Stars recognized for innovative use of analytics and Artificial Intelligence

The Stars are leaning on technology throughout their organization, and this week they received an award for using AI to aid in strategy for ticket sales.

The Stars on Tuesday were one of eight teams to receive a “2024 Stanley Award” at the NHL Club Business Meetings in Boston. Dallas was honored in the category of “Strategy, Analytics, and Innovation” for its dynamic ticketing initiative. The plan was developed by the Ticket Sales, Business Strategy and Analytics & Ticket Operations departments. Director of Business Strategy and Analytics Benjamin Yoder explained in a video presentation to the award committee that the Stars were able to meld AI with their own analysis to create new ideas for selective pricing.

The work done between Yoder and Senior Analyst Jed Buchholz created a platform that was much better able to respond to changes in the market.

“Those two do a great job, and this is just one more example,” said Vice President of Ticket Sales and Services Daniel Venegas. “This is the first year the NHL has given this award, so that makes it even more impressive.”

Being on the cutting edge of analytics and AI is huge for the Stars, throughout the entire organization, and being able to take a significant amount of raw data and process it in a manner where it can become useful is advantageous for many departments.

“Those are the two guys in the lab every day doing all of the work. They take big buckets of information and distill it down into information we can use,” said Stars’ Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer Matt Bowman. “The more useful data we have, the better our decisions will be.”

Yoder explained the process: “What we came up with was using an Artificial Intelligence neural network to act as a third analyst on the team to come out with pricing recommendations - what inventory we had available, what the secondary market looked like, what the primary market looked like in terms of current prices and what recommendations we were getting from the other tools we were using- and putting all of that together to build that neural network that then recommended price changes.”

In doing so, the Stars are better able to find the right fit for tickets. That has resulted in a current sellout string of 68 games, and just as important, a higher rate of bodies in the building so tickets don’t go unused.

“What we were ultimately able to develop has made things five times faster on the implementation side of things,” Yoder said. “It’s been used in other industries before, but never been implemented, to our knowledge, in terms of sports. It’s something I think we’re going to see a lot of other teams pick up on.”

Bowman said the business analytics department helps in a myriad of ways.

“They also help us with television ratings and selling merchandise and food and beverage,” Bowman said. “They’re really good at looking at data and making it make sense.”

And by doing that, the Stars as an organization function better.

“At the beginning of my career no team had anything like that, and now I can’t imagine operating without them,” Bowman said. “They are our insight center. Whenever we have a problem, we take it to that group, they do their analysis, and they come up with a solution. They’ve been absolutely integral in everything we do.”

Additional 2024 Stanley Award recipients:

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on Twitter @MikeHeika.