The ROAR Podcast

No new episode this week. We’re bringing back a conversation worth a second listen. Almost every sports real estate conversation starts from the same premise: the venue anchors the district, and the district delivers the return. Mike Carney builds from the opposite direction — and that inversion is why this episode keeps coming back up for us. Mike leads On Deck Partners, the minor league baseball...

Jackie Krutz started her career as a therapist. Today she leads development at Titletown, the Green Bay Packers’ 45-acre mixed-use district just west of Lambeau Field. In this episode, co-host Caroline Valvardi talks with Jackie about her unusual path. She left counseling psychology for real estate during the 2008 downturn and helped shape community at Playa Vista in Los Angeles. Then a cold email...

Rick Wade is Senior Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Outreach at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he leads the organization’s work connecting small businesses, athletes, and the broader business community to the sports economy. He grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina and a master’s in public policy from Harvard’s K...

We’re resurfacing one of our favorite conversations this week. Kirtan Mehta, Chief External Affairs Officer for the Washington Commanders, joined Caroline Valvardi for a clear-eyed look at one of the most complex real estate projects in American sports — and it’s only gotten more relevant as the RFK project moves forward. From Harvard Law to two U.S. Senate offices to an early stint at Robinhood,...

When the final whistle blew at World Cup matches this summer, fans weren't ready to go home. Where the stadium gave them a place to gather, they stayed. Where it didn't, the party moved elsewhere, sometimes miles away. Adam sits down with Lauren Adams, Global Director of Lifestyle Research at Gensler and lead author of  The Fandom Effect: Sports Urbanism 2026.  It's a three-part study from the Gen...

In 2007, a young high school math teacher in Ohio asked a simple question: why does the end of a basketball game reward teams for breaking the rules? His answer was to turn off the clock and play to a target score. It took a decade of cold outreach, rejection, and reinvention before TBT gave it a shot in a small Division II gym in Philadelphia. Since then, the Elam Ending has been used at the NBA...

When Pau Gasol went looking for someone to run his business in 2015, he wasn't looking for a sports insider. He wanted someone who could be Catalan in Barcelona, Spanish in Madrid, and American in the U.S., and who understood investing, startups, and leadership. He found that in Ferran Prieto, a Barcelona-born engineer whose career ran through the automotive industry, General Motors' corporate str...

Most sports real estate conversations start the same way: the venue anchors the district, and the district delivers the return. Mike Carney is building from the opposite direction. Mike is the head of On Deck Partners, the minor league baseball platform established inside Avenue Capital Group's sports fund, which came to market in December with its first two club acquisitions in Visalia and Montgo...

Steve Lefton has spent twenty-nine years at what he jokingly calls "the largest firm you've never heard of." Kimley-Horn is eleven thousand people across a hundred and sixty offices — engineers, planners, landscape architects and environmental scientists who handle nearly everything on a project except the architecture. As Executive Chair, and previously as president and CEO during a stretch in wh...

George Barrios walked away from a signed offer to run Univision in July 2020, called his former WWE co-CEO Michelle Wilson the next morning, and told her he'd rather build something with her instead. In his second appearance on The ROAR Podcast, he walks Adam Grossman through everything that decision produced: taking Bowlero public via SPAC at the peak of the frothiest IPO market in decades, retur...

Renee Washington's résumé reads like four careers stacked on top of each other — broadcaster, host, speaker, founder, and soon-to-be author. But the through line traces back to a two-year window at Lehigh in 2014, when she was coaching college soccer, finishing a master's in educational leadership, and deciding whether to return to professional soccer. The NWSL had just completed its first season....

Alex Heriard-Dubreuil didn't set out to work in sports. He trained as a civil engineer in Paris, joined Merrill Lynch in the late nineties to invest in real estate across Europe, and spent a decade in London watching an asset class transform from a passive, collect-the-rent business into an actively managed one. In 2008 he moved to the real estate arm of the Arnault family office — the family behi...

This week on ROAR we're re-running one of our favorite conversations of the season — our sit-down with Jason Wright. If you missed it the first time, it's essential listening on where women's sports, real estate, and revenue actually intersect. Most people still frame women's sports as a movement. Jason Wright runs a fund built on the opposite premise — that it's one of the most under-researched a...

When Thayer Lavielle set out to build a research practice around women as fans, athletes, and executives, the problem wasn't interpreting the data. It was that the data didn't exist. She describes searching for insight on women as insurance buyers and turning up a single study from 2003. Six years after launching The Collective in the wake of the U.S. women's national team's World Cup win, that ga...

We're revisiting one of the conversations from The ROAR Podcast that has held up best in the months since it aired — Caroline Valvardi's interview with  Everett Sands, Founder and CEO of Lendistry . Lendistry is a mission-driven capital deployer that partners with Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Visa, Walmart, and government agencies (including LA County during the wildfire recovery) to move capital into s...

For the first time, co-hosts Adam and Caroline record together — and they do it on location in Chicago at the WNBA All-Star Media & Innovation Summit, sitting courtside on Home Court, the new basketball facility at the Obama Presidential Center. It's a fitting backdrop: a purpose-built venue on a huge piece of developed land, capturing exactly where this show lives — the intersection of sports...

Seth Rubinroit talked his way into NBA Summer League media credentials before he was old enough to drive — becoming, by his own account, one of the first credentialed reporters under 18 to cover the event. That early hustle, and the lesson underneath it, has defined a career that runs from a scrappy USC basketball website to a leadership role in audio and digital strategy at NBCUniversal. In this ...

The Washington Commanders didn't just negotiate a stadium deal with a city — they needed a federal bill passed to get there. Kirtan Mehta, the team's Chief External Affairs Officer, joins Caroline Valvardi to unpack one of the most complex real estate projects in American sports. A Northwestern grad who took an unlikely route through Harvard Law, two U.S. Senate offices, and an early-stage Robinho...

We're taking the week of the 4th of July off from new episodes, but we didn't want to leave you without something to listen to. We're re-running one of our favorite conversations from the season — Adam Grossman's interview with Alex Teodosi, Vice President of Corporate, Community, and Strategic Partnerships for the Chicago Sky. New episodes return next week. This conversation covers the rapid grow...

Most people still frame women's sports as a movement. Jason Wright runs a fund built on the opposite premise — that it's one of the most under-researched and undervalued asset classes in sports. In this episode, Caroline and Adam trace Wright's path from seven years as an NFL running back, through a labor lockout that became his first lesson in sports business, to McKinsey, the President's chair o...

Most sports executives inherit a brand. Amina Bulman is building one from zero. As Chief Revenue Officer of Boston Legacy FC, Amina is launching a professional women's soccer club in a city that already lives and breathes its teams — with no history to lean on, a fan base that doesn't exist yet, and a permanent home still under construction. In this episode, Adam Grossman traces her unlikely path...

This week it's just the three of us. Brice, Adam, and Caroline step out from behind the guest chair for a wide-ranging conversation on the stories moving sports business right now — and the single idea tying them together: compounding effects. One small change is almost never just one change. We start with Major League Baseball's quiet race to beat 7 PM, and why moving first pitch earlier is far m...

Adam Grossman sits down with  George Barrios  — former Chief Financial & Strategy Officer and Co-President of WWE, co-founder of ISOS Capital, board member and investor in Global Sport Group, and author of the new book  Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt. George helped take WWE from a company worth less than a billion dollars to a valuation north of nine billion, architected its merger with U...

The conversation covers Everett Sands' career journey, Lendistry mission, partnerships in women's sports, Lendistry's role in capital deployment, connecting women's sports and community development, using data to evaluate partnerships, supporting small businesses in sports and entertainment districts, and leadership priorities. Key takeaways include mission-driven finance, access to capital, and i...

The conversation covers the rapid growth and evolution of the WNBA, the impact of this growth on the organization, the role and responsibilities of Alex Teodosi, strategic partnerships and community initiatives, changing conversations with brands, operational growth and evolution, the practice facility and business growth, adoption of data and analytics, and the use of AI-driven insights. The conv...