The National Football League streamlined its stadium operations by introducing an AI-powered Game Ops Dashboard built with Microsoft. The system uses automated classification to categorize incidents like stadium access issues and technical faults, saving staff up to 12 hours weekly.
Staging a professional football game requires managing thousands of operational tasks behind the scenes, ranging from facility readiness and security to audio-visual systems and broadcast support. When technical issues arise on game day—such as a broken sideline microphone or a temporary camera outage—staff traditionally logged each incident by hand into an Excel spreadsheet. This manual method often led to inconsistent data entry, slowing down post-game reporting and limiting how well teams could learn from past incidents.
Building the Game Ops Dashboard with Power Platform
To modernize these workflows, the NFL partnered with Microsoft to build a unified reporting application called the Game Ops Dashboard, utilizing Power Apps and Copilot Studio. Operating from mobile phones or tablets, league staff select a specific matchup and log operational events as they happen on site. Instead of filling out lengthy forms, personnel simply type a short description of the problem, such as Mic not working on the sideline
or Endzone camera feed briefly unavailable during the first quarter,
according to deployment details from Microsoft’s customer records.
Once a note and timestamp are submitted, an integrated AI model in AI Builder automatically assigns a category, subcategory, and priority level. These automated predictions draw on domain-specific knowledge of stadium operations and historical incident data stored in Dataverse. At the same time, Power Automate pulls official league schedules and metadata via APIs, ensuring every logged incident ties directly to the correct venue, kickoff time, and teams.
The system quickly adapts to the rhythm of a football season. As the season went on, we found ourselves making fewer and fewer manual corrections,
said Quentin Autry, game operations associate at the NFL, in an account published by Technologyrecord. It was clear that the model was quickly learning and moving to near-perfect accuracy.
Efficiency Gains and Offseason Planning for NFL Staff
The shift away from scattered spreadsheets has produced measurable time savings for league personnel. An embedded conversational agent built in Copilot Studio allows staff to query Dataverse records directly, filtering notes by category or pulling up specific game logs.
“The platform has helped save the Game Ops team between eight-12 hours a week in data entry and report generation,” said Greg Horrocks, senior coordinator of game operations at the NFL. “Additionally, we look forward to the unrecognised efficiencies the platform will provide us as a year-by-year database. This will allow the Game Ops team to be more informed in making policy changes each offseason.”
Greg Horrocks, senior coordinator of game operations at the NFL
Consolidating game-day incidents into a single standardized view allows the league to export clean reports to Excel and tailor summaries for individual clubs or executive leadership. Rather than sorting through disparate notes, operations teams now possess a centralized historical record designed to inform future rule adjustments and logistical planning.
Expanding Artificial Intelligence Across Sidelines and Front Offices
The game operations dashboard forms part of a broader, multiyear strategic partnership expansion between the NFL and Microsoft announced on August 20, 2025. That agreement brought advanced AI tools deeper into coaching booths, scouting departments, and league headquarters in New York and Redmond, Washington, according to an announcement from Microsoft News.
Under the expanded initiative, all 32 clubs received upgrades to their Sideline Viewing Systems, incorporating more than 2,500 Microsoft Surface Copilot+ PCs. Coaches, players, and football staff use these devices to analyze formations and review penalties in real time using GitHub Copilot integration. Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay noted that the technology assists staff by breaking down complex data into digestible insights that can be quickly communicated to our players and help them realize their highest potential,
as detailed by the corporate announcement.
Gary Brantley, CIO of the NFL, emphasized the broader scope of the collaboration in league statements released in August 2025, noting that deploying artificial intelligence across business units aims to elevate the gameday experience for hundreds of millions of fans worldwide.
Продолжение темы
