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EFL · England

Bolton Wanderers built an AI-ready data foundation from scratch in four weeks

Arkero stood up the club's new data infrastructure, connected its core commercial systems and enabled full lifecycle marketing in five weeks — with every layer designed for AI from day one.

Starting from zero

Bolton wanted to modernise how it used supporter and commercial data, but the underlying infrastructure wasn't there yet.

There was no modern data warehouse to build on. Core data lived across systems including Ticketmaster and Jonas, and the club also needed to move off its existing marketing platform before the new season.

Rather than build a traditional data stack first and add AI later, Bolton and Arkero designed the new foundation to support both from day one.

From no warehouse to live activation in five weeks

Arkero designed and stood up Bolton's new data infrastructure from scratch.

Within four weeks, Ticketmaster data was flowing into the new warehouse. Customer.io and Shopify were connected, giving the club a unified foundation for ticketing, commerce and supporter engagement.

By week five, Bolton had launched full lifecycle marketing on the new stack and completed its migration away from the previous marketing platform ahead of the season.

The result: Bolton didn't just get a new data warehouse. It got a data foundation built from the outset for analytics, marketing automation and AI agents.

New data warehouse live in 4 weeks

Built from scratch, with no prior modern warehouse to inherit or migrate.

Ticketmaster data flowing automatically

Ticketing data moves directly into the warehouse, ready for reporting, activation and AI use cases.

AI-ready from day one

The same governed data foundation powering reporting and marketing also feeds Arkero's AI agents — avoiding a separate AI infrastructure project later.

Ticketing + commerce connected to marketing

Customer.io is connected to Ticketmaster and Shopify, giving marketing a joined-up view of supporter behaviour.

Lifecycle marketing live in week 5

Bolton launched lifecycle marketing across the supporter journey within five weeks of starting the project.

Legacy marketing platform retired before season start

The club completed its migration away from the previous platform in time for the new season.

One data foundation. Built for people and AI.

A traditional warehouse only knows what happened in the systems connected to it.

Bolton's intelligence layer goes further. It brings together structured data, documents, conversations and the club's own operating context so both employees and Arkero agents can work from the same understanding of the business.

Why speed matters

Most clubs don't need a multi-year data transformation before they can start using AI.

Bolton went from no modern warehouse to a live, connected data foundation in four weeks, with lifecycle marketing running on top of it a week later.

By designing the architecture for AI from the beginning, the club can now add new data sources and deploy AI use cases against the same foundation instead of rebuilding the stack for each project.

“Over the past three months, we have worked closely with Arkero to develop a clear AI strategy and a practical roadmap for delivering it. They have been instrumental in helping us establish the modern data infrastructure required to operate the club more effectively.”

David Ray

CEO, Bolton Wanderers

“We didn't want to simply roll out AI tools and hope people found ways to use them. Working with Arkero, we've focused on building the underlying intelligence layer that connects our data, systems and knowledge. That gives Bolton a foundation we can build on as AI becomes a bigger part of how the club operates.”

Andrew Bradford

IT & Systems Manager

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