Dan, thank you so much for joining me for this interview. I'm very excited about this. You and I have known each other for quite a few years, and really excited about walking through the journey of your career.
IDan: t's an honor to be here, and my favorite saying is getting together with friends and calling it work and you've been such a wonderful friend to me and so many. It's a joy to have this conversation together.
What was your first job moving you into the sports industry?
It's going back in time and actually my first job was here in Chicago with a publication Team Marketing Report, which prior to Sports Business Journal was probably the preeminent sports marketing publication that covered revenue generating strategies for sports teams. A lot of probably the gray-haired SEAT attendees would remember the days of getting the monthly Team Marketing Report and I was maybe three months out of school and I went to the baseball winter meetings and had just started a job with Team Marketing Report right out of school. There was a conversation amongst senior level marketers of is it a good idea to put your email address on your business card.
" Hard to believe we have come this far in marketing, especially on business cards. ( laugh)"
When you look back and you laugh, right? I came back and I told my boss, the publisher, I said, "Hey, I think we need to do a better job of reporting on questions that senior level marketers at teams and leagues all over the world have as it relates to any kind of electronic medium, because this world seems to be changing." He looked at me, and he was definitely that kind of classic publisher that you'd see in a Spider-Man movie or something, he'd be like, "All right kid. No one's ever going to do business through that video game machine, but I'll give you a half a page in the next issue and let's see what you got."
I started writing a column that was called Cyber Spotlight where I started to review teams' websites from a business and fan perspective, and I started interviewing owners about it. I did that for probably about a year and I ended up writing a book that was called Selling Sports on the Web as a guidebook for teams and leagues to monetize their digital assets. I was amazed Jerry Jones bought it, Commissioner Tagliabue, Commissioner Stern, and I was probably 23 years old, and I had a chance to really sit down with those folks and really learn the traditional side of sports marketing as well as digital.
62