Watch Tim Bezbatchenko, Crew President & General Manager of Columbus Crew, interview with Kitman Lab’s CEO Stephen Smith to discuss their partnership to advance its data-driven soccer club.
PARTNERSHIP INTERVIEW
Innovation Partnership with Columbus Crew
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Transcript
Tim Bezbatchenko 00:00
And it’s really been really great to see as, as, you know, we take different paths, and Kitman has continued to evolve in the last few years. And we were starting this project in Columbus with new ownership, really ambitious, in our sights to be at the top of the league consistently, and not only does it show up in the facilities, but it’s about the environment you create and what you’re doing with the athletes and, and the coaches. And so, through this project and we, we felt like it just made sense to work with Kitman in the performance space, which then led to where we are now. In our weekly meetings, we talked about an assessment for where we are as a team and where we are as a club. And that in that conversation, I’m not sure if it was Darcy or myself talked about what a modern football club looks like, and where this space is headed. And I think Darcy took that back. And they brainstormed if I recall, and maybe, then they reached out to then say, ‘hey, there might be something here we’re working with some clubs in Europe, you might have heard of them.’ Chelsea, Chelsea Football Club and, and then we started brainstorming. And from there, Stephen and Darcy came into town, and we had dinner and really connected on the vision of the two organizations and how they could potentially come together to do something great.
Stephen 01:28
When we came out it became really evident, really clear, or really clear, like very quickly that there was an incredible amount of alignment, not just between Tim and I, but our broader organization. So meeting Cory and Jamie and Isa and Mark, and even Dan, more recently, everybody was thinking the same everybody was saying the same things. That we want to be able to harness the data and information we’re collecting, we want to be able to do something with it. We don’t want to just store it. We don’t want to just visualize it. We want to actually understand whether the things that we’re doing is making the organization better or not. And for us, that was, like, the perfect, the perfect partnership because they’re the types of questions that we want to help and assist in, and I think the opportunity then to do this together with an organization that doesn’t want to accept what’s standard in the industry wants to do something different and wants to want to push the industry forward. It’s just. It’s incredibly exciting.
And it’s really been really great to see as, as, you know, we take different paths, and Kitman has continued to evolve in the last few years. And we were starting this project in Columbus with new ownership, really ambitious, in our sights to be at the top of the league consistently, and not only does it show up in the facilities, but it’s about the environment you create and what you’re doing with the athletes and, and the coaches. And so, through this project and we, we felt like it just made sense to work with Kitman in the performance space, which then led to where we are now. In our weekly meetings, we talked about an assessment for where we are as a team and where we are as a club. And that in that conversation, I’m not sure if it was Darcy or myself talked about what a modern football club looks like, and where this space is headed. And I think Darcy took that back. And they brainstormed if I recall, and maybe, then they reached out to then say, ‘hey, there might be something here we’re working with some clubs in Europe, you might have heard of them.’ Chelsea, Chelsea Football Club and, and then we started brainstorming. And from there, Stephen and Darcy came into town, and we had dinner and really connected on the vision of the two organizations and how they could potentially come together to do something great.
Stephen 01:28
When we came out it became really evident, really clear, or really clear, like very quickly that there was an incredible amount of alignment, not just between Tim and I, but our broader organization. So meeting Cory and Jamie and Isa and Mark, and even Dan, more recently, everybody was thinking the same everybody was saying the same things. That we want to be able to harness the data and information we’re collecting, we want to be able to do something with it. We don’t want to just store it. We don’t want to just visualize it. We want to actually understand whether the things that we’re doing is making the organization better or not. And for us, that was, like, the perfect, the perfect partnership because they’re the types of questions that we want to help and assist in, and I think the opportunity then to do this together with an organization that doesn’t want to accept what’s standard in the industry wants to do something different and wants to want to push the industry forward. It’s just. It’s incredibly exciting.
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