It’s a short drive from Detroit to Ann Arbor on Interstate 96, where I attended the 7th annual Michigan Sport Business Conference this month. The University of Michigan students were first movers in organizing a daylong conference on campus on sports business, and there are now a number of student-run programs across the U.S., including at Stanford, Penn State and South Carolina, while North Carolina produced its inaugural event earlier this month.
In Ann Arbor, 27 undergraduate students spanning a range of majors worked 10 months on the event. Many of the students are children of sports business executives and I appreciate how this day brings families together in almost a celebration of the business. Because of the high number of Michigan alums working in sports, this conference has a strong agenda. It’s a great day of idea sharing, learning and networking for the more than 500 students on site. Here’s a few things I picked up from my day on campus.
A few years ago at the conference, esports was discussed in a breakout session. This year, it was the featured kickoff session, as Activision Blizzard’s Bobby Kotick joined New York Excelsior owner/Chairman Jeff Wilpon to talk about the promise and potential of the Overwatch League.
Kotick is a tour de force and it’s easy to see why the Harvard Business Review recently listed him among the 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World for 2018 — he’s that commanding and effective as an evangelist for the sport. His swagger is evident when he declared that his property represents the future of sports and the live event experience. In his conversation with Allen & Co.’s Michael Melnitzky, he offered a powerful statement about the inaugural year of his Overwatch League, which has now grown from 12 to 20 franchises. “We had 160 million viewable hours. We have 45 million people in the spectator audience. We are just getting started,” he said.
To demonstrate the everyday accessibility of esports, the corporate executive Kotick called up event emcee and former NFL player Dhani Jones (6-foot-1, 240 pounds) to stand next to him, the size and shape difference noticeable. “Look at Dhani. Now, look at me. There are 3,000 guys like him who can play NFL football. There are 100,000 guys like me who can play esports.” He stressed the connective tissue of the gaming culture (“It’s a very, very high level of engagement and commitment”), the appealing demos (“Esports fans are the hardest-to-reach market for advertisers”) and the powerful platforms of their partners (“If you think about Twitch as a network, it’s two times the size of ESPN”).
He said his Overwatch League allows traditional sports investors like the Wilpons and Krafts to flex their entrepreneurial muscles, which are often constricted in their traditional league models. Wilpon agreed and showed the confidence in Kotick by saying, “We bet on Bobby and his team.” He went on to add, “It’s about being entrepreneurial and about being digitally focused. I was surprised how quickly the fan base got behind our team and the following.”
Kotick stressed his company’s “ruthless prioritization, maniacal focus and complete alignment to build value for partners.” It’s obvious he embodies those values. Global domination as the biggest sports league is his goal, and while clearly focused on the prize, he offered one caveat to future success: “Managing the 20 most successful entrepreneurs in sports is really hard to do.”
NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith was in midseason form in telling students about the relationship between unions and management, and he didn’t pull any punches. “There has to be a healthy antagonism between management and labor,” he said. “Because they want things we don’t want.” At one time he said, “I represent the players and Roger [Goodell] represents the bad people.” When I asked, “Do you really believe that?” Smith said, “Yes.” Describing his relationship approach with the league, he said, “I believe in a mix of humor with violent confrontation.”
I asked Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini if she would be interested in revisiting talks with ESPN about Barstool programming on the network under the new leadership of Jimmy Pitaro. “No,” she quickly said. … Overtime co-founder Zachary Weiner, 25 years old, describes his digital sports media company as a lifestyle play — which reminded me a bit of And1 in the 1990s. “We want to be, essentially, a streetwear brand.” Nardini said Overtime is clearly an acquisition target: “There are big established media companies who will want Zack [and what he’s building].” … I appreciated how casually Fred Wilpon assimilated with the students at the event. At one time, the 81-year-old Mets owner sat on the floor in a crowded breakout session, and I watched him later speak one-by-one to the exhibitors. Few owners demonstrate such humility as the gracious Wilpon, a 1958 Michigan alum.
Abraham Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
