Tao of Sports Podcast

Before 2017, Jim Hayes never thought about who owned his Denver Broncos tickets. He always thought that he did. Since 2011, after being on a 75,000+ waiting list for 6 years prior, Hayes had been a Denver Broncos season ticket holder. But when he decided to resell his tickets through the official Ticketmaster exchange, he unwittingly had his information weaponized against him. Hayes' story goes be...

In her 20 years with the San Francisco Giants, Annemarie Hastings helped craft one of the largest client relations programs for a Major League Baseball team front office. Hastings discusses how the Giants approached season ticket holders, renewals, and high-level client retention as well as building a strong brand through their front-line ambassadors at the ballpark and through their call staff. H...

As the president of NACMA for 2017-18, Ayo Taylor-Dixon comes on the podcast to present the 2020 strategic plan for the marketing arm of college athletics administration. Taylor-Dixon discusses how the organization has taken a deep-dive into understand what its membership want, both at convention as attendees and as non-attending members in their athletic departments. Taylor-Dixon talks about the...

Rick Horrow has a media sports business legacy that spans over two decades, along with a sports consultancy firm which has amassed a portfolio of clients ranging from major leagues to individual sports stars. Horrow discusses his approach to the industry, interviewing well-known and unknown front office personalities, and working with inside information without divulging everything to the viewing...

John Barrows represents a new type of sales training with old school skills, focused on technology companies and building relationships through workflows. Barrows discusses the process of creating a dynamic relationship within the sales team, and initiating it into a formidable strategy. Twitter: @JohnMBarrows

Richard Harris is known as one of the top sales trainers in the country and has come on the podcast to take on the tactics and acumen applied to sports ticket sales. Harris goes through scenarios of how to engage with a prospect, as well as to transition the conversation into a buying experience. Harris refers to his thoughts on management and improving the sales pipeline for a sales team. Twitter...

The Vodafone Warriors may sit one of the rugby hotbeds of the world, but that doesn't mean that the National Rugby League team doesn't have to fight for attention, especially given that one of the top rugby squads internationally, The All-Blacks, is nearby. Glenn Critchley discusses the challenges for the Vodafone Warriors, which do not designate their brand with a city name, but instead a corpora...

Kenneth "Ziggy" Siegfried was on the podcast back in 2013 ( Ep. 15 ), as the Sr. Associate Athletic Director of Major Gifts for CSU Bakersfield. Now serving in the Athletic Director's chair, Siegfried gets to announce a move for the athletic department to the Big West Conference from the WAC. This is a long time coming for CSUB, as Siegfried explains, and helps bolster the expectations for the sch...

Tibor Shanto has honed his B2B sales training in Toronto over the last 25 years. Shanto discusses how he works with business development teams to get them focused on improving their pipelines from prospecting to actual closing. Shanto presents the argument that sometimes, the best sales people aren't your future managers. Twitter: @TiborShanto

Few NHL journeymen can claim to have an amazing second career like Kevin Westgarth, who won a Stanley Cup with the LA Kings and now transitioning to developing the game of hockey in China for the NHL with an eye on the 2022 Olympics. Westgarth talks about growing the game the right way in Asia along with how other countries are embracing the sport. Westgarth also talks about his role as an enforce...

Malcolm Bordelon represents a 20-year legacy with the San Jose Sharks (1993-2013) where the NHL franchise was one of the highest revenue drivers in all of professional hockey. Bordelon discusses his tenure with the club, which created waves in Silicon Valley and the tech industry, stemming from the birth of building naming rights to the secondary market. Bordelon chats about leaving the Sharks to...

Charlie Kaufman launched Ticket Talk on WLINY Radio in Brooklyn in 2017, and asked me to come on the show Nov. 9. We chatted about the secondary market, the issue of whether a closed market is about protecting the consumer or locking the consumer into a limited option system. You can listen to the other Ticket Talk episodes here , which are also video livestreamed.

Maury Brown has redefined the investigative sports business reporting game published in the New York Times, Boston Globe, CNN/Money and Forbes. Brown discusses the issues of breaking news compared to well-sourced reporting, as well as he develops his sources long-term. Brown chats about young people trying to break into the sports industry, as well as leading the Portland, Oregon effort to nab the...

Bobbi-Sue Doyle-Hazard has initiated a sports business podcast focused on the advancement of women in the industry, called Leveling The Playing Field . Doyle-Hazard discusses some of the issues underlying the sports industry in terms of gender equity, then starts a discussion on privilege and the #MeToo social media movement. Doyle-Hazard then discusses her battles with depression. Twitter:@BobbiS...

The international soccer community's interest in the Chinese Super League is growing and is bouyed by Wild East Football, the only English speaking website focused in China on the sport of soccer. Founding editor Cameron Wilson opens up the massive country of soccer-crazed fans, showcasing where the sport in within China and how far it can potentially go. Twitter: @CameronWEF

Should NCAA student athletes be paid for their performance? OSKR's Andy Schwarz thinks so, and provides his argument for why they are already being compensated, and why transparency in the overall marketplace for college sports could be a great thing. Schwarz discusses his thoughts on the economics of recruiting for various schools, as well as whether NCAA compliance would go away in a payment-res...

The Golden State Warriors have become the darlings of the NBA on and off of the course, with record-breaking team wins and attendance records. GSW Vice President John Beaven discusses the success of the team, especially when it comes to ticket sales, pricing and the secondary market. Beaven talks about the Chase Arena membership plan, and its uniqueness in the marketplace. Twitter: @JohnBeaven

Mike Snee comes on the podcast to discuss the overall branding of College Hockey, as it expands from a northeast American sport to a national one, with more Midwest and West Coast athletic departments seeking new programming for men and women. Snee talks over some of the challenges that have faced the game of hockey at the college level in the past, as well as the opportunities. Twitter: @mikesnee...

John Barr is in an interesting position. He's advocating for the relocation or expansion of a National Hockey League team in Seattle, but has no ownership stake in the outcome. Barr represents the grassroots effort of the NHL to Seattle, creating a Facebook group of over 15,000 members and a significant-sized email list. Barr discusses some of the issues with the NHL coming to the Emerald City, in...

Stefanie Gordon arrives on the podcast during an interesting time in her sports social media career: searching for that elusive next job. Gordon shares her experiences in the digital realm as a producer for Sports Illustrated, as well as how one tweet from a space shuttle managed to go viral, giving her the idea of how to generate the hashtag #hirestef as her job search continued. @stefmara

Karri Zaremba shares her experiences at creating connective marketing for venues through technology, both inside and outside the facility. Zaremba talks about the optimization of personalized data, marketing analytics, relevant/targeted content, and interactive technologies designed to acquire, retain, and monetize active users. Zaremba discusses the highly fragmented technology market around the...

Paul Franklin, founder of  Franklin Capital Strategies , a full-service financial strategies firm with offices in Vienna, Virginia and Cleveland, OH. Franklin shares his vision of what makes a great financial strategic plan for athletes, and has worked with many professional athletes and is himself a long-time athlete and football coach. Through these experiences, he has become an expert on the in...

It's the 5th Anniversary of the original recording the Tao of Sports Podcast, with Ep. 1 guest Matt Harper, who returns for the third time to the show. Harper discusses his transition from college ticket sales to minor league baseball, as well as the founding of the college ticket association (NAATSO) and the first Sports Sales Boot Camp. Harper provides his thoughts on why he had originally agree...

Dan Gale isn't shy about telling everyone that he finds the large sponsorship merger of Learfield-IMG College to be troubling for the landscape of collegiate athletics. Gale discusses some of the issues that arise from developing corporate sponsorship activation, especially with the lack of interest in signage and more interest in data. Gale discusses why he decided to move to an independent consu...

Brandon Steiner launched a sports marketing empire by using his life savings in 1987 and hasn't looked back since. Steiner discusses how sports collectibles have been resilient in their comeback potential with consumer demand, and what the sports trading card industry didn't do which has harmed that sector the most. Steiner talks about how the availability of athletes to understand their brand, en...