The hotel lobby and back halls of the CAA World Congress of Sports are typically buzzing with some of the industry’s top dealmakers. The banking crowd this year included Andrew Brown of A&W Capital, Accelerate Sports’ Brent Lawrence, Inner Circle Sports’ Steve Horowitz, J.P. Morgan’s Jordan Kessler, LionTree’s Alex Michael, Sixth Street’s Russell Wolff and Dan Zweben from Moelis. Top law firms have been spending big to staff up sports M&A departments, and some of the recent hires in attendance included Jason Krochak and Frank Saviano, who joined Kirkland & Ellis in October, as well as Eric Geffner and Michael Kuh, who earlier this month landed at Simpson Thacher along with former NBA lawyer Matthew Carpenter-Dennis.
SBJ’s Joe Lemire spotted several sports business executives Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, chatting with Ketchum’s Patrick Wixted, FloSports’ Seth Hart, Transmit CCO Bo Han and WolfCycle’s Ryan Miller. The usher of that section was Sachi Hamilton, the great-niece of Jackie Robinson — on Jackie Robinson Day at the ballpark. New Balance execs also went to the game to watch two of the players under their brand umbrella: the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and the Mets’ Francisco Lindor.
Ahead of their onstage sessions Wednesday, Premier League CCO Will Brass and Fanatics founder and CEO Michael Rubin had a long chat in the green room, talking about EA Sports’ licensing of video games.
The Rams’ Joanna Hunter and baseball reporter Evan Drellich of The Athletic are old high school friends who caught up on the concourse. Continuing the theme, Publicis VP/Business Development Brett Becks and SeatGeek’s Bob Sivik have been friends since attending rival high schools less than two miles apart in suburban Cleveland.
Netflix’s Bela Bajaria noted that “I can text like a teenager.” Speaking of texting, ESPN’s Shams Charania was also spotted in the lobby. No word if he landed any scoops.
LA84 Foundation President and CEO Renata Simril was seen chatting with Barbara Bouza, executive director of market strategies at CannonDesign.
Fun fact: Netflix’s Elle Duncan has 20,000-plus unread emails. NFL EVP and CRO Renie Anderson said she had zero.
New Balance’s Global Brand President and CMO Chris Davis discussed the brand’s 1906 origins onstage. It “first started off not even in the footwear game. We started off by making arch supports that go into shoes. And William J. Riley, the founder of New Balance — it’s actually a really funny story — he was fascinated with chickens, and he was always fascinated by the fact that chickens could have these big bodies and these really skinny legs that supported these big bodies. And he said, ‘There has to be something about their feet that enables this to happen.’ So he essentially created arch supports that mimic the foundation of a chicken’s foot that gave better stability, better comfort, better balance, hence the name ‘New Balance.’ It wasn’t until 1961 when New Balance created our first running shoe, which was 55 years later.”
Local legend Shawn Green, the former Dodgers slugger, attended the event on behalf of his startup, Greenfly.
Buccaneers safety Miles Killebrew said the one job he could not do was Colin Cowherd’s — they met earlier in the green room and took a selfie together.
Happy SBJ Days: Spotted walking by the escalator just below the main ballroom was Henry Winkler. Since his back was turned, we couldn’t verify if he was or wasn’t wearing a WCOS lanyard.
