Baseball And AI Take Center Stage At Silicon Slopes Summit

(Chris Samuels | Salt Lake Tribune) From left: Entrata CEO Adam Edmunds, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Larry H. Steve Starks, CEO of Miller, talks about Utah's major league efforts at the Silicon Slopes Summit. Delta Center on Thursday. September 28, 2023

|: September 30, 2023, 13:56

What does baseball have to do with Utah's tech industry? So said many speakers at the Silicon Slopes Summit, a two-day technology conference that ended Thursday in Salt Lake City.

Sports have been a recurring theme at the summit, now in its eighth year, featuring a mix of old Utah pastimes and new, booming industries. It probably helped that the convention was held at the Delta Center, home of the Utah Jazz. Both the space and the team are now owned by Qualtrics co-founder Ryan Smith.

Several speakers said the technology has the potential to improve Utah's sports scene by providing two seemingly limitless economic opportunities.

For example, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall told the summit audience Thursday that bringing Major League Baseball to the city is a "home run."

"It's about sports," Steve Starks, CEO of the Larry H. Miller Company and former Mendenhall Jazz president, said of MLB's potential expansion. “It’s also economic development. It’s about building community, bringing this western area together.”

Salt Lake City is bidding to field its own MLB team, a campaign that began in May.

Mendenhall, Starks and Entrata CEO Adam Edmunds spent their half-hour session discussing why Salt Lake City is the right place for MLB expansion, and their themes echoed what the state has been saying about its tech sector: Utah is on the rise; another professional sports team will further expand and diversify the state's economy; it's good for business. An MLB team is a "natural evolution" in the fast-growing city, Mendenhall said.

Many summits also focused on the symbiotic relationship between technology and sports.

Sports are America's favorite pastime. Technology can bring them to a wider audience, ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said. According to Pitard, innovation in streaming services coupled with unique audience-focused content is the future of sports media.

(Bethany Baker | Salt Lake Tribune) Reed Hastings, founder and executive chairman of Netflix, offered some streaming advice to Ryan Smith, founder of Qualtrics and majority owner of the Utah Jazz. Streaming is just the beginning.

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Keynote address at the OCP Global Summit