Ryan Madayag has a had a long successful career in sports marketing, starting with the NFL's Seattle Seahawks in 2004 as the team's fan development manager, which fostered a Super Bowl run in 2006 and the berth of the Seattle Sounders FC in 2008. Madayag talks about the Seattle market, some of the aspects of what traditional media still means even in a tech-savvy city, and how to impact fan engagement enough to draw them into the stands. Madayag talks about some of the challenges of marketing multiple college sports compared to only two professional ones, and some of the factors that go into building one of the best home football advantages in newly-renovated Husky Stadium.
Michael Mink has been around football for his entire life and now considers himself blessed with an opportunity to found his own indoor football conference, the X-League. Mink has seen the challenges of running minor league football franchises in the past, with an experience in Yakima where the team was doing well, but the entire league was not and collapsed around him. Now in Florida, Mink feels he has a legitimate shot at making the X-League a success; that means ensuring that each team owner has the acumen to operate their franchise effectively for the sake of league health. Mink talks about some of the issues surrounding his motivation to get into coaching in general, including the guidance of his mother, as well as some of the other important lessons he’s picked up along the way. Twitter: @XLeagueFootball
Matt McGovern is running one of the top smaller promotions for unarmed combat sports with World Fighting Championships. McGovern covers not only the Las Vegas-Tahoe-Reno markets with his fights, but also into Louisiana with an eye on the Pacific Northwest. McGovern talks about some of the challenges he faces while running boxing and MMA promotions, as well as whether multiple major fight leagues can exist and stay on-par with the UFC promotions around the world. McGovern discusses his business acumen approach to the entire promotion game, which he considers lacking in some of the other fight promotions. Twitter: @WFCFights
Chuck Lamson brings over 30 years to his sports consulting business, trying to help potential owners understand exactly what they need to know about running a franchise. Not everyone heeds the advice, but Lamson talks about some of the easiest ways that owners avoid making revenue in sports business. Lamson talks about his time with the Tulsa Drillers, as well as how drawing people to a sports event is one of the hardest things in the world to do.
Long-time sports marketing legend David Hersh has formed a new company to change over how college athletics promotes and sells their teams. Hersh has formed the Viking Athletic Partnership with Portland State University, which he considers wholly different than the third party concept used by most major university athletic departments in terms of ticket sales. The VAP examines ways to use the entire sports revenue ecosystem; tickets, marketing, promotions, corporate sponsorship, etc., to build a better, more sound product to sell to the greater Portland area. Hersh discusses his background in running two versions of the Portland Beavers baseball franchise as well as his twenty-plus year career in the world of professional sports, and how he looks to extend those metrics to the college athletic landscape.
Chuck Johnson operates one of the most successful minor league brands in the Pacific Coast League. Johnson talks about some of the issues surrounding the 51s name as it has now been extended past two different ownership groups, as well as how the 51s deal with the struggling Las Vegas economy. Johnson discusses some of the ways that the 51s have to be creative at Cashman Stadium to draw crowds which is 10 miles from the Las Vegas Strip, as well as some of the possible future plans for the team to relocate to Summerlin, Nevada. Twitter: @51sGM
The Asian markets, especially a massive country such as China, get categorized in a macro sense in the matter of sports business. Rob Mills helps break down each corner of Asia; Shanghai, Bejing, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and Korea are all discussed with intimate detail. As are the countries of Qatar, Australia, and Russia. Mills talks about some of the issues going on with global sports, how the English Premier League has found some backlash to their international touring initiatives, and how American college sports have an untapped potential to expand globally with games set in new marketplaces throughout the world. Twitter: @Millsyrob
A name change can do a lot of things for a minor league baseball club, but the Akron double-A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians caused a social media explosion when they changed their team nickname Oct. 29 from the Aeros to the RubberDucks. Director of Ticket Sales Brian Flenner talks about the name change, the impact on the community, the internal staff secrecy about the nickname, and the media attention that followed. Twitter: @Flenner1970
Dennis Kalina fully admits that it was easier to garner large donation asks while at men’s basketball powerhouse Gonzaga University as associate athletic director of external relations than Kalina’s new challenge as senior associate athletic director at Binghamton. But Kalina says that he is embracing his new experience, not only as a component of the Bearcats’ senior management team, but also focus on spearheading the department’s fundraising, marketing and ticketing campaigns. Kalina talks about the dynamics of how the paradigm changed toward marketing and ticket selling for college campuses, as well as how his experiences have helped guide him along a path toward becoming a candidate for an athletic director position down the road. Twitter: @DennisKalina
The Mountain West Conference holds one of the hottest tickets in Las Vegas during conference tournament time for men’s basketball. Dan Butterly oversees the Mountain West’s annual conference tournament, and talks about how he helps sell sponsorship inventory as well as achieves activation for corporate clients. Butterly discusses how the Mountain West engages and educates fans during a rabid, sell-out situation for each game, as well as ensures that once teams lose, fans have a secondary ticket market to resell to fans interested in attending the remaining games on the schedule. Twitter: @DanButterly