightly, so I wanted to just have you talk to us about the need for that change and why this was the time for that.

Bill DeWitt III: 2:51

Sure, I think it's a topic that a lot of fans were interested in and I think they were a little bit apprehensive about the whole process that we went through to make such a big change with the pitch clock and the larger bases and the elimination of the shift, which were kind of the three big rules that were debuted last season for the first time. And I would say that you know, the baseball business is slow to change in those areas, certainly, but what had happened over the years and I'm going back maybe about 25 years or so is that the rules hadn't changed in the game, but the game was changing, if that makes sense. So the analytics revolution came about, which reached certain conclusions about how we were playing the game, as, as you know, pitching and hitting and an example would be with hitters. You know the technology and the stats were saying that that an uppercut swing is going to create more power because it's going to get loft the ball and get it over the wall more for home runs. The problem is the flip side of that was it also creates more strikeouts, and so pitchers were exploiting that and throwing high in the zone and it's like a cat and mouse.

Bill DeWitt III: 4:08

It just keeps going back and forth and iterating, but what was happening is this new information, this new technology was causing the game to change, and one of the ways it changed I don't think was for the better. It was sort of mucking it up. It was getting slower. Pitchers were finding that they were better off taking their time so they could actually recover from every pitch, because it's a max effort sort of pitching philosophy these days.

Bill DeWitt III: 4:33

Hitters were going through this long routine. In many cases that felt just redundant for fans. Bottom line is something had to give because the game was getting less interesting even though the rules had changed. So the thinking was let's change some rules to get the game back to the best version of itself that fans were familiar with, you know, 15, 20, 30 years ago or even longer. And that's what they're these new rules were designed to do and I think they largely succeeded, probably because they did so much experimentation in the minor leagues to figure out which worked. I mean, these are the three that they did, but there were 20 ideas out there that they experimented with in the minor leagues and I think that's an overlooked aspect of what happened there, that they really felt confident in going with this in the major leagues because they had experimented with it for many years.

Missy Kelly: 5:29

That's interesting.

Bill DeWitt III: 5:30

How long ago did you start talking about it? I'm just curious. I think we started seeing these trends getting pretty consistent, I would say about seven or eight years ago, where the strikeouts were going up, balls in play were going down, batting average of the pitchers were going down. That was another one we didn't mention. But we put the DH in the National League the year before, which was a change for Cardinal fans for sure, and these were things that were undeniable. They were trend lines that just kept going up and up and up or down and down and down, depending on which issue, and it was clear that some sort of change needed to be made.

David Hartley: 6:10

So, bill, actually I have a question on that. So, when you think about that, you've really got two opposing forces that you're trying to balance, one being sort of this incredible history of success with the franchise. You've got an incredibly strong and loyal fan base, but then, as you've been talking about, the game was changing. So how do you think about balancing those things? Sort of respecting the past, but also and that's one of the things we hear from our clients and prospects is, just as you start to go into the future and innovate, it means change, and that's really uncomfortable for a lot of people. So I guess, from your perspective, as you think about those two things, how do you try to balance those forces?

Bill DeWitt III: 6:50

Yeah, I would say with the rules changes, it was largely driven by the central baseball office and the whole game, and so I always enjoyed doing fan events with either season ticket holders or whatever.

Bill DeWitt III: 7:05

I do a lot of different, you know, events with fans, and I find that just showing them the data is the most helpful thing, because you know then they start to think about the problem from the standpoint of the overall system instead of just maybe what they would initially react to the problem with.

Bill DeWitt III: 7:23

So, and then just appealing to the history and the tradition. Like you know how many people in this room want to see a pitch clock, you know before they knew anything about it, and I knew this was kind of coming and not many people raised their hand. But if you pose the question how many people would like to see the game played the way it was played in 1970, 1980, early 90s rather than the way it's played today, and you'd get 95% of the people raise their hand. And so I think that's what baseball's insight was, is that it's how you frame the problem and how you communicate with fans who are so passionate about the game so that they understand that we're trying to create a better version of the game through rules changes in this case and that the end result is not something that was reached lightly. It was like a goal. A North Star is to find the best version of the game itself, and that appeals pretty much to everybody.

Missy Kelly: 8:22

Was the length of the game affecting viewership or attendance? Do you think?

Bill DeWitt III: 8:29

It's hard to say because there's so many other factors involved.

Bill DeWitt III: 8:33

I don't necessarily think it affected attendance the way, for example, team performance does, or weather events when you're looking at it on a game-by-game basis or anything like that, but you could tell that we were sort of losing ground in the entertainment space to some things that were clearly more digestible.

Bill DeWitt III: 8:57

The games were getting to be about three hours. I think they peaked at about three hours and 10 minutes average, and playoff games are going even longer. Many of them are going over four hours and the pitch clock literally fixed it overnight. We cut essentially just under 30 minutes off the length of these games and I don't really know anybody in the industry, other than perhaps a few pitchers, who felt like that recovery time issue maybe hurt them or whatever. But I mean everybody, from the players to executives, to people that have to be at every game, whether they're general managers, et cetera. People that work the games behind the scenes and the fans themselves are like I'm much more interested because this pace is better and then you're home earlier, you have your fun, but it doesn't just get unnecessarily dragged out.

David Hartley: 9:48

Bill, you mentioned the 70s, 80s kind of the game in that era and when I think back to those days, really it didn't seem like there was much competition for baseball. So it was like in the summer that was all there was was baseball. And now, when I think about today, there's so many other things going on and you mentioned more short form type of entertainment. So when you think about that, has the competition, the competition changed? When you think about, as a business, who you're competing with, has that changed? Has that evolved over time? And is there one or two particular threats that, as you're assessing the landscape, that kind of come to the forefront of? These are the things we really have to deal with.

Bill DeWitt III: 10:27

Yeah, I would say that there's two ways to answer that. One is to say that baseball is a sport that is very different than the other sports, the other professional sports that we're all familiar with, and I personally believe that baseball needs to look closely at what they're doing well, but also understand baseball's unique difference from them. Just as, an example, hockey, which is a sport I love I'm a big Blues fan and I play hockey myself. Still, it's just different. It's a winter sport. There's this high pace, high energy at every moment. You know you're sort of edge of your seat entertainment. Basketball maybe not quite like that, but also the winter sport that has half as many games as baseball.

Bill DeWitt III: 11:13

Football, also different Appointment viewing. It's on Sunday. I mean they've expanded the schedule, but you know, basically it's that sort of national product that people follow teams outside of their market a lot more perhaps than the other sports which can be a little bit more regional, can be a little bit more regional, but also, mostly in the offseason, baseball is that slower-paced product in terms of, you know, any one game. There are obviously exciting points. The pressure builds usually during the game as the outcome moves towards. You know this unknown ninth-inning tension.

Bill DeWitt III: 11:46

But it's also the sport of the summer, you know, and it's every day almost. You know very few off-games, so you know, baseball becomes this generational, I think, thing because it's part of your life in the summer. And I think that's something that St Louisans know very well, particularly the older generations, when they were gathered around the radio or that might have been background with Harry Carey and Jack Buck as they cooked out in the summer evenings. And it's changed, but that's still essentially what baseball is. It's that soundtrack of the summer. And we're also the sport that has more inventory than any other sport 81 home games and we have a ton of capacity in these stadiums and as a result, the pricing is different. Of course, those green seats behind home plate at Busch Stadium are going to be pricey 200, 250, all-inclusive, high-end experience, best seats but then on 90% of our games you can find a ticket for less than $10.

Missy Kelly: 12:48

Really.

Bill DeWitt III: 12:48

And that's just what. You cannot say that about the other sports, no-transcript. So the second half of the question I'm going to talk about, you know competing with something else, and that is, and this is, what all sports are competing with now too. 20 years ago there was no such thing as a cell phone in everybody's pocket, sort of the early days of cell phones, and our kids didn't really have them. Now kids are spending what? Two, three hours a day on a device, and that time is coming from something, it's getting pulled from something. It could be homework, it could be boredom.

Bill DeWitt III: 13:53

I mean, maybe it's filling in those boredom moments, of course, and it's to some degree sports or it's viewership. And so every you know, mainstream TV obviously pulls from, and that's why when you see ratings for big things that have been around forever, like the Oscars or the World Series or pick any sort of entertainment property that's been going on a long time, and you'll see ratings in decline over time because of this fact that there's so much other content, particularly short form social media content, that people gravitate to and it's pulling a little bit from traditional TV, and so we all have to be worried about that competition. Because what is that that is a multifaceted, multi-issue type of competition and it's sort of designed to, you know, basically, let's be honest hack people's brains to feed them what they want to see in this feedback loop. That can be quite addicting and and I'm not criticizing it inherently, because, you know, I scroll Instagram when I'm bored too, so, but I have a page, you know.

Bill DeWitt III: 14:57

But so we're all kind of dealing with this new reality, and sports certainly needs to, and so what we do is is try to like rather than fight it. You kind of join it, and so we have all sorts of content that we make sure is online and accessible to people. Mlb TV is a great product where people can get all the outer market games. We have an app that allows the stats to be right there, and so we want to be embracing it to the extent we can, and obviously we have an important social media presence that helps us articulate our messaging, but also understanding the reality of the fact that it does pull in its competitive force to all sports properties.

Missy Kelly: 15:35

Okay. So thinking about, you know, a night at the ballpark and when I think about when I was a kid I went to ballgames as a kid some of my best memories and I think about that experience versus now and I feel like the biggest difference is not really on the field as much as it is in the concourse. You know there have been changes to the game. You know the scoreboard and the digital signs and the. You know they're flashier, they're easier to read. You can get any information you want. You know in the moment you want it.

Missy Kelly: 16:04

But I think about the food and retail options and how much that has evolved over time. I mean you could have like an entire shopping and dining experience and every once in a while, be looking up at a monitor and watching the game and never go to your seat or go for a few innings and then go to the. You know the bar area and the concourse and it's a really cool experience. My question is around why has the fan experience evolved in this way? Is it about competing with things outside of baseball or is this just something customers demanded?

Bill DeWitt III: 16:39

I think it's a little bit of both. You know, customer preferences have evolved over the years and we know that. You know the hardcore baseball fan who's bringing a scorecard to the game and scoring the game is different than the fan that might be a young person who their parents are taking to a game, you know, for the first time or and so, or somebody who's coming in from out of town which is something that we really try to cater to who's experiencing everything that st louis has to offer, whether it's the arch, uh, the city museum, union station. Do a cardinals game, maybe they go out to the Magic House, I mean, you name it. You can just go on and on.

Bill DeWitt III: 17:15

There's so many great things you can do on a weekend here and we're still the big city for a giant swath of people about 20 million people that are in that 300-mile range perimeter and they travel in.

Bill DeWitt III: 17:27

But I think you really want to be able to offer different things to different people. I mean, that's just sort of what it comes down to, while also keeping an eye on tradition and not trying to so change the experience that a traditionalist won't recognize it, you know. And so I think we feel like we try to balance that pretty well. You know we still have the organ as part of our entertainment, but then you know, a player may have a hip hop song for his walk up song, so but these different bar areas and all inclusive areas in particular, st Louisans love all inclusive, where you're paying one price for all the food and beverage you can drink or eat and obviously your ticket, and so we have multiple categories of that type of product. We find that, you know, st Louisans have a particular way of experiencing Cardinals baseball, a particular pattern and a particular mix of customers and what they want. We try to offer something for everybody in that regard.

Missy Kelly: 18:17

Yes, I remember what I had bringing my two young kids down and one of my children loved baseball and, you know, was kind of obsessed with it and the other one was like I don't really want to go. But when we got down there we did Build-A-Bear, we did the you know we got to do there's so many like interactive things that she could do and she loved it and it's one of you know, her great memories. So, one way, that diversity, you know, of options at the ballpark, I mean it can actually even help just with one family and getting everybody to feel like this is an experience for them, even if they aren't, you know, the diehard baseball player that their brother or sister is.

Bill DeWitt III: 18:57

Yeah, because I mean, if you think back to your first game or that first moment or memory that you have, it's probably not of what the Cardinals did on the field that day.

Bill DeWitt III: 19:06

You're right I mean we know that that's what ultimately moved the needle on a fan interest level, of course, and that's where we put most of our focus. But that experience and that tradition and that feeling of coming to the game with a parent or a grandparent or a friend is ultimately about the experience itself and what we do in the ballpark and sort of what it means and how there's this fabric of history with the game that you really do tap into when you come to a ballgame in St Louis.

David Hartley: 19:36

So we're visiting today with Bill DeWitt, president of the St Louis Cardinals. Bill, thank you for being here. So let's shift the conversation a little bit and talk about technology. When we think about the business world as being dramatically impacted by technology it has for the last couple of decades and it's going to be even more so going forward with AI and different things that are happening so when you think about technology and innovation as it relates to your business, I guess how do you view that? And when you think about that, I guess think from two lenses One is on the field, but then also off the field. How does that play into your thinking about strategy and where you want to take the business?

Bill DeWitt III: 20:14

Yeah, I would say, if we start on the baseball side of things, you know, just look at the performance enhancing technology that we use throughout our player development system, where we, you know, understand when a pitch happens or a hit happens, bat speed, spin of the ball, speed of the ball, angle of the bat when the player was swinging at it. I mean, every pitch has all this data associated with it. That's basically a technology backbone creating that. And then there's like performance enhancing technologies for training. You know that are a little bit different. They might be things that are wearable or attachable or video stuff, apps that help you replicate what an opposing pitcher's motion looks like with a video, and then the ball comes out of the screen but it looks like the actual pitcher is throwing it with the same spin that the pitcher throws it. I mean, these are the kind of batting machines that are there in Busch Stadium right now. So it's kind of endless on that, not to mention the whole analytics revolution behind the scenes with baseball that we've talked about earlier and how it sort of changed the game and how we evaluate the game Probably a whole other topic, but that's certainly a huge piece of what's happening on the baseball side.

Bill DeWitt III: 21:25

On the business side, I think it's probably something that's a little bit more customized, depending on the team. We were one of the first teams actually we were the second team to go to dynamic pricing. The Giants out in San Fran were the first probably no surprise out near Silicon Valley and we picked up on what they were learning. And now it's. You know there isn't a team that doesn't do it. So we were, we thought appropriately like second mover in that technology revolution and when that allows us to do is essentially just properly price our tickets. It's just a fact that you know a Friday night June game against the Cubs is going to be more attractive than a Tuesday night, early April against a team that you know might not be that exciting for our fans.

Bill DeWitt III: 22:14

And so the price should reflect that difference. And also we find that it can help us when we've got a really hot situation happening. Just a couple of years ago, pujols was chasing 700 and that helped us drive incremental value when those final few tickets were being sold, and likewise, on the other side of that coin, when things aren't going so well. You know, we're off to kind of a mediocre start this year. We're looking at dates to, you know, create more value and we'll drop the price so that we get the people here to still enjoy the games, and so it's become a nice tool for us to properly price our product. That's another example on the business side. One other is just ticket technology. If you think about it, it wasn't that long ago we all had physical tickets hand in, or they just looked and saw the date on the ticket and let you go through the turnstile. I still call it the turnstile count, even though it's the scan count. Right, but continuing to drive innovation in that your ticket now can be emailed to people before the game, or texted or whatever. That's a whole sea change in how we run the business. Allows us to understand our customers a little better. You know they get their ticket in the app, the ballpark app, and there's some other things we can do technology-wise in that. So it's kind of limitless.

Bill DeWitt III: 23:30

Our social media presence obviously we talked about that a little bit is a function of really being on top of the technology. What's the best way to get our message out there? We find that we're constantly chasing the algorithms a little bit, because when you try to advertise on these various social media platforms using the followers that you have, they won't even post it on their feeds. You got to pay for that right, so they're pretty devilish in terms of their ability to force you to try to figure out this algorithm so that you can reach fans with messaging but also create content that they're interested in. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do in social media is give people content so that it creates interest and engagement in the product.

Missy Kelly: 24:15

So I know that season ticket holders are a significant value from a revenue stream standpoint and I'm wondering, as all of this has evolved the technology, the way the game has changed has there been feedback from season ticket holders that have driven any decisions or that influence, kind of, where you head?

Bill DeWitt III: 24:36

For sure. I mean, we still view season tickets as the foundational aspect of our whole ticketing game plan and the Cardinals are proud to be a team that's able to draw $3 million a year. If we have decent teams, which not many clubs can say, that only a handful and not many regularly reach that milestone. So tribute to the amazing fan support that we have. But the foundation of that is the season ticket base, and it's gone up and down a little bit over the years depending on various factors, but we try to create a set of things that give the season ticket holders a feeling that because they're a season ticket holder, they have this set of benefits that they otherwise wouldn't get. First and foremost it's you know you have the right to buy playoff tickets, which that's sort of the promised land that's a big deal.

Bill DeWitt III: 25:24

Yeah, that's a big deal, and then instantly there's value there.

Bill DeWitt III: 25:27

They can flip them for even more on the secondary if that's what they want, or come to the dorm and enjoy it.

Bill DeWitt III: 25:32

This year, for the first time, we provided a discount on concessions, food and beverage and retail for season ticket holders reflects the feedback we got from them that that was their biggest complaint, if you will, of Cardinals baseball was the price of concessions and merch, and so being a season ticket holder gives you a discount to those things during the game.

Bill DeWitt III: 25:57

Now we have fan surveys that are now standard throughout the league and then we add to them that are online. We send them to people that have just been to a game. We do a lot of looking at that to see where their issues might be, from something as simple as oh, my seat in section 152 was kind of broken and go fix it, to concession pricing concerns. Or you know an issue with something that happened during the game that they, you know, had to talk to the usher about, or it didn't get solved, or a fan thing, or you know who knows, but you know. The other thing we get a lot of feedback on is just, you know how we should do our jobs, just kind of play right.

Bill DeWitt III: 26:41

everybody's a closet general manager of course we get a lot of um input, I'll say from, uh, our fans on various things too, which which is kind of funny. We try to keep a handle on the trends of what people are saying without looking at every last item.

Missy Kelly: 27:00

Sure. So let's talk about the link between creativity and innovation. So I heard Adam Wainwright on a podcast the other day being interviewed, and I follow your art that you've put out on social media and Instagram is where I usually see it and I know you studied history and architecture and I guess my question is that how does exercising the creative part of your brain help you in the business side of life, or does it?

Bill DeWitt III: 27:31

It definitely does help me. I think what it does is it just kind of gives me confidence to be visual in explaining things or in evaluating things that relate to our brand. I'll give you a couple examples. If I go around the concourse and I see some things during a game or even, you know, after a game or something, and I see something that just looked wrong or could be fixed or I have a question about it, I'll instantly take a picture, I'll make notes on the thing and I'll send it to our Stadium Ops folks. Or I might get even more detailed and throw it into a computer program and look at different paint colors of a suite that we're repainting and try those on, because I have this knowledge of some graphics programs that just do myself and not everyone in my position needs that skill, but I try to use it wherever I can.

Bill DeWitt III: 28:24

The other thing is you know things like our City Connect uniform, which we're about to debut, other uniform changes and thoughts that we've had over the years I've been directly involved in and that's been really fun because we have such a great logo, such a great classic uniform and tweaking that and thinking about how to best maximize that through the programs that MLB has with, such as City Connect, or the way we innovate every about five, 10 years on jerseys and things.

Bill DeWitt III: 28:59

So I do enjoy being able to visually communicate to people. We have this huge promotional products approach to our fan engagement, whether that's bobbleheads or t-shirts or hats, and the team knows to run stuff by me on occasion to just get my take on how something looks or how we might make it more interesting visually. So there's a lot of ways that I use that skill with my job. I don't think it's like a prerequisite, but I find it a fun way to be able to get involved in some things that are a little bit more fun being part of baseball and rolling up my sleeves and being part of that decision-making.

David Hartley: 29:31

So and you mentioned bobbleheads my Whitey Herzog bobblehead is right over there, so you can't see it, but yeah, that's a great way to create engagement. So, Bill, when we talk to a lot of business owners, they're focused on growth, trying to figure out how they can grow the business. So when you think about is that introducing new products? Is it entering new markets? So I'm sure it's the same for the Cardinals. When you think about legalized sports betting, TV rights, all those types of things. But when you think about growing revenue streams for the business, have the sources of revenue, have they changed significantly in the last couple of decades? And when you think about diversifying revenue streams, new revenue streams, what are the things that come to mind and what's the process you go through to sort through your potential options? You've done major construction projects. When you think about all these things that are out there, I guess, what's the process you go through and how do you make those choices?

Bill DeWitt III: 30:25

Yeah, I would say the overall revenue categories are largely the same as they've been for many, many years. You have your ticket revenue. You have your sponsorship revenue, corporate sales, where companies are affiliating with the Cardinals in various ways to reach our fans, and then you have the game day revenues of food and beverage and concessions. And then you have TV revenue and radio revenue. That is in a sort of period of disruption because local TV is with cord cutting and everything is a whole nother topic, but it's an area that is changing rapidly, that we're paying very close attention to. So those categories are largely the ones that you have to grow. There are perhaps some new ones that maybe weren't even in the categories at all of late. That you know we've started to exploit, like Ballpark Village is an example, something that didn't exist, you know, many years ago, so, and many clubs are pursuing that now. So I think it's about really understanding where the industry is headed, really keeping an eye on your competitors and seeing where they've been innovative, but also really understanding your market. For example, in St Louis, we know that we have this great fan base in a metro that's about 2.7 million, but that we also take advantage of this wonderful outer market which is part of that legacy territory that we all know was part of, you know, the Western most team for many years and we're not like surrounded by water or or mountains or anything. So we have that wonderful outer territory. So we've been thinking a lot about how do we reach that group to make sure that they consider the Cardinals when they're coming to town, or or or maybe the Cardinals spark an interest in coming to town. And that's where I think we're doing a lot of brainstorming and thinking about how technology can leverage our messaging and how it might help us solve our local media issues.

Bill DeWitt III: 32:22

But you know, I think the same basic revenue categories have always been there. There's just new versions of those categories. Sports betting is a good example of one where, you know, unfortunately, we're falling behind our competition in that respect. Most of our central division rivals have legalized sports betting in their states. Missouri hasn't yet gotten it done and it's a big sponsorship category for teams. I mean, it's definitely a competitive issue for the teams and it also creates fan engagement for a younger audience. So I've been supportive of the, where we share one actionable takeaway that other business leaders can count on.

Missy Kelly: 33:14

So if you had one piece of advice on how to innovate, what would it be?

Bill DeWitt III: 33:19

I would say that for us, you know you obviously have to look at technology as a ability to either communicate better with your customers, perform the service or product, or make the product better, more efficiently than it was in the past, or even act as something that you know helps the product, like on the field, for example we talked about. You know performance technology as well, so I think that has to be your first look, you know. The second for me, is a deep dive into an issue that you feel like has opportunity. I like to give a lot of my staff a lot of leeway and a lot of rope to do what they think is the right way to do things like interact with customers and service customers and reach out to them, market our product, have the stadium run smoothly. These are all the basic functions of our business.

Bill DeWitt III: 34:14

But I also think that when we're pushing on an area, when I'm pushing on an area that needs, perhaps we're lagging in that area against other teams and some of the metrics that we see for major baseball, there may be something in pattern that other teams are picking up in terms of what's working on the sales side of things.

Bill DeWitt III: 34:36

That that I have, that I should. And it's on me to really understand the issue deeply so that when I'm having those conversations with folks on my staff who are, by definition in the weeds on issues depending on category, that we're sort of having a conversation that reflects a give and take and not just a boss-subordinate relationship, if that makes sense. And that's what I find to be the most effective way of not just coming up with the right solution on how to grow and innovate, but also on how to get buy-in for executing on the plan. Because once you have a collaborative approach and everybody's sort of on the same page and there's give and take, when you arrive at what you want to do, you've arrived at it together and everybody's on the same page.

Missy Kelly: 35:22

So it starts with a deep dive and like fully understanding the issue so that you can lead that collaboration.

Bill DeWitt III: 35:35

Yeah, that's generally how I approach it, because I think the worst thing you can do probably is to think you know the answer to something and push people towards that when you haven't sort of done the work that it should be the foundation of reaching that conclusion, if that makes sense.

Missy Kelly: 35:49

Okay, well, that was an excellent answer and a very fascinating look at the business of baseball and how innovation and creativity all combine with technology and the history to make it such an amazing sport, and especially Cardinal Nation. We are so proud of it here in St Louis. So, bill, thank you so much for your time.

Bill DeWitt III: 36:10

Thank you, guys Enjoyed the conversation.

David Hartley: 36:13

Thank you for joining the but who's counting podcast. Make sure to never miss an episode by subscribing on Spotify or Apple podcasts and let us know what you think by rating and reviewing. Keep up with more Andrew CPAs and advisors insights by following us on social media through the handles in the show notes. We'll see you next time.