On a Monday afternoon earlier this month, I took in Power Play: Sports Sponsorship Accelerator, an event hosted by Avenue Capital Group and Herrick law firm, which was held at Cosm’s original facility in Inglewood, Calif. The event featured sessions, networking and activities based around Marc Lasry’s Avenue Capital sports portfolio, including Cosm itself. There was a mechanical bull (Avenue owns the New York Mavericks in the PBR Team Series), a golf simulator (it owns the Bay Golf Club in the TGL) and, of course, there was pickleball (it invested in court operator CityPickle). Conversations over the afternoon touched on trends in sports sponsorships, players-turned-investors and a brief presentation by Cosm CEO Jeb Terry that wowed first-time attendees and showcased some of Cosm’s latest tech.
To end the afternoon, attendees ventured out to the facility’s second-floor patio that is sandwiched between Stan Kroenke and Steve Ballmer, as SoFi Stadium sits on one side and the Intuit Dome on the other, with the constant rush of jumbo jets piercing the skyline to land at LAX. It’s quite a setting, and attendees listened to a fun and informative conversation between former CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro. “We are no longer competitors,” McManus laughed. Before starting, McManus said he first met Lasry for breakfast about nine months ago, and fresh off his time at CBS Sports, wasn’t looking to get back into the game. But he was intrigued so much by what Lasry was doing that he immediately agreed to join Avenue Capital as an adviser. “I’ve always gone with my gut and this felt really right,” he said. Turning to Pitaro, McManus played the role of interviewer, and the duo covered a lot of ground: Pitaro’s early days as a lawyer for a company ahead of its time, Launch.com, which was acquired by Yahoo; his fortuitous, career-changing shift, from Yahoo Music to Yahoo Sports, where he went from managing a handful of people to nearly a thousand. He was later elevated to run all of Yahoo Media, where his orbit continued to change. He initially resisted his friend, Sheryl Sandberg’s, suggestion that he meet with Bob Iger, but after more prodding — “just take the meeting,” she said — Pitaro finally agreed to meet with Iger on a Sunday afternoon, which forever changed his personal and professional journey. He started at Disney in 2010 at Disney Interactive, and was named to run ESPN in 2018 after three months of interviewing for the role. There was, of course, some business talk. Pitaro said he’s seeing real financial discipline among all companies — tech, streamers, media — interested in acquiring sports rights. “Companies aren’t doing deals where they are going to lose money,” he said.
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Pressed by McManus about all the dramatic and unsettling changes in college sports, Pitaro insisted the space has never been more popular. “College sports fans don’t seem to care about all of that [unrest and change]. It doesn’t impact their fandom,” he said. McManus asked if there was a sports property not with ESPN that Pitaro covets, and he playfully replied how “someone took March Madness away from ESPN all those years ago, so I would love to bring the men’s tournament back to ESPN.”
Other takeaways: Pitaro stressed the impact and value of playing sports; he was a wide receiver at Cornell: “I learned more about life playing team sports than I did as an undergrad and graduate school combined.” While his wife has banned any more Beatles paraphernalia in the house, his dream dinner guest would be Paul McCartney, whom he has met a few times: “There is so much I’d love to ask him and learn from him.” McManus finished with a word game. Caitlin Clark: “Generational.” Derek Jeter: “Clutch.” The College Football Playoff: “Drama.” The automated ball-strike system in baseball: “Yes.” And in perhaps the least-surprising answer from Pitaro, if he could ever own one sports team: Of course, “the Yankees.”
Before the conversation, I joked with a colleague that the day was refreshing in that we didn’t hear the overused, tiresome words “authentic” or “organic” during the sessions. But near the end of the interview, Pitaro dropped an “authentic,” and while we nudged each other, he said, “It’s OK, because I think this was so great.” That captured the mood of that late afternoon, seeing two leaders with such mutual respect share thoughts and stories.
Abraham Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
