“With all of this change, right now obviously there’s not going to be much of any travel. That’s a big part of what I do. I’m on the road a lot, whether it’s recruiting, checking in with clients, whether it’s meeting with teams. Pretty much we’re all going to be shut down right now for the foreseeable future.”
Allan Walsh, NHL agent, Octagon
“Our work is built around events and experiences, which tend to include a lot of human-to-human contact. When people are questioning whether there should be human-to-human contact, it creates a lot of consternation. It affects what we do. You always have contingencies, but when you’re talking about something as unpredictable as a pandemic, it’s not quite as foreseeable.”
Tyson Webber, president, GMR Marketing
“This is the reverse of the 2008-09 recession, when it wasn’t the leagues and teams that were sick, it was a lot of their partners. So in the same way as then you’ll see some skipping this year and going for extensions — a lot of teams did that. The trust in that relationship has to be shown and then you can get to a longer-term deal, rather than the short-term financial implications.”
Scott Rosner, academic director of Columbia University’s sports management program
“We [parent Horizon Media] are one of the largest buyers of sports content in the U.S. So we have a lot of media that we’ll have to shift around from sports, and there aren’t many options. You are talking about re-purposing huge, enormous sports media investments, which is going to wreak havoc on the broadcast ecosystem, because there’s not enough other programming that can deliver similar audiences of that size.”
Michael Neuman, managing partner at Scout Sports & Entertainment
“I don’t see a lot of brands buying anything new. This is the time to focus on the basics and hug your sponsors. … If you have a sponsor in the travel industry that’s hurting, how could you show them some love and maybe keep them as a sponsor for many more years?”
David Grant, president, sport and entertainment, MKTG
