Confidential. This presentation is provided for the recipient only and cannot be reproduced or shared without Fair Isaac Corporation's express consent.

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. 1

Carole-Ann MatignonVice President, Product ManagementFICO

The Science of SportsHow Football Scores with Decision Management

November, 2009

Carlos Serrano-MoralesVice President, Product DevelopmentFICO

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.2 © 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.2

Agenda

» Sports Problems are YOUR Problems

» ESPN and Ad Scheduling

» The NFL and Game Schedules

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.3 © 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.3

$7B

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.4

A Match Made in Heaven: Pro football and TV

» A little history…» In 1935, Bert Bell proposed

“reversed draft”—attendance doubled and revenues increased

» He introduced scheduling parity» He allowed the 1958 NFL

championship game to be broadcast

» Today, including agreements with CBS, NBC, ESPN, Fox and DirecTV, the NFL gets $7 billion a year

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.5 © 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.5

The Importance of Decision Management

“The NFL was catapulted to its current success

through smart management and marketing.”

Tailgating, Sacks, and Salary Caps How the NFL Became the Most Successful Sports League in History

by Mark Yost

Confidential. This presentation is provided for the recipient only and cannot be reproduced or shared without Fair Isaac Corporation's express consent.

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. 6

April 10, 2023

About ESPN

• Founded in 1979• Owned by Disney since 1996 (Disney also owns ABC)• Televise sports events, news, documentaries, and

related programming• Many live events• 6 domestic networks in over 90M US households, 32

international networks• Web site, magazine, radio, mobile, many other media

platforms

April 10, 2023

Advertising on ESPN Broadcast Networks

• A major source of ESPN revenue• Each network can air up to 150,000 advertisements annually• Companies put large investment into advertising, and manage that

investment carefully• Complex negotiations take place regarding advertiser budgets and

targeted demographics for their products, to yield a combination of:• Number & length of commercials to air• Mix of programming • Combination of calendar, day, time, and other parameters

• “34 ads in the 6PM SportsCenter, April 12 — June 25, M-TH”• AutoSlot comes in to schedule the commercials into programs

April 10, 2023

Business Problem• In 1999-2000, ESPN was experiencing rapid growth

• Thousands of contracts, tens of thousands of commercials– There was a backup of 3 or more months worth of orders to schedule– Many orders were negotiated and written without accurate view of inventory,

causing more overhead

• Multiple networks added in previous 5 years

• Recent networks had increased advertising opportunities

• Growth of internet & other cable outlets• ESPN offers unique challenges in TV industry, such as large portion of live

programming, and frequent schedule changes

April 10, 2023

Business Solution

AutoSlot

Developed in FICO™ Blaze Advisor®

April 10, 2023

Goal: An automated expert system to schedule commercials after they are purchased, based on the manual process

• Guiding principle: “Fair and Equal Rotation”, which is an industry standard– Best possible separation and distribution across all aspects of calendar:– Good rotation gives best mix of viewers– Manage inventory to preserve what can be sold

• Handle special advertising requests:– In-program sponsorship– Be single advertiser of a product– Buying time in designated programs, and rotating around that

• Manage restrictions:– Orders have dates, times, and other restrictions – Product type constraints: airing too many competitors in same program

• Provide explanations for anything that could not book

April 10, 2023

Application Structure (Part 1)

• Blaze Advisor application captured the expertise of ESPN’s commercial schedule coordinators

• Production in October 2000

• Runs as background process (Unix)

• Connects to transactional database (Oracle), which feeds on-air

• Java is used for Object Model, DB communication, email, reporting• Creating “virtual grid” to represent Program / Ad Inventory Calendar

• Leverages database procedures used by online system, reusing existing logic from manual process

April 10, 2023

Application Structure (Part 2)

• Not a traditional business-rules system, but rather an “expert system” that uses rules-based technology to solve the algorithm for scheduling• Rules aren’t “policy”, but navigate the scheduling process

• Challenge of rules is in their complexity, not volume, (roughly 100 rules)

• Heavy use of Pattern-Matching, Forward Chaining

• The ESPN Object Model is inherited into usage for ABC application; different Blaze Advisor program off of this model.

April 10, 2023

Development - Misc

• Team consisted of 1 Blaze Developer, 1 Manager / Tech Lead, 1-2 database programming developers, 1 full-time business expert

• In production in 10 months• Looking for other applications with integration with online

systems

April 10, 2023

Ongoing Maintenance

• Fundamental rules change very infrequently• Most changes are due to increased complexity and

sophistication of orders• Partially due to improved customer satisfaction• Cross-network selling (ESPN — ESPN2), Cross-platform selling

(.com, magazine)• Changes to fine-tune algorithm, from business• Structural changes — GUI, DB, Rules

• Separation of slotting algorithm from database, online, and procedural logic increases agility to changing marketplace

April 10, 2023

Business Benefits• Scheduling is 100% automatic; Sales can review and make adjustments

• Inventory picture is accurate in real-time, increasing opportunity, customer service, and revenue

• Rotation is applied consistently 100%

• Sales Operations can focus on 10 - 20% of cases that require extra attention

• Long-term focus could include advanced pricing models, and cross-platform planning

• Since product went live

• ESPNU, ESPN Deportes were launched

• ABC Family, 10 Disney-owned ABC Stations, ESPN International (Brazil, Mexico) now use AutoSlot

• In 2008 alone, scheduled over 650,000 commercials for ESPN Networks, 1.9 M for ABC Stations

April 10, 2023

Benefits of Blaze Advisorin Building AutoSlot

• The inferencing and pattern-matching capabilities

• Separation of complex relationships and database communication separated in Java allows Blaze Advisor to focus on the algorithm

• Managing all objects in memory: • Focus is less on “how did we get here?”, but “what is this logic doing?”

– “for each” loops– pattern definition “an eligible Program is any Program such that

availableSeconds > 30”

• Special rules: “if at least 2 Programs such that…”, “if every”• Handy in determining explanations

• Some rules are complex, but the rules-based technology manages them in a way where the focus is on their individual accuracy

April 10, 2023

What Made It Work?• Strong buy-in from management and staff, both from Ad Sales and IT —

• Believed in the solution, defined a clear objective• Full-time resource commitment from the business to provide expertise

and feedback• Great technical support from Application Development (interacting with

online system and database), as well as Infrastructure (UNIX, DB needs, etc)

• A strong object model to represent the business entities and manage relationships independent from the database.

• Focusing on the distinguishing features of Blaze Advisor

• Gradual production implementation — especially important as a “behind-the-scenes” process that automates something previously done manually.

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.19 © 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.19

The NFL and Game Schedules

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.20

Challenges

» 10 week manual process

» 32 teams—256 games

» 17-week schedule

» Tried to automate with sub-optimal results

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.21

Goal

» Automate schedule creation

» Better serve all parties» Teams» Fans» TV Network

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.22

Must-Have Constraints

» T.V. packages

» Stadium blocks

» Shared markets (NY & Bay area)

» Long road trips

» Prime-time appearances/spacing

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.23

Nice-to-Have Constraints

» Home/Away spacing (3/3, 2/6, 4/10)

» Soft stadium blocks

» MNF road games

» Divisional game spacing

» Early/late games

» Specific game positioning

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.24

Resulting Schedule

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.25

In the End…Touchdown?

» Xpress-MP can search through trillions of possible schedule options» Optimization penalizes solutions when constraints are violated » Identifying feasible and optimal solutions» In the shortest timeframe

» Optimal Planning Solutions provides out-of-the-box » Constraints for venue availability and date preference, home/away spacing,

opponent structure and spacing, travel limitations, shared market behavior, network/television appearances

» Constraints may be global, or limited to specific teams, matchups, parts of the season, etc.

» League-specific heuristics to solve in a reasonable amount of time

» NFL can now explore alternatives and see the opportunity cost» Set Cincinnati and Cleveland on Day 5» Or not!

» Optimal schedule for the year in question, and taking previous years in consideration

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.26

Solution Benefits

» Competitive fairness» Scheduling trends may have put a team at a disadvantage

» Objective view» Quality schedules increase in TV rights payments by the networks

» And as a result: greater satisfaction for everyone

“We work so much smarter, so much more efficiently”

Michael NorthNFL director of broadcast planning and scheduling

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.27

Scheduling Problem Scheduling Problem

Objective Function:All Solutions are Equal

Objective Function:Some Solutions are Better than Others

Culture:Need to Build Trust into New System

Mirror existing Processes

Culture:Looking to Improve Quality of

Resulting Schedule

Solution:Business Rules

Solution:Optimization

Decisioning Technology Adapted to the Problem

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.28 © 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. Confidential.28

To Learn More

Please join us for the next session in our FICO Webinar series:

5 Steps to Building your Pattern-based StrategiesNovember 18, 9AM and 12PM EST

To register or learn more, visit the Decision Management Community:

decisions.fico.com

Confidential. This presentation is provided for the recipient only and cannot be reproduced or shared without Fair Isaac Corporation's express consent.

© 2009 Fair Isaac Corporation. 29

THANK YOU

November, 2009

Carole-Ann MatignonContact # +1 703-532-6691CMatignon@fico.comTwitter.com/cmatignonEdmblog.com