Sports Business Conversations

Consider for a moment, if you will, the humble stadium sign. Yes, those ubiquitous displays that vie for your attention at every stadium and arena you’ve ever been to.

I think most people in sports business have been guilty at one time or another of looking at those signs a little derisively. You know. “Spots and Dots”, as they saying goes. The things you add toward the end of a sponsorship proposal.

Well, disregard the no-longer h...

I think it’s fair to say that pain, and managing pain, is just part of a football players every day experience. It’s something a player just has to learn how to deal with. The entire culture of the sport kind of celebrates pain, right? “Play through the pain” “No pain no gain”. And my personal favorite: “Just Rub some dirt in it”.

But there’s a human toll to all that pain. We’ve all seen stories of former athletes laid low by the t...

So a little personality quirk about me: I love to drive. On a long road trip, I’ll turn off the radio and cruise in silence. It’s one of the few times I can really just let my mind just unspool.

This episode’s guest also loves to drive. In fact, Mike Rolih, the founder and CEO of GoRout, loves driving so much, he became a limo driver after his baseball playing career wound down. He would spend hours driving thinking about what his ...

On March 1, 2025, I had a chance to do a live interview with Jess Smith, President of the Golden State Valkyries, for the USF Sports Management Program.

In our conversation, Jess talks about the decision to join the Valkyries, building the team’s front office, how she’ll evaluate success in this first year of operation, and what’s left to do with a little more than 2 months before the first tip off in franchise history,

Special shou...

There’s a line from Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” that’s always stuck with me. It’s when the memory of Willy Loman’s successful older brother Ben is encouraging him to persevere when the going gets tough.

Ben says, "The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy. One must go in to fetch a diamond out."

This episode’s guest, Chris Pearlman, the CEO of Aggregate Sports? Well, suffice it to say he knows a thing or two abo...

In this episode of "Catching Up", we reconnect with Episode 8 guest Ashley Chalk, who left Chip Ganassi Racing to become the VP of Partnerships for the Tomorrow Golf League.

ABOUT THIS PODCAST

The Sports Business Conversations podcast is a production of ADC Partners, a sports marketing agency that specializes in creating, managing, and evaluating effective partnerships between brands and sports. All rights reserved.

YOUR HOST

Dave Al...

Was there ever a point where you thought you wanted to be a sports agent?

Look, most of us have. Call it the “Jerry Maguire” effect. The 1996 Tom Cruise movie was a first exposure to sports business for a lot of people. And it made the job seem pretty cool, right? Going to games with a lanyard around your neck that provides all kinds of access, rubbing elbows with athletes and owners, being down on the field, etc.

My guest, Mac Bar...

What a world it is when you can be considered past your prime at age 27. But that’s pro baseball for you. That talent pipeline is always filling up with new players who are looking to take a roster spot. Even veterans as talented as Bobby Bramhall, a promising lefty pitcher, who’d come back from Tommy John surgery and was pitching better than ever, wasn't safe.

But when the writing is on the wall, you can do one of 2 things: bury y...

People say a lot of interesting things on this podcast, but this quote from Mark McCullers, Principal of the McCullers Group, really caught my attention.

He said: "You have to make the building sweat".

Basically it means that if you’re thinking of building a sports facility, you have to make that barn work as hard as it possibly can for your organization. You have to squeeze every last drop of usage and revenue out of that thing.

Fe...

Let’s start by just stating the obvious. There’s a lot of people out there who want to work in sports.

My guest Scott Doyne of Doyne Services was one of those guys. And he pulled it off. Did all the things he needed to do: worked his tail off, got a job with Turner Sports to work on NASCAR and then the NBA, hooked into digital media when it was just starting to take off, and doing all the things that make working in sports pretty ...

Sports business moves pretty quickly. People change jobs, get involved with cool stuff, launch new companies. All kinds of stuff. So it makes sense, every so often, to catch up with a previous guest.

This time, we’re catching up with Episode 5 guest Charles Nieves, now of Georgia Tech Athletics.

Click here for our original episode (published on Dec 2021.)

ABOUT THIS PODCAST

The Sports Business Conversations podcast is a production of ...

I collected baseball cards as kid. I still remember the excitement of saving up that $1 and heading out the drugstore to get a fresh pack. Then carefully opening the wax paper, popping the worst piece of gum ever conceived into my mouth, and sorting through the trove of 15 cards and PRAYING that I’d get a player from the Boston Red Sox.

There was just something about having a picture of that player in your hand, and pouring over hi...

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably consider yourself to be something of a sports fan. But what degree of sports fan are you, really…? How badly do your favorite team’s losses really sting?

For example, does that 1 run loss on the 27th game of the baseball season hurt so much that it forces you to go on a two hour walk to decompress? Probably not.

But that’s what fandom is ...

I’ve always loved the expression “Man plans, god laughs”. It’s actually an old Yiddish proverb that speaks to how hard it is to execute a plan when so many unforeseen variables can come into play. Vaunted 21st century philosopher Mike Tyson has a more contemporary version : “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

I suspect no one knows more about carefully laid plans going awry than this episode’s guest, Learfield...

Sports business moves pretty quickly. People change jobs, get involved with cool stuff, launch new companies. All kinds of stuff. So it makes sense, every so often, to catch up with a previous guest.

This time, we’re catching up with Episode 19 guest, Jenn Todd of the Boston Celtics.

Click here for our original episode (published on Dec 2022.)

ABOUT THIS PODCAST

The Sports Business Conversations podcast is a production of ADC Partner...

I’ve got bad news for you. Turns out your TV is pretty dumb. Well, not the TV itself, really. But the broadcast that comes into it sure can be. In this age of personalized experiences and customization, a sports broadcast is more or less one size fits all. Here’s the game, there’s the couch, sit down, and watch.

It’s a situation that was just begging for someone to apply a little innovation and creativity. And that someone was Wim ...

The other day I was looking at all the digital photos and video I’ve stored over the years, and was a little overwhelmed. I’ll bet you know what I’m talking about, right? Things stored in different places. Lack of categorization. Frankly, it’s a total mess.

Now, imagine what that’d be like if you were doing it for hundreds of thousands of people...

But that’s what sports teams are dealing with right now. Think about all the photos, v...

The other day was movie night here at worldwide HQ, so I thought I’d check out “The Spoils”, Mike Nicoll’s monumental documentary about AAU basketball. I’d juat settled in when the film’s protagonist, Etop Udo-Ema, says the following about AAU hoops:

“It’s a street game. It’s really just one step ahead of the dope game.”

It’s kind of an astounding statement, right? Youth sports being compared to the drug trade? But that line that lan...