I’ll be at SBJ and Leaders in Sports’ Business of Soccer event this week in Atlanta. Please say hello if you’re at the event. If you do, please do not ask about the final 12 minutes of UNC’s opening-round NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament loss.
(l-to-r) LG VP/Corporate Marketing Chulho Huh; Don Kwack, president and CEO of LG Electronics North America; ANC’s Jerry Cifarelli Jr.; and LG’s John Won, president of media entertainment solutions. Jerry Cifarelli Jr.
When I joined a call with Jerry Cifarelli and Chulho Huh, they were discussing workout routines. These two get along, which is part of the strength of the relationship between their two companies, LG, the South Korea-based makers of well-known home appliances, and ANC.
In the past, ANC might have been described simply as an LED display provider, Daktronics’ main competitor in the North American pro sports market. They’re a bit more than that, and they are leaning into the differences under Cifarelli, who in 2023 bought the company his father, Jerry Sr., founded in 1997.
ANC is built on three units: tech integration (installing LED displays); ongoing tech service related to those installations; and a media and sponsorship sales business connected to the LED displays. Unlike Dak, ANC doesn’t do any manufacturing and has an asset-light business, and it leans into sponsorship more heavily than its South Dakota-based competitor.
The partnership with LG, which has generated eight to nine figures of business already, according to Cifarelli (an SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree in 2025), is the best vehicle for explaining how those three verticals fit together under one ANC umbrella.
Originally founded in 1958 under a different name, LG has existed under the “Life’s Good” brand (LG) since the mid-1990s, but it hadn’t seriously waded into the North American sports industry until a 2023 meeting with Cifarelli and ANC in Barcelona.
A deal framework emerged from that meeting in which ANC would be LG’s nonexclusive conduit for LED display sales to North American sports teams and venues, as well as serving as LG’s agency of record in doing sponsorship and marketing deals with the same teams and venues buying the boards.
LG has the No. 1 market share in washing machines and refrigerators, but “we are placing a strategic focus on expanding our B2B business,” Huh said, “and we see ANC as an imperative partner for achieving our vision.”
The LG-ANC deals began with the Red Sox and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, and now include the Ravens, Commanders, and Monumental Sports & Entertainment. Acquiring the right to communicate to those teams’ fans was nearly as powerful for LG as their video boards being used in highly public stadiums, like Fenway Park.
The connections that LG is making in the sports industry via ANC is, additionally, helping it make inroads with sales of dishwashers and laundry appliances to those same sports organizations, though that’s not the focus of their deal.
“We’re very proud of this marriage because for us it fits ANC’s business and it fits LG’s business, and it fits where the industry is going,” said Cifarelli.
The Commanders’ planned D.C. stadium will have a promenade that has the look and feel of the nearby the National Mall in D.C. HKS/Commanders
I only had a page for my magazine profile of Commanders Head of Real Estate Andy VanHorn, so there were plenty of interesting leftovers that didn’t make it into print.
Where’s the project right now?
The Commanders’ D.C. stadium is moving through the design process, with the concept design finished and now roughly halfway through schematic drawings. That work will wrap up in April, with design documents following in late summer or early fall. VanHorn expects the team to break ground in March 2027.
Mixed-use master planning, a process run by the District of Columbia, kicks off this week to determine how the large areas around the stadium will look. Perkins Eastman is the surrounding development’s master planner development architect.
Hiring specialists
Commanders President Mark Clouse built factories all over the world during nearly 30 years in the food industry, the final six spent as Campbell’s CEO. That construction résumé included one of the world’s largest bakeries, “but it ain’t a stadium,” he noted. Clouse and others I spoke to imagine VanHorn’s role proliferating throughout pro sports.
“The teams that are successful are the ones that are going to recognize that just because you are an expert in sports doesn’t mean you’re an expert in real estate,” Clouse said. “If you’re going to spend over several billion dollars, it’s worth it to invest in some talent. This was an easy one for me.”
A powerful network
An unofficial group of executives working on NFL stadium projects has convened in recent months, including VanHorn, Clouse and the Commanders. Every league meeting, they end up in a room together, asking, “OK, what have you learned?” said Clouse.
“It is a really powerful network.”
How to structure the project team has been a constant source of discussion. The Commanders have roughly a hundred people working on their stadium project, led by the 40 to 50 from the lead architecture firm, HKS. CAA Icon and Brailsford and Dunlavey provide roughly another dozen project support people, while the Commanders, including VanHorn, have a seven-person internal team.
“We’re developing a good playbook for what it looks like. It’s going to become an ever-growing part of sports. I think you’ll likely see this in most teams. Even if they’re not building a stadium, even if it’s not in place today, it’s what most are aspiring to,” Clouse said, referring to the broader real estate portfolios that many NFL teams are assembling.
The exposure of a role with the Commanders
VanHorn was integral to Arlington, Va., attracting Amazon’s HQ2, but that project was really for the people inside the building, he said. The Commanders’ stadium is for the fans and the community. Millions of people pay attention to it. Every rendering release generates huge debate.
“And they’re going to take a picture of this one. No one goes and takes a picture of Amazon,” said VanHorn. “The exposure here is significantly higher.”
Clouse was involved with press and investors while at Campbell’s, but not with the general public. I asked him how he and VanHorn had adapted to being in the spotlight.
“The short answer is we are not anxious to be in the spotlight,” Clouse said, smiling. He noted that, as we spoke, VanHorn was at a gathering discussing the stadium project. “If these are things that we think are going to help us in attracting the right partners, creating the right awareness around the project, then we’re going to do it.
“People were really passionate about soup, but it doesn’t compare to how they feel about their football team. And the stadium in particular is such a source of joy, excitement, and to a certain degree of return to something that so many fans had been waiting for. What a gift to be able to work on something that makes people feel that way,” said Clouse.
Andy VanHorn’s real estate experience and expertise were needed by the Commanders, who are juggling roughly $10 billion-worth of real estate. Washington Commanders
Daps has pivoted to narrowing its business model on in-venue experiences. Minnesota Timberwolves
SBJ has written about Daps several times over the last few years, and I checked in with them again after the company (formerly known as Daps Bounty) shed another layer (and word in its name) to reveal a narrower focus.
Daps — as in the handshake you do with your nephew when you’re trying to project “cool” — had created a platform where fans could suggest something they wanted from a favorite athlete, offer how much they would pay for that thing or experience, and wait to see the player’s response.
Unfortunately for me, I found out about Daps too late to make my offer: paying one of LaMelo Ball’s speeding tickets if he would play Magic: The Gathering with me. (jk)
Instead, the offers that Daps continually received steered the company in a specific direction: in-person experiences before or after live sporting events, what co-founder Jake Klores described as “‘holy s***’ moments with the people they admire.”
The narrowed focus also likely speaks to athletes’ lack of desire to, for example, eat dinner with a fan they’ve never met. Limiting interactions to the sports venues where athletes already do their jobs probably increases the likelihood of athletes accepting “bounties.”
The company has also moved away from simply providing bidders with a collectible devoid of an interaction. The experiences — the moment with the athlete, no matter how fleeting — are the collectibles.
“As digital entertainment becomes more and more abundant, real world, physical experiences are only going to become more sought after,” Klores said.
To be clear: If a bidder’s request for a game-worn jersey from a player is approved, it’s on the bidder to get into the game with their own ticket; Daps is just facilitating the exchange.
Daps has had conversations with teams and leagues, but it mainly arranges these experiences at events by going through the player or their representation. The new iteration of Daps, mostly focused on the NBA, WNBA, college basketball and even high school basketball, emerged from private beta roughly a month ago. Daps plans to get into more sports down the line.
“Right now, we’re heads-down focused on as narrow a value prop as we can add,” said Klores.
The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo takes over NRG Park for the next month. Aramark Sports + Entertainment is offering this souvenir frozen margarita ($17.95) and a loaded BBQ tots cowboy hat ($18.99). Giddyup!
Sticking with the Texas theme, take whatever metaphorical business lessons away from this Smithsonian Magazine story about guard dogs on Central Texas ranches that you need to, but I enjoyed this story for several reasons: I love dogs, written descriptions of the American West, and that these guardian dogs’ work happened out of sight and almost never involved direct conflict with the coyotes.
Truist is the sponsor of the Orioles’ new premium club at Oriole Park at Camden Yards under a multiyear deal that also sees Truist become the team’s exclusive banking sponsor in 2027, reports SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
Louisville’s KFC Yum Center hosted 113 events in 2025, featuring nine sold-out concerts, two record-breaking comedy shows and the LOVB Finals, adding up to 792,000 guests and $16.7 million in gross ticket sales in advance of a $100 million renovation project rolling out over the next five years.
USL’s Sporting JAX is planning a $500 million mixed-use stadium project, and to help the club pull off the development, it created a real estate subsidiary.
Organizers of the Credit One Charleston Open WTA 500 tournament made a slew of venue upgrades, featuring a 4,100-square-foot deck that will support a restaurant concept branded “The Kitchen,” writes SBJ’s Rob Schaefer.
SBJ’s Joe Lemire reports on Boston’s new Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute focused on closing the data gap on female athletes and funded in part by Clara Wu Tsai and the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance.
