This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01 .324)

Very happy to welcome Andrew McIntyre. He's the Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation at the Tennessee Titans. Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Andrew McIntyre (00:10 .918)

Sean, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Sean Callanan (00:13 .71)

Not a problem at all. It was good to have a seat, catch up with you in seat Nashville. I want to sort of dive into your career. As I always start, I always ask people how they got their start in the world of sports business. What about yourself? What was your first gig in the world of sports?

Andrew McIntyre (00:28 .464)

Yeah, I got the opportunity to join the Chicago Cubs back in 2011. Kind of a really interesting time for the Cubs. They had just been purchased by the Ricketts family two years previously, and they were looking at doing a major transformation of their front office. And so the Cubs had pulled in a management consulting organization to evaluate the different areas of the business and start to look at what might be

a good fit for them moving forward and also to actually like model what type of leader they were looking for. And so one of my good friends now was the target of what that role was going to look like. And so the management consulting firm then helped lead the recruiting process and evaluate different people out in the marketplace. But one of the things that stood out was actually someone from outside the sports organization. The Cubs are pretty adamant. They wanted someone with a different

view and a different experience so that they can apply those best practices from other industries to the Cubs and then leverage that to hopefully help them transform and become a better organization as a whole. The model, go ahead, Sean.

Sean Callanan (01:40 .974)

So there's a lot of people that do look at sport and say, do I get in? So what was your background prior to being recruited for that role?

Andrew McIntyre (01:53 .532)

Yeah, so I started my career in consulting. I'm gonna age myself a little bit, but I started at Anderson Consulting before it actually went through the name change to Accenture. Did that for several years and then family life made me get off the road a little bit. So I was working in a mid-sized financial services firm with multiple locations based out of Chicago as well as Carmel, Indiana. So my background was a little bit consulting, a little bit financial services.

leveraging those best practices. And then when the Cubs were looking for someone, they were looking for someone with a similar background. And so it was nice for me to come in, albeit, I don't know if I was fully prepared for the role, but they kind of also knew that going in and they had some really good people internally that had the business context and understood the industry of sports. And obviously my job was to learn as quickly as possible and then really help kind of drive the change that they needed to take them to the next level.

Sean Callanan (02:51 .768)

So that initial role at the Cubs, was effectively new and guess exciting, but there was that remit to, I guess, make some change and roll out some technology.

Andrew McIntyre (03:04 .551)

Yeah, so the Cubs had built out a multi-year roadmap and that roadmap included really driving towards being the best on the field and off the field. They had three major goals. One was the win in World Series for their fans because it was over a hundred years since they had last won. The second was to save Wrigley Field and the third was to be a great neighborhood champion and really support all of Chicago and all the neighborhoods that Wrigley was at. And so

My role was on the technology side was to help them with a key piece of that vision, which was to help them with their infrastructure needs, specifically of the saving Wrigley field, but also looking downstream at the spring training facility, which was a bit of a challenge at the time when I joined and then really what they were doing in the Dominican Republic. And so we had basically three major construction projects lined up.

and then additional ones got added along the way. it was building a training academy in the Dominican Republic. It was rebuilding a spring training or building a brand new spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona. Then five years of restoration of Wrigley Field. And then along the way, we kind of expanded that to be more of an entertainment district, too. And so I got to work on not just the infrastructure, but also all the systems and applications that were supporting our business. So it was was an amazing time to be there. And obviously,

very successful both on and off the field during my tenure.

Sean Callanan (04:34 .894)

Yeah, I mean, that's when we first met when you were first to the Cubs. And I remember some of the conversations between yourself and people like Steve Connolly at the Red Sox, when you're working at these historic old venues that weren't built for technology, it takes some ingenuity and some innovation and some problem solving to get some tech into some of those, into that old stadium.

Andrew McIntyre (04:59 .654)

Yeah, I mean the stories from Steve Conley, we became very quick friends when I first joined the league and just a great individual, but like him sharing his stories at Fenway. And then really for the Cubs, we were looking at Boston as kind of a blueprint of how do you look at doing major renovation