Welcome back from the holiday weekend, and hello, December. Absolutely wild that we’re in the closing stretch of 2026. Let’s finish strong and dive back into sports tech. — Ethan Joyce
In today’s edition of Power Up:
- NHL, NHLPA team with SAP, ESPN for Hockey Innovation Competition
- Cowboys, Legends Global use Exo Checkout to boost AT&T Stadium experience
- How Momento is helping fans create new memories -- and mementos
NHL, NHLPA team with SAP, ESPN for Hockey Innovation Competition
The NHL and NHLPA are collaborating with SAP and ESPN’s “Take Back Sports” initiative for the second installment of the Industry Growth Fund’s Hockey Innovation Competition. The competition, which is presented by SAP and developed through the NHL and NHLPA’s Industry Growth Fund, is aimed at encouraging college students to generate ideas for the future of hockey. This year’s edition invited undergraduate and graduate students from the state of Florida. Finalists of the competition will present pitches to a panel of judges at ESPN Wide World of Sports in January (NHL).
Cowboys, Legends Global use Exo Checkout to boost AT&T Stadium experience
Don Doolin is excited for Thanksgiving. And when we talked late last month, our conversation didn’t even approach the topic of favorite holiday food on the family table (mine is a squash casserole passed down through my wife’s family, if you are curious).
Doolin, senior director/merchandise, stadiums and arenas in the central region for Legends Global, is looking forward to Thursday’s Chiefs-Cowboys 1:30pm ET matchup as the final test for the shopping experience that debuted this year at AT&T Stadium.
The venue has deployed about 70 Exo Checkout units in 17 locations, and the results have been dramatic for Cowboys’ game days. Previous transaction times, Doolin said, would take between 90 to 105 seconds. That’s now down to an average of 33 seconds. Average spend per transaction is up 11% year-over-year as well.
Exo Checkout has three appealing angles that have boosted the Cowboys’ processes around the arena. The aforementioned checkout boost, plus inventory management and anti-theft prevention, are all products of the RFID software and the smart tags that most merchandisers now use as an industry standard. Doolin, who has worked as a team operator for both the Texas Rangers and Cowboys, also said the inventory process now requires less time and fewer workers. “Inventory’s done in a snap, with one person versus five people,” he shared.
Exo’s adoption happened during late spring and early summer, a scaled deployment folded into a larger renovation effort around the venue that will cost approximately $300 million (improvements timed to finish ahead of AT&T Stadium’s hosting duties for the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup).
A relationship spanning the biggest games and venues
Exo’s first sports deployment with Legends was for an NFL store in the Forum Shops and Appian Way Shops at Caesars Palace, featuring two stations. From there, Legends has deployed them around multiple Super Bowls, Yankee Stadium, and the College Football Playoffs. Exo co-founder Rey Essex believes that AT&T Stadium is the largest deployment for the company so far.
Something else that’s improved the shopping process? The upgrade of AT&T Stadium’s point-of-sale provider, which shifted to Retailcloud. Exo and Retailcloud are frequent collaborators around RFID work, with the two companies first integrating in 2021 when Exo deployed in a sports venue for the first time with the Islanders.
Doolin joked that previously around the stadium, you could see lines that rivaled those in amusement parks. They were plenty long enough to deter fans from even waiting or even deter buying Cowboys gear after waiting for a while and ultimately giving up. This new shopping experience is a way for Legends and the Cowboys to add value for any visitor.
“Technology does nothing but evolve,” Doolin said. “So, if we don’t evolve with it and keep the fans engaged ... it’s not cheap to come to an NFL event, so in order to keep the fan wanting to come out, we need to provide them with something in that regard.”
November is always the biggest month of the season for the Cowboys’ business, Doolin added, and with three home games (including two that feature both sides of last year’s Super Bowl matchup), the challenge will build up toward the holiday.
“At least two out of the three games, I’m very, very anxious to see because we will be [at] capacity, and I believe that fans will be very, very still energetic for those two,” Doolin said. “And I’m anxious to see a true test we’ll go through with Exo ... but at the same time, I really want to push the system to the limit and see what it does.”
How Momento is helping fans create new memories -- and mementos
Austin Fletcher credits the inspiration for Momento -- an in-venue fan engagement startup he co-founded with his father, Tom Fletcher, in 2019 -- to a now decade-old meme.
The date was Oct. 17, 2015. The context was an improbable comeback victory by Michigan State over rival Michigan, with the Spartans capping off the win by returning a fumbled snap for a touchdown in the game’s final seconds. And the viral moment was the sea of shocked fan reactions, broadcast for all the world to see.
Fletcher, who eventually went to MSU, was not in attendance. But in 2019 he won a pitch competition in an entrepreneurship class with the concept that would become Momento, anchored by the use-case of that game: a service that delivers fans photos of themselves, from anywhere in a sports venue and pegged to thrilling moments within a game, that could be taken home as collectibles.
“[The idea was], how do you remember those types of moments? The moments you talk about for the rest of your lives,” Austin said.
Since then, Austin and Tom (whose decorated career includes co-founding renowned camera solutions provider Fletcher Sports and a spot in the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame), have developed the idea into a service offering that has attracted 11 pro sports teams, including six from the NFL (Bengals, Commanders, Falcons, Ravens, Patriots and Seahawks).
Momento in action
The name Momento is a double entendre, in one sense a nod to capturing and taking home moments within a game, and in another signaling sports fans’ desire for personal, tangible “mementos” of their experience at live events.
Here is how it works: First, Momento installs high-resolution cameras around sports venues so that their combined field of view covers every seat (a typical install can range from eight to 14 cameras). Then, the company enlists a camera operator to manually fire them directly after key moments in a game, typically producing seven to 10 pictures per moment.
These images are delivered to a web platform Momento white labels to its clients within three minutes. For fans, finding the image is as simple as entering their seat information and registration info (e.g., name, email) and then toggling by moment. Images are free to download, and teams have varying prices for ordering prints.
How each of Momento’s clients uses the company’s technology varies.
Sports Illustrated Tickets -- which, as a team sponsor, has facilitated relationships between Momento and seven of its team clients -- has enabled fans to create printed or digital magazine covers using their photos (including GIFs for digital ones). The Ravens, who host the Bengals (another Momento client) at M&T Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving night, create custom, digital ticket frames for each of their home games that fans can plug their photos into for downloading or printing.
“It’s a great offering for our fans and something that we thought that they would enjoy,” Ravens Senior Director/Digital Strategy and Innovation Dave Lang said. “I love seeing the pictures of a parent taking their child to their first Ravens game and then having photos from the biggest moments of the game with their child’s reaction. That was the big thing -- for people to share that and show other fans what a great experience they had at our stadium.”
Lang said improving the game-day fan experience is the top priority of his team’s use of Momento. But the Ravens have also seen a value-add in data acquisition -- garnering more than 12,300 photo downloads per game and open rates of nearly 60% on marketing emails -- and are pitching sponsors to attach to the offering.
The Ravens have also begun enlisting Momento to snap photos at timed intervals pregame and during breaks between quarters to study crowd flow, which Momento facilitates through an analytics dashboard.
Austin Fletcher said Momento’s annual pricing by venue can range between $50,000-$100,000, depending on the number of cameras installed, and that most of their deals are for multiple years. Money is coming in, and traction is picking up.
He added that expansion into international sports -- e.g., Premier League soccer -- and other types of entertainment events like concerts are targets for the company in the next year. Ultimately, he said, “our goal is to have this in every major sporting event.”
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