The Record - Issue 20: Spring 2021

80 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om F E ATUR E “We are excited to partner with Microsoft to virtually incorporate NBA fans into our season restart,” said Sara Zuckert, head of next gen telecast at the NBA. “This unique live game experience will allow fans to maintain a sense of community as they watch their favourite teams and players.” Behind the scenes, Microsoft is also helping organisations to reduce the time they take to build and deploy apps that can help to drive fan engagements. The Dynamics 365 Media & Entertainment Accelerator includes new media-specific data entities and attributes that extend the Common Data Models for fan and engagement scenarios, along with sample apps for tasks such as venue management, event registrations and the tracking of ticketing. These assets can then be used as a platform by Microsoft’s partners when developing their own apps. “The goal of the accelerator programme is to provide our partners with already constructed software code that gives them a template to build an app,” says Wahl. “We don’t need any credit for our role in those apps, but we help by giving our partners a big head start in their development. We’re able to engage our customers to find out their business needs, then identify partners who can fill those needs, while we can help with the engineering if needed. It’s supercharged our partner ecosystem.” As vaccines begin to be rolled out across the world, fans will eventually begin to return to live venues when it becomes safe to do so. However, the acceleration of development that the pan- demic has caused will continue to have implica- tions into the future. “A lot of these changes will be carried over after the pandemic, and we believe that the transfor- mation post-Covid is going to be built around the pillar of data,” says Cooper. “Engagement is about so much more than what we’ve tradition- ally defined a fan experience, and I think we’re just beginning to understand what those expe- riences are going to look like with technologies such as virtual reality being powered by AI or 5G. Covid has accelerated innovation, and we as consumers will soon see the benefits.” “The pendulum has swung all the way to the virtual side during the pandemic, and that’s led to investment in that area,” adds Wahl. “But as the pendulum swings back to a middle ground between live and virtual experiences, we’re not going to lose sight of the important lessons learned in the digital space. Physical venues will begin to make more and more use of digital tech- nology, and this effort will continue to be very important once we reopen again.” Digital platforms have provided fans with a way to support their teams from a distance