The Fanatics generative AI hackathon

Introduction

Recognizing the transformative potential of generative AI, Fanatics Commerce, a global leader in licensed sports merchandise, organized a global generative AI–based hackathon. This initiative not only accelerated the adoption of cutting-edge AI technologies, but also fostered an agile, knowledge-sharing environment. With its tech-driven, multi-channel approach, Fanatics has revolutionized how fans purchase team sports apparel, offering the largest collection of sports merchandise online, on mobile, in flagship stores, at stadiums, and at major sporting events. The hackathon resulted in a surge of innovative solutions, promising to propel business outcomes and Fanatics to new heights of success.

The driving force: Elevating fan engagement and operational efficiency

Fanatics created this hackathon to explore how generative AI could revolutionize its operations and fan-engagement strategies. It wanted to use generative AI to streamline processes—such as on-demand product content generation—while adhering to league-specific guidelines and brand standards.

Moreover, Fanatics envisioned creating immersive and interactive fan experiences, including personalized product previews and other engaging features. By integrating AI-based solutions with its ecommerce platform, it aimed to enhance its ability to predict demand, forecast business trends, and ultimately improve fan engagement and operational efficiency.

Technological focus: Amazon Bedrock and RAG

To achieve the ambitious goals set for the hackathon, Fanatics focused on several advanced technologies, particularly Amazon Bedrock and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG).

RAG enhances the capabilities of large language models by integrating them with external data sources. The models can then retrieve relevant information from proprietary databases, ensuring more accurate and contextually relevant responses. For Fanatics, RAG was essential in providing precise and domain-specific information across various applications.

Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers a selection of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies. It provides the tools necessary to build and scale generative AI applications securely and efficiently. Fanatics used Bedrock Agents and Bedrock Knowledge Bases to rapidly develop and deploy innovative solutions during the hackathon. These components allowed teams to create powerful, scalable solutions.

The AWS collaboration: Harnessing expertise and cutting-edge technologies

The Fanatics team including MacKenzi Simpson, Software Engineer, Kshitiz Garg, Director Software Engineering, Thanigai Vellore, VP Software Engineering, and Sashanka Vishnuvajhala, VP Software Engineering turned to AWS as a trusted partner to help put together the Hackathon. With roughly a month and a half to plan the event, AWS provided invaluable support with training, enablement, and ideation.

Over the course of four immersion days, AWS service team experts rapidly upskilled the Fanatics team on Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock through intensive, 4–8 hour hands-on sessions. Immersion days are designed to launch knowledge of AWS services at an accelerated pace, and provide participants with practical, hands-on experience and best practices.

During the immersion days, AWS created temporary accounts for the Fanatics engineers and guided them through interactive learning exercises, helping them upskill quickly. This comprehensive training prepared teams for the upcoming hackathon, where they would deploy Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon OpenSearch vector database.

AWS assembled an array of 15 Solutions Architects (SAs) from across the US and India to facilitate the hackathon. The hackathon itself spanned three intense days of hacking for 128 talented hackers. During the event, 33 proof-of-concept (POC) projects were developed and four prizes were awarded. To ensure seamless collaboration, the Fanatics team (Mackenzi Simpson, Jess Beering, Sagar Sahal, and Kshitiz Garg) coordinated teams, scheduled workshops, and coordinated with AWS SAs, fostering open communication and real-time support during the build process. Additionally, AWS provided example POC git repositories, which served as valuable resources and code examples for the teams.

Ramana Thumu, chief technology officer at Fanatics, said “We are investing heavily in AI to elevate our Fan Experience and the broader tech ecosystem. We are grateful for AWS’s support during our recent AI hackathon. The team’s dedication over the past three days was crucial to our success, resulting in 33 innovative AI projects. The technical support, immersion days, and architectural guidance provided by solution experts allowed our engineers to push boundaries and explore new solutions. AWS’s commitment to Fanatics’ success has strengthened our long-term partnership, and we look forward to achieving more amazing things together.”

Simplifying use cases: A glimpse into the future

The hackathon focused on three broad areas that hold immense potential for Fanatics’ future growth and fan engagement.

• Be brilliant at the basics
  • Explore how generative AI can create content at scale, enhance efficiency and productivity through automation, and improve product offerings. Generate unique and engaging content tailored to different fan segments, automate analysis for security issues and incidents, detect mismatches in merchandise details, offer dynamic product pricing, and optimize influencer selection.
• Elevate fan experiences
  • Use generative AI to enable personalized shopping assistants, provide immersive and interactive experiences such as virtual try-ons and visual search engines, and revolutionize fan services by using intelligent chatbots with real-time accessibility features like sign language interpretation.
• Ensure profitability and free cash flow
  • Harness generative AI to manage product inventory more effectively by predicting demand, improve cash flow forecasting through data analysis, automate account receivables processes, and better monetize targeted marketing and promotions.

As VP of Software Engineering Thanigai Vellore noted, “Fanatics’ recent hackathon was a game-changer for democratizing generative AI across our entire organization. By focusing on empowering employees from all roles—not just technical teams—we’ve accelerated the adoption of these powerful AI tools into our daily workflows.”

Conclusion

The collaboration between Fanatics and AWS is empowering the home of digital sports fandom to innovate faster and introduce cutting-edge solutions to its brand, resulting in an enhanced customer experience. By using generative AI, Fanatics can assist customers more effectively, helping them create lasting connections with their favorite sports teams.

“The innovation, collaboration, and enthusiasm were unparalleled,” said VP of Software Engineering Sashanka Vishnuvajhala. “Our teams worked tirelessly for 72 hours to bring their ideas to life. Their dedication was evident in the creative videos and final projects, evaluated on business and tech impact, creativity, feasibility, and presentation.”

If you’re considering using generative AI to upscale your business, enhance efficiency, and improve customer delivery, check out our post on AWS Solution-Focused Immersion Days. Interested in hosting a hackathon with AWS? Reach out to AWS for more information.