Your disconnected data is costing you speed on the field and in the stands

Today’s fast-paced sports industry is pulling sports and entertainment CIOs in several directions. In many organizations, operations rely on slow, disconnected systems that limit visibility and delay critical decisions for key personnel and business operations. Meanwhile, stadium operations must meet fans’ growing expectations for real-time awareness, which many venues simply have not been built to accommodate.

With the business of providing immersive, engaging, and monetizable fan experiences evolving rapidly, CIOs must have a shared technology playbook and a trusted partner to enable success. This report explores the partnership between Tepper Sports & Entertainment (TSE) and Innova Solutions. It illustrates how unified, cloud-native data foundations are modernizing football operations and unlocking personalized, intelligent fan experiences.

TSE swaps siloed playbooks for a unified game plan that aligns sports decisions, business goals, and fan expectations

Tepper Sports & Entertainment owns and operates the NFL’s Carolina Panthers and Major League Soccer’s Charlotte FC. Its responsibilities include managing all game-day, stadium, and fan engagement event operations at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. The organization oversees a complex environment where operations, business performance, and fan expectations intersect. The organization manages data across various systems, including commerce, business applications, security, and fan engagement.

HFS spent time with TSE at Innova Solutions’ The Spirit of Innovation: Digital Excellence in Action event inNovember 2025 to understand its journey, challenges, and how it leverages partners, people, and technology to empower sports and business executives and deliver a better experience for fans. This multi-year journey begins with overcoming fragmented data, adopting cloud solutions, and using emerging technologies to empower decision-making across teams, operations, and its commercial partnerships.

The rising pressure of fragmented data constraining decision-making was a catalyst for action

A few years ago, TSE began exploring opportunities to modernize and strengthen its technology landscape. At the time, scouting information, player analytics, medical data, and financial models were spread across various disconnected platforms, often offline or manually updated. This legacy approach had supported the organization for years, but it limited real-time insights and slowed decision-making. Recognizing the potential for greater efficiency and impact, TSE set out to create a more integrated, data-driven foundation for the future.

As fan expectations for immersive, mobile-first experiences continued to rise, TSE had a valuable opportunity to modernize its back-office and stadium systems to better meet those needs. Growing demand for seamless digital engagement highlighted the importance of strengthening connectivity and unifying venue technologies across navigation, concession, and crowd-flow management to drive greater operational efficiency, improved fan satisfaction, and new revenue potential. Exhibit 1 illustrates why this opportunity extends beyond TSE, underscoring the industry-wide momentum toward innovative, next-generation stadium experiences.

Exhibit 1: You can’t win today’s game with yesterday’s playbook

Source: HFS Research, 2026

Recognizing these opportunities, TSE made a call to double down on modernizing sports operations and reimagining stadium engagement by putting the fans and teams first. TSE’s strategy centers on real-time data access, high-speed connected infrastructure, and a scalable applications foundation ready to support future AI and experience-driven innovations. The goal is to transform how its technology investments are seen as best-in-league for fan and team experiences and outcomes.

Innova Solutions joined the huddle to modernize TSE’s fragmented systems into a unified, cloud-native operating backbone

TSE is engaging Innova Solutions as its trusted technology partner whose role is to collaborate on designing and delivering its transformation vision into practical, scalable solutions. Innova Solutions is working with football, soccer, and stadium teams to map decision workflows, uncover and remediate pain points, and identify where modern digital solutions can replace manual, inconsistent processes.

As in every sport, speed is essential. To deliver quickly and collaboratively, Innova Solutions applied its Accelerated Engineering Methodology, which combines design thinking, rapid prototyping, and short development cycles. This approach ensures that every capability considers how scouts, analysts, and executives use data and insights daily. Understanding today’s use and desired outcomes enables Innova Solutions to build future-ready systems that are cost-effective and create internal improvements and measurable gains in the fan experience.

To begin, Innova Solutions built a cloud-native foundation needed for long-term application and data modernization. Using Microsoft Azure, the team consolidated previously scattered data into a secure and scalable infrastructure, enabling the Carolina Panthers to fully migrate its football operations to the cloud. Automated data pipelines and Power BI dashboards introduced real-time visibility across performance, financial, and scouting information, while advanced analytics supported faster, more reliable decision-making. Following immediate success with the Panthers, this initiative is being extended to meet the needs of Charlotte FC, benefiting both the soccer club and its supporters.

With this foundation in place, TSE and Innova Solutions are embarking on a shared journey to rapidly deliver new capabilities, beginning with a redesigned scouting and drafting experience and extending into broader fan engagement innovation. This not only improves the product on the field but also allows fans to be engaged in new ways, creating opportunities for both engagement and monetization for the teams.

Unified data is transforming TSE’s scouting and draft-day decisions from manual guesswork to real-time insights and outcomes

Modernizing football operations began with reimagining how TSE could evaluate talent and make draft-day decisions. Scouting insights, medical evaluations, performance metrics, and financial considerations lived in separate tools. To address this, Innova Solutions built a unified, cloud-based scouting application that centralizes years of player performance data into a single, intelligent system.

The platform consolidates performance analytics, contract implications, and medical information into standardized player profiles, giving scouts and executives a shared view of every prospect. With football operations modernized, the next priority is helping deliver an industry-leading stadium experience.

Building a seamless, personalized fan journey through an intelligent, connected stadium

One of the biggest opportunities to elevate the fan experience emerges during live events. As fan expectations for immersive, personalized, and enjoyable moments continue to rise, stadiums have a tremendous chance to evolve and meet those ambitions. As technology is baked into sports, CIOs are uniquely positioned to reimagine how fans connect with the team, spark deeper passion, and enrich every moment they spend in the venue. Based on discussions with numerous organizations, Exhibit 2 outlines the four pillars that define a best-in-class fan experience.

Exhibit 2: The four pillars of the technology-enabled sports experience framework put the fan’s needs first and drive business results

Source: HFS Research, 2026

TSE and Innova Solutions embarked on what they call “Stadium X,” a shared vision to transform Bank of America Stadium into a connected, intelligent venue that adapts to fans in real-time for the Panthers, Charlotte FC, and all entertainment events hosted at the venue. The goal is to create a connected, personalized, real-time fan journey that begins before fans arrive, adapts throughout the event, and continues after they leave.

Stadium X demonstrates how to effectively combine the four pillars to shape a modern stadium experience.

Activate: Know your fan base using data

By understanding where fans congregate, how long they dwell, and where congestion forms, stadium operations can shift from reactive to proactive decision making, enabling better staffing decisions and more effective fan guidance through a unified mobile app, ultimately creating a better overall experience for venue guests.

Engage: Build deeper, interactive experiences for all fans

Stadium X uses real-time venue intelligence to reduce friction at the moments that matter most to fans, including navigation, wait times, and access to services. By detecting congestion as it forms and responding dynamically, TSE can improve wayfinding, surface better options, and help fans spend less time waiting and more time enjoying the event.

Expand: Attract new fans and markets through personalized connections

Stadium X is framed as a comprehensive fan lifecycle, including the entire experience from before fans arrive to after they leave, rather than being limited to the in-stadium moment. TSE described a vision to curate fan relationships across markets, including international audiences, and to eventually connect the venue experience to arrival, mobility, and surrounding destinations so fans remain engaged and motivated to return for future games and events.

Monetize: Maximize value without compromising a fan-first approach

TSE describes monetization as value creation grounded in engagement and experience rather than transactions. Through Stadium X, the organization plans to utilize fan insights to inform partner activation and commercial decisions across food and beverage, merchandise, and premium experience upgrades, making interactions more relevant and timely based on fan context and behavior.

The Bottom Line: Disconnected systems no longer meet the speed of the game or fans’ expectations. Following TSE’s example, it’s time for sports leaders to turn unified, cloud-native data into a strategic asset that powers the entire enterprise.

TSE reports it is getting sustainable results by partnering with Innova Solutions. Through its partnership, it is proving that organizations can move fastest by collaborating to replace legacy systems, data, and processes with a cloud-native backbone. Its new architecture strengthens decisions on the field while providing intelligent experiences in the stands.

Based on HFS’ engagement with TSE, the winning CIOs in sports will be those who are willing to go for it on fourth down and call a new play that unifies data, engages with a partner who shares in the wins, and turns every investment into a scoring opportunity for business leadership.