Throughout the week, THE DAILY will present anecdotes from numerous industry execs remembering when they first started reading SBD and SBJ and the impact the publications have had.
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Condon calls SBJ a must-read because of its
accuracy and primary-source reporting |
Tom Condon, CAA Sports football agent
When SportsBusiness Journal launched, there wasn’t anything else like it. Before SBJ, information was either in the newspaper or it was a rumor. So when the SBJ came out, it was a must-read. It had breadth of scope, and exclusivity in sources and stories. I admire SBJ for its unique position in sports business. It identified sports as a business, created itself as an unequivocal repository of information about the business of sports and continues as a distinct market force of its own. I have been able to utilize SBJ clippings and other recognition in recruiting efforts or as a reference in establishing a profile in sports representation.
SBJ pioneered the emphasis on the universe of competitive sports as a profession in and of itself. It is fact-based. It is essential in assessing market forces affecting an individual sport and its athletes, agents and executives, as well as that sport’s functionality in the sports business universe. It's always been a must read for me for its accuracy, its primary-source reporting, and its own reputation for exclusivity in sources and stories. It is a resource that is dependable, is read by decision- and opinion-makers, and is stand-alone in its reputation for those reasons.
George Pyne, IMG Worldwide Sports & Entertainment President
It seems like I have been reading the SBJ and SBD forever. I can’t even remember when it did not exist. … I first read the SBD via fax. I read them on a regular basis and I think they serve the industry well.
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Stern says he used to print out every issue of SBD,
but he now reads each day on his iPad |
David Stern, NBA Commissioner
Early on, I remember [SBD founder] Jeffrey Pollack came to see me, and I said that [SBD] really would have a place in our industry because, like other industries that have other daily newsletters, sports could use one, too. I was encouraging to Jeffrey. I was rooting for SBJ. I knew that others had early demises. I very much appreciate it. Back in the early days of SBD, I printed it out. Now, I read it on my iPad. My understanding was that I was one of a limited minority that was reading SBD. I wasn’t sure SBJ was going to get traction. SBJ is in sound hands now. They have a number of awards and issues and the like, and have stepped up opportunities for interested sponsors to advertise in the publication.
In terms of news stories and coverage, I very much appreciate the dives on digital accumulation on what teams and leagues are doing and on sponsor activation. That is the kind of information we provide to teams, and I think SBJ tees up the categories on an ongoing basis. It gives me an understanding of what the other leagues are doing and that has been helpful.
Mark Steinberg, Excel Sports Management
I started reading the magazine before SBD, but I do read SBD every day, and that has been going on for years. Before, you’d just get the main daily, but now you get the Morning Buzz, you get The Daily, you get the afternoon wrap, you get the Global Daily. It’s evolved so much. The publications are a meaningful trade for us to have. They are great publications for us to have and know what the various sports are doing. I am a sports fan and an owner in a pretty robust business where we now represent the highest profile athletes in basketball, baseball and golf. And SBJ and SBD cross all sports and all issues in the business of those sports. They provide a cross-section of all the sports. You get insight into what the leagues are doing and thinking. For me, the most interesting part of the SBJ and the SBD is what the brands are doing. I like to see where the brands are spending their money. What they are doing with the NFL, what they are doing with NASCAR, what they are doing with the NBA. It might pique my interest to say, "Hey, this company may be an interesting fit for this golf event or this golfer or create a special event around these athletes and this brand."
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Welts expects each of his employees to familiarize
themselves with the content of SBD and SBJ |
Rick Welts, Warriors President & COO
From the beginning, when [SBD founder] Jeffrey Pollack wandered into my [NBA] office with this idea for an electronic, daily newsletter, I said "We’re in." It absolutely changed the reading habits of every person in the industry. I can’t start my morning without Morning Buzz. My "new employee" speech is -- when we add them to the SBD distribution list -- that the expectation here, and I would guess at every well-run sports organization in the country, is that you will have read and researched a few articles in SBD every day and read SBJ for more in-depth coverage. I don’t know how we did without the publications. They have come to be the road map for anyone who wants to be successful in the business. Now we have a whole generation of sports marketers who take it for granted, because they weren’t around before [SBJ and SBD] existed. The publications filled an absolute void that we didn’t know existed until we had them.
Rick Alessandri, Univision Communications Exec VP/Business Development
I first became aware of SportsBusiness Daily when Jeffrey Pollack and David Abrutyn told me about an idea they had for a product that would provide daily coverage for the industry. My first reaction was kind of like the way a lot of people thought about ESPN when it first launched: Does anyone really want that kind of 24-hour coverage? While I was vice president and general manager of SportsTicker in 1994, we were one of the first distribution partners for SBD and delivered the product over our wire service to customers worldwide. Our deal was done with Jeffrey, David Abrutyn and Abe Madkour. Outside of Sports Inc. magazine, which folded years earlier, SBD was the first of its kind to consolidate all the news on the business of sports in one easy read. Our customers loved the content and it became a daily staple of their sports lives.
I remained in sports with SportsTicker and ESPN until 2011 when I moved over to Univision Communications Inc. to lead a new business development group. While only some of my current activities are assisting our Univision Deportes team, I still subscribe to SBJ and read SBD daily.
Earl Santee, Populous senior principal
SBD was the first publication where the news was at the moment. It wasn’t old news, it happened that day or the day before. It was faxed to us. We printed it and we would pass it around the office to the market leaders and they could read stuff and know collectively what was going on in the sports business. We would have clients say, "Hey, did you read this in the SportsBusiness Daily?" That was really the beginning. When clients were responding to us about what was published about us or someone else in The Daily, that was it. That was when we knew it was going to really work. We relied on SBJ and SBD because of the content and information. Sometimes, it would confirm what we already knew. Sometimes, it was information we didn’t know. Sometimes, it was information we knew that wasn’t necessarily true. But it was information, so you’re looking for it.
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Sutton is among those who refer to SBJ as the
sports business bible |
Ben Sutton, IMG College President
The Daily is a little like your morning coffee -- you need it, you want it, and you feel a lot better once you've had it. It's no exaggeration to say The Daily and SBJ are an institution in sports -- absolutely vital for keeping up with every important aspect of this rapidly changing, multilayered business. My first recollection of SBJ was: Finally, our own sports business bible! How do we get an ISP story in here? At the time, I had assumed a credible, objective sports business publication would make it, for all the same reasons our team and I were in the business of sports -- it’s challenging, fascinating and, most of all, primed for growth. So two decades later, you could say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Scott Blackmun, USOC President
I started reading SBD in 2002, and have read SBJ since it started. It was great to have one place to go to that you could find out who was going where and saying what in the industry. It was a useful tool for us as we were selling. My initial thought was, "I’m surprised anyone could make a biz of this, but I’m glad they’re here." I wondered with SBJ, "Is anyone going to advertise in this magazine? Who?" It looked like a subscription-based model. You had to make it a magazine that people needed and SBJ managed to pull it off.
When I was at AEG, I loved the stuff SBJ did on facilities. We were trying to build facilities, and being able to understand the financial structure around how people were getting stadiums built was incredibly useful for me. You would read the story about the structure used for particular financing and you would know who to call. I used it as a reference tool. If someone did a deal in Dallas, you knew who to call. It was a networking tool.
