Snowflake Summit 2025 | Erin Foxworthy, Snowflake & Kevin Longo, Fanatics

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Erin Foxworthy

Global Industry GTM Lead, Marketers & Advertisers

Snowflake

Kevin Longo

VP of Sales and Product Marketing

Fanatics

play_circle_outline Unlocking Success: Leveraging Passion-Driven Data in Marketing and Advertising with Fanatics Business Model

play_circle_outline Leveraging data for personalization and enhancing fan experience

play_circle_outline Building trust, relevance, and impact with data insights

play_circle_outline Collaboration between marketers and Fanatics for secure data sharing

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Erin Foxworthy, Snowflake & Kevin Longo, Fanatics

Erin Foxworthy

Global Industry GTM Lead, Marketers & Advertisers Snowflake

Kevin Longo

VP of Sales and Product Marketing Fanatics

In this Snowflake Summit 2025 conversation, Erin Foxworthy, global industry GTM lead, marketers and advertisers, at Snowflake, and Kevin Longo, VP of sales and product marketing at Fanatics Holdings, sit down with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and John Furrier to explore how sports fandom, data and AI are converging on the AI Data Cloud. The discussion spotlights Fanatics’ FanGraph platform and the company’s strategy for turning its vast fan database into personalized experiences and new revenue streams while preserving fan trust.

Longo details how FanGrap... Read more

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What kinds of data is Fanatics grappling with and can you tell us a little bit about their business model? add

What are the ways in which Fanatics is leveraging their partnership with Snowflake to enhance the fan experience through data in terms of speed and scale? add

What are some key considerations for marketers when it comes to building trust, relevance, and impact with their data, and how can AI and partnerships help in achieving these goals? add

What methods are marketers using to securely share data with platforms like Fanatics for better understanding consumers and improving measurement? add

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Erin Foxworthy, Snowflake & Kevin Longo, Fanatics

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Snowflake Summit 2025 here in San Francisco. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Alongside my co-host and analyst, Dave Vellante. We would like to welcome Erin Fox who are the global industry, go-to-market lead, marketers and advertisers at Snowflake. Welcome to the show Erin.

Erin Foxworthy

>> Thank you so much.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Kevin Longo, VP of Sales and Product Marketing at Fanatics. Thank you so much for coming on the show Kevin.

Kevin Longo

>> Thanks for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah, so we're very big sports fans here-

Kevin Longo

>> Let's go.

Rebecca Knight

>> At theCUBE. Let's go, right. But why don't you, and I'm sure we've all rubbed up against Fanatics maybe sometimes when we don't even know we are. But tell our viewers a little bit about your business model and the kinds of data that you are grappling with all the time?

Kevin Longo

>> Yeah, I mean, it's immense. So I think transparently, I've been at Fanatics for about five months and we are in the Fanatics advertising side of the business. I think what struck me when I got here is Fanatics as a company has built this incredible ecosystem that spans all of sports. But on the advertising side, we were enabling brands to partner across a small sliver of that. So what most people know us for is we own and operate over 900 e-com sites. That includes Fanatics.com, but also all the team and league shops that you would visit. And that's where we focused our sales motions in the past. But really as we were looking towards the future, we have an extensive events business. We run what's called Fanatics Fest. It's like the Comic Con of sports where people get to meet and it's like a dream come true. We also operate the fan events, WWE events across the year. So I think that's a really interesting business. Our collectibles business has been on fire since we acquired Tops in 2020. We have the fastest growing sports book in the country, and by virtue of our relationship with Lids, we also operate over a thousand stores, both at Lids and then in venues and stadiums across the country. And so as I'm thinking about my own excitement towards this company, it's like how do we do more cohesive things across this entire ecosystem? And then if you think about all the touch points that I just listed, you understand that we're sitting on a vast amount of data and that's where the partnership with Snowflake becomes so critical.

Rebecca Knight

>> So can you describe a little bit about the actual data that you have? I mean, obviously it's the people who are buying the T-shirts, it's the people who want the collectibles. But I mean that's really valuable stuff because those customers are almost cultish in their devotion to that team.

Kevin Longo

>> We actually say our data is more based on passions, wants more than needs, which I think is a really interesting through line, especially as advertisers are thinking about classic retail media emotions, which are data based on things that people need or buy. I'm sure transactions are part of our data stack, but really it's so much more because these are people saying, "These are the things that I care so much about. This signed jersey from Barry Bonds is so special to me." And so I think our data is really unique in that way, in that it's more grounded in passion. But to talk about the data itself, so you obviously have all the commerce sites, which is immense collectibles, but betting and gaming. Think about the daily habit of betting gaming and how often you would go in and place a bet. Five bets a day, 10 bets a day. And we're sort of developing an understanding of the fan through that. And so we're constantly thinking about all the different operating companies that sit at Fanatics and how they can enable us to have a more robust understanding of each and every fan.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Erin, what's happening in the world of marketing and advertising? I mean, AI must be completely changing the way that your customers are thinking about it?

Erin Foxworthy

>> Yeah. What's really exciting about what's happening with AI, with marketing is that marketers understand consumers really well. That's their job. They're understanding the behavior of marketers, a lot of times though data's been out of grasp for them. So you think about some of the data sets that Kevin's talking about, they're starting to actually be able to ask questions of data they've never had before. So if you think about I want to understand these consumer touch points, these fan data sets that I've never had access to, I can now put natural language on top and ask questions of really difficult data that I've absolutely never had a chance to do before. So a good example of that is we have a lot of different marketers bringing in social listening data data from various platforms and just asking questions of trends by what's happening across the social ecosystem, what's culturally relevant. Maybe I want to work with a partner like Fanatics to get really interesting data sets around fandoms. And so the AI is allowing them to actually access this data in ways they've never been able to before. And so I think we're having a lot of marketers sit back and think about what's the data been missing and how do I be really thoughtful about how I put that in a platform that allows me to access those new data sets.

Rebecca Knight

>> Fundamental to that is having good data-

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's right.

>> Good quality data. Are you seeing a number of customers that maybe weren't as focused on the quality of their data before coming to you saying, "Help, we got to get our data act together?" I could tell by your reaction, you're seeing a lot. We see it as well. People jump into AI and then say, "Uh-oh."

Erin Foxworthy

>> Don't have a data strategy.

>> I got bad data, I got bad AI.

Erin Foxworthy

>> Yeah, I mean, if you walk the show floor today, a majority of these partners that are actually here, are helping marketers. It's a massive use case, right? If you think about the touch points of marketing and the budgets the marketer has, these are large budgets in organizations, sometimes the largest budgets in the organization, and they need data. They need data to do their jobs and to be efficient and to harness the power of AI. So what's happening is they're needing to understand a platform that can handle the different types of data sets that we're talking about, unstructured video, audio assets, things that we've never had before as marketers to leverage in our campaigns. But we need that to be able to come in a platform that can unify that and allow us to bring the AI to the data. And that's really where a lot of marketers are transforming their businesses.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Kevin, I know you're relatively new in the role, but how are you using the partnership with Snowflake to help you get more out of your data in terms of speed and scale and tell our viewers what's making a meaningful difference for you?

Kevin Longo

>> Yeah, I mean, so if you know Fanatics as a company, our mission statement is we relentlessly enhance the fan experience. We're trying to do that everywhere we can. And as an ads business within that company, we're not spared from that remit that's truly core to what we're doing. And so a fan fest is a fun example where if a brand came to us and said, "We want to give you $5 million to show up and promote something," we would actually not say yes immediately. We would say, "How do you show up in such a way that makes the event better?" And we're pushing constantly in that direction. So as we think about the data, it's no different. It's like how can we leverage this immense data to actually enhance the fan experience? And we think we can do that in two main ways. The first is obviously relevance. We know a ton about the fan, we can deliver the right message at the right time, and we're very confident in that. I think the second is something new that we're trying to figure out. But again, the fan data is rooted in passion. And I just think marketers, when they develop that understanding, it's such a new creative canvas that if I know what you really care about, what you live and die by, I can deliver a message that you might receive even better. So I think again, it's all kind of rooting in how we can enhance the fan experience even as we think about advertising.

Rebecca Knight

>> So are you finding that Celtics fans are generally better looking and smarter and kinder people?

Kevin Longo

>> No comment.

Rebecca Knight

>> You not a Celtics fan?

Kevin Longo

>> No.

Erin Foxworthy

>> We're in pain right now.

Kevin Longo

>> I'm Dallas through and through, so I have a lifetime of pain.

Kevin Longo

>> Feel your pain. What does the data tell you about non-mainstream sports? We're seeing definitely the rise of women's sports. I mean, WNBA amazing. Other sports I read recently sailing was one of the most watched, most fanatic sports. What are you seeing in terms of alternative sports?

Kevin Longo

>> The rise of women's sports has been amazing. I mean, I was looking at the data last week, particularly around just women's sports sales. So we combined WNBA and WSL. Last year you had this amazing Caitlin Clark effect obviously, but even this year compared to last year, we're still up 35% in that category. If you look at it without the Caitlin Clark effect, you go back two years we're up about 650%. So it's just exploding onto the scene. And then I think to your point, there's been this emergence of all these new sports. I've watched beanbag toss on ESPN six or whatever. They make every shot. How can you even compete? And so we're constantly thinking about we are the brand that brought together all of the league sites and merchandising opportunities and everything, and we think there's an opportunity to do something like that in video where to your point now there's viewership everywhere and they're watching all sorts of different things. And we think we can be a long-term aggregator of that content.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Erin, as Kevin said, the data is really about people's passions and about what they love and what they're willing to live and die for. How is Snowflake helping to tap into those passion-driven audiences?

Erin Foxworthy

>> So we break down, when we talk to marketers, specifically the CMO, we talk about three different things. We talk about building trust, building relevance, and building impact. So one of the ways you start thinking about it's not only working with the way that the data comes in and how it's structured and making sure that it's unified in a way this can be leveraged across the entire company. It's also about making sure you have consent of that data. It's making sure that you're actually allowed to use the data and respecting the consumer's decision to opt in or opt out. So we've created a lot of partnerships. One of them, example the company called OneTrust who is a global consent management company. So before you start to think about downstream segmentation of all these amazing fans and touch points that you can start to be relevant, but you're making trust with that consumer now you start getting into where a lot of the AI is playing. This is the segmentation and analysis of I want to understand this passion point. I want meet my consumer and I want them to find their fan base. How can I leverage AI to think about this fan loves these specific types of sporting events or maybe ones they've never seen before. And predicting their behavior and understanding how you find those touch points in the ecosystem. Fanatics is a huge part of that. The fragmentation is not in sports, it's everywhere. And so how do we start to be able to match the audiences that a marketer has to the right partner that understands this type of data, which is Fanatics, and then measure back the impact of that. And so that's all done on Snowflake. And so that's what's been so amazing is that they're bringing together all this structured data, we're bringing together the marketer's data, and then we're marrying it, right? So they can find each other. And that's what gets so exciting between our partnership.

>> Well put. So I'm interested in that trust, relevance, impact and how that translates into how you guys are building trust, relevance, and impact and what the data shows on each of those. What are you measuring there-

Kevin Longo

>> Across trust?

>> Yeah, so I mean the fans obviously trust you. They go to your platform, it's authentic. So you're putting out relevant content and impact is what? Monetization, is it engagement?

Kevin Longo

>> Yeah, I mean advertiser outcomes really. So as we're building everything, we have trust at the center because we can never violate the trust of the fan. That would just be antithetical to everything that we're doing. We think we can increase relevance again by virtue of our understanding of the consumer. But then impact has been really interesting because I think again, that's going to be advertiser outcome and that's where we have to partner with Snowflake to ensure that we can drive those outcomes. How do we use our data in such a way that State Farm and Universal Studios and Disney can all independently find the outcome that they're looking for? And that's the impact that we're talking about.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Fanatics is leveraging Snowflake's AI capabilities to drive personalization. What does that look like behind the scenes?

Kevin Longo

>> It's a mess.

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's probably good for you to answer. It's a question for you.

Kevin Longo

>> No, it feels like you.

Erin Foxworthy

>> I think there was a couple things when you're thinking about the way that the data is structured and we walk in it through, if you think about the way that the data's collected and ingested and the types of formats that data comes in. So again, the amazing thing about Snowflake is that we work with all different types of data sets. You've heard that today coming in all kinds of with time, a lot of structured to unstructured now and semi-structured. As that data comes in, what's happening is that Kevin's team is having a platform that can unify that into a semantic layer that basically tells what that data represents across all the different types of data sets. And then what's happening is that they can take that semantic model and apply that to the AI models that come to it. And the great thing about Snowflake is that instead you taking that data, sending it out to a model where you don't necessarily know what's being used, the amazing thing that through our architectures that the models come to that data. So you can choose the best of breed algorithm and LLM to start to do things like how do I think about building segmentations that I can leverage for my marketers as an example. So it's very similar to the marketer side on what Kevin's doing within his own business. It's making sure you're segmenting relevant audiences and using the right models to make sure that that's the right segment, meeting that right need of that consumer.

Kevin Longo

>> You build a platform on top of this, you call it FanGraph, is that right? SocialGraph. We have ValueGraphs. What's FanGraph?

Kevin Longo

>> FanGraph is everything we know about the fan. So it's the amalgamation of all these different, if you think about the opcos going into it, so it's commerce, it's betting and gaming, it's collectibles. All of these are coming in with sort of different understandings, different expressions of fandom if you will. And so FanGraph is where we pull all that together. I was talking to somebody about this yesterday and I was thinking about the first road show that Google ever did. I don't know if you've ever read about that, but they were kind of quirky and they were poking people in the eye, but they landed this idea that I know what people need and that was all they needed and they won and they become the juggernaut that they are. We don't have that. But I'm so fascinated by the idea that we don't know what you need. We know what you want, we know what you aspire to, we know what drives you. And I think that that's a whole new value prop that we're still trying to figure out how we sort of untether and offer that up to advertisers.

Kevin Longo

>> So that's kind of a knowledge graph of the fan that you build.

Kevin Longo

>> Exactly.

Kevin Longo

>> And you guys feed it.

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's right. And that's where you're going to see what he's talking about is the predictive models. So we know them. How do we not start to think and predict behaviors? So if we know you like this sport, what's the next sport? What's the next fan? Who's the next up and coming fan that you're going to actually be passionate about? And they get to leverage those insights when a brand comes to them because they're going to know how to match that behavior to the brands. What's the brand's need? You are an insurance provider, you are a movie studio. What's the right type of sports fan engagement platform channel that you can predict that that's going to drive the most impact to your business? And that's the journey that they've been on is it's that once you landed the data, now it's all about how to use test and learn and predict leveraging AI.

>> Because historically you knew what did the fan do? Why did they do it?

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's right.

>> What are they going to do next? That's what you're-

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's exactly right.

>> Have to know.

Kevin Longo

>> And what do they do that we don't see? I think that's where the partnership becomes really key, because we can see every way that they're touching sports, but I can't see when they buy a Coca-Cola, if they like to go to the movies. There's so many other things. And so we partner with her team and really this ecosystem that they've built on top of Snowflake to create a more holistic understanding of the fan. I can see everything they're doing in sports. I have a really good knowledge of their demographic data, but I don't have those other components. And that's where we partner to build that.

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's an important point. So going back to the marketer side, the marketer has those same signals of what they have. They know their consumers. They need to send that data securely to Fanatics, that Fanatics can match the same data sets. We do that in a way where they don't actually have to share the underlying data set so they actually keep security and they could just match those data's between each other without saying, "This is Erin Foxworthy here," and you have Erin Foxworthy. You don't even have to know what's Erin Foxworthy, right? You can match that data without exposing it. And so that's how marketers are starting to collaborate the platforms like Fanatics securely because they want those signals to be able to understand the consumer and to drive better measurement, but they don't want to expose their consumers. And that goes back to trust.

Rebecca Knight

>> And do you end up being able to draw out higher level insights like Bill's fans like Coke and Patriot's fans like Pepsi and work from there?

Kevin Longo

>> It's really fun. We're trying to figure out how granular do you go before you get ridiculous, but yeah, Green Bay Packer fan, how do they behave different? What's their restaurant affinity? Beyond just what are the restaurants that are in Green Bay? So they're going to pop, but what kind of products are they into? And we are finding differentiation between fan groups. And so that's something we're exploring now, especially on the path to can, our aim when we get there in a couple of weeks is to really unveil insights just like that. Okay, you really want to understand your consumer. The NBA fan is different than the NFL fan, and you should think about them like this because those leagues their point in time, right? They go for four months, but that fan is year round. So understanding them better I think is really critical.

Erin Foxworthy

>> And what platform are they on linear? Are they on their mobile devices? It is really hard for a marketer to understand even at what point you hit them on what platform, and that's the insights that you guys actually sit on. Very few companies actually have that type of data.

>> Interesting. Last decade, there were a lot of attempts to do this with social media data, which it didn't give the complete picture and the tooling wasn't really good enough. Now that's one major input obviously is social data, but you've got so many other inputs to your model that you can munch.

Erin Foxworthy

>> That's right.

Kevin Longo

>> Yeah. And it's all based on, I mean, it's mostly based on transactions and the transaction is the new cookie. As we keep moving towards this cookie-less future, we feel really strong about our position going into that.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, a fantastic note to end on. Kevin, Erin, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. Really interesting conversation. Go Celtics.

Erin Foxworthy

>> Thanks for having us.

Kevin Longo

>> Go Celtics.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight, Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Snowflake Summit 2025. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.