Santee, Semiao, Filippell, Kain and Warren closed out day one of the CAA World Congress of Sports TONY FLOREZ
Five of the six honorees in SBJ's '19 class of sports business Champions joined a panel discussion to close out the opening day of the CAA World Congress of Sports and shared some of lessons and insights they have gained during their career.
* Vikings COO Kevin Warren said he has based his entire career on being “uncomfortably comfortable.” That is an outlook that stems from a childhood accident that left Warren in a body cast for months after being hit by a car. Warren said you can get the most out of people when they are uncomfortable, but was quick to add that this does not mean being cruel. “When something goes haywire and you accomplish a goal,” he said, “you have a bond that lasts forever.”
* TeamWork President Buffy Filippell said the most difficult challenges early in her career were in just getting a job. She recalled calling up Korn Ferry co-Founder Dick Ferry’s office and saying she wanted to run the search giant’s sports practice. “I got a ding letter from the Cleveland office,” she said, “and called up and said, ‘If Mr. Ferry doesn’t want to hire me then I want to hear it from Mr. Ferry. Of course, I got the job.”
* NFL VP/Programming & Media Events Ron Semiao, who is credited with creating the X Games, recalled the drama around selling the concept of the event to ESPN. He likened it to the rise of rock and roll. Semiao: “Parents said, ‘This isn’t real music and it’s a fad and it’s never going to last.’ At ESPN, there were a lot of people who prided themselves on being sports traditionalists. One executive said ESPN was the New York Times and these sports were the National Enquirer. So trying to convince enough people that there was something here worth pursuing (with) these sports was probably the biggest challenge.”
* Populous Managing Dir for the Americas Earl Santee said the influence of data on live events took a while to take hold during a time of copycat venues. “When I started it was all about seats," he said. "They weren’t market driven, they just said how many seats another team had is what they wanted. The transition from the seated experience to just the experience, where it’s not selling seats but selling whatever else I have, that’s been 10 years in the making. What X team has versus Y team has is over. They had to get data and make good decisions and they had to, in some ways, take a gamble and risk their investment on what the market will bear out.”
* USGA Exec Committe member and former IMG co-CEO Bob Kain said, “Disappointment is a good lesson learned early.” He recalled spending two years pursuing teen tennis sensation Tracy Austin in the '70s, only to see her sign with a rival agent. He then signed both Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, who spent the next decade battling over the top spot in the sport. “That was the best thing that ever happened,” he said. “Take losses and turn them into wins.”
