SBJ Unpacks: How Kevin Harlan navigates the miles

Tonight in Unpacks: Kevin Harlan is one of the most well-traveled sportscasters of his era, and he has meticulously documented his journeys from game to game, event to event. In this early look at next week’s magazine, SBJ’s Richard Deitsch profiles Harlan, his travel habits and the strategies that help him ensure he never misses a call.

Also tonight:

• Participation gap persists for female college athletes
• Networks looking to build on ad revenue as WNBA rights deals kick in
• DirecTV fights for its future
• Op-ed: From patronage to partnership in brand collaborations

Listen to SBJ’s most popular podcast, Morning Buzzcast, where SBJ’s Josh Carpenter puts a lid on the week with the WBC’s record viewership for the Venezuela-U.S. championship matchup, the deal between MLB and Polymarket, the LPGA bringing a bevy of enhancements to broadcasts and more.

If you ever have a chance to visit Kevin Harlan at his century-old home in Mission Hills, Kansas, ask the famed sports broadcaster if you can see the collection of weekly calendar books on the first floor of his house, just off the living room. Or maybe take a look at the older ones on the second floor, tucked away inside a file cabinet in a storage room. What you’ll discover on the pages of these 8-by-5 leather journals is the story of Harlan’s 40-year work life.

Harlan is a writer by nature, and his Arcadia burgundy-colored weekly planners contain the secrets of how he has managed his work assignments for three national employers — CBS Sports, Amazon Prime Video and Westwood One Sports — as well as his previous employer (Turner Sports), various commercial appearances and projects such as providing a voice for the NBA 2K video game franchise (since 2005).

“I can tell you that Annie [Harlan’s wife] and I first met on March 7, 1987,” Harlan said. “We had our first date on March 10, we were engaged in June and married that Christmas. I knew the moment I saw her. That was my first year broadcasting the University of Missouri.

“I keep all of my travel notes in the calendar books, things like what flights I’m on and what airline routes I like to take. Because there are so many games with different employers, if I don’t stay on schedule, well, I don’t like that feeling.”

You might guess that Harlan would have a personal assistant, given his various assignments for three employers, but your guess would be incorrect. He researches all of his flight information himself, then books his itinerary with the help of the travel departments at each of his employers.

“I keep all of my travel notes in the calendar books, things like what flights I’m on and what airline routes I like to take. Because there are so many games with different employers, if I don’t stay on schedule, well, I don’t like that feeling.”

—  Kevin Harlan

Harlan makes sure to have up-to-date information on backup flights (and sometimes backups for the backups) because he never wants to miss an assignment. During his career, there were stretches when he did five games in six days for three employers, so he had to become skilled at travel that works best for his body and mind.

For instance, when Harlan calls a West Coast-based NFL game for CBS on a Sunday, he will fly to either Chicago, Detroit or Houston afterward and stay overnight in one of those cities so he can get an early flight the next morning to make his Westwood One game. (Being at a major Midwestern hub gives him more flight options, as well as a chance to get some sleep — he prefers not to fly red-eye flights.) Harlan is easily one of the most well-traveled sportscasters of his era.

“Here’s a quick thing that just happened a couple of months ago,” Harlan said. “I was at the Green Bay airport and had a Wisconsin-Michigan college basketball game in Ann Arbor the next day [on Jan. 10]. I was gonna take a five o’clock nonstop to Detroit the night before the game, but the plane was delayed because it caught fire after it landed in Green Bay. Now it’s six o’ clock at night and I have a noon game in Ann Arbor. There are no flights and I don’t want to fly the day of the game.

“I asked CBS to get me a rental car, and I drove the seven-and-a-half hours. I arrived in Ann Arbor at 3:30 in the morning, slept till about nine, showered and cleaned up, and got to the arena two hours before tipoff. Sure, I would have preferred not to have driven during the night before a big game with Robbie [Hummel] and Raf [Bill Raftery], but CBS was very understanding, the weather wasn’t bad and I got there safely.

“There have been a couple of those over the years that I’ve had to navigate, but it’s worked out by the grace of God.”

Father’s legacy

Think about this: Harlan has been the lead announcer for Westwood One radio’s coverage of “Monday Night Football” since 2010. That means between CBS and Westwood One assignments, he has called more than 35 national NFL games every season over the past 16 years. February marked his 16th-straight Super Bowl, the most in radio or television history as far as consecutive Super Bowls called for a national broadcaster. He is easily in the top-five all time as far as the number of national NFL games called by a single broadcaster.

Harlan said one of the reasons he believes he has successfully worked for multiple employers — he called NBA games for Turner Sports from 1996 to 2025 — is that he never viewed one employer as more important than another. He watched his father, the late Bob Harlan — who served as the Green Bay Packers’ president and CEO, among other positions during his four decades with the franchise — smoothly glide between NFL hierarchy and the devout Green Bay fan base. That ability to navigate with different people rubbed off on Kevin.

Bob entered hospice care in late February and passed away on March 5 at age 89. One of the few NBA games that Kevin had to cancel over his five decades was the Warriors-Rockets game the day Bob passed.

“Kevin probably doesn’t even remember this, but one of the first years he did for us, maybe 15 or 16 years ago, I was with him for a Packers game in Lambeau Field,” said Mike Eaby, Westwood One vice president and executive producer. “I knew he went to high school in Green Bay, but he didn’t really talk about it much. After that game, he says, ‘Let’s go for a little bit of a walk.’

“It was just me and Kevin, and we ended up in the plaza outside of Lambeau Field that’s named after his dad. He’s like, ‘Do you know where we are right now?’ I’m like, ‘We’re outside of Lambeau Field.’ He’s like, ‘No, look at this plaque over here.’ It was the Bob Harlan Plaza or something like that. I’m like, ‘Holy shit, Kevin, I didn’t realize this.’ I could tell he was just so proud. I understood Kevin a little more after that night.”

Equal opportunity employee

Kevin Harlan has had the same agent for decades — CAA’s Michael Glantz, who met Harlan when the sports broadcaster was a young pup calling Kansas City Chiefs games. At the time, Glantz worked for Art Kaminsky, a famed agent who represented Len Dawson, Harlan’s then-partner calling games.

“Michael knows how I like to operate,” Harlan said. “I’m not confrontational. I’m not a big demand guy. I’m more stunned that I’m in this position than driven by ego. I always tell him, ‘Michael, I need you to put me in your shoes when you’re negotiating with [CBS Sports President and CEO] David [Berson] or [former CBS Sports Chairman] Sean [McManus], or any of these other people.”

“He has an authentic level of humility, and part of that earnestness makes him not suffer from an overabundance of cockiness,” said Glantz, who also represents Brad Nessler and news clients, including Savannah Guthrie. “It’s funny — I have told him over the years that it’s OK to schmooze with executives and that it’s OK to play the game, but Kevin is simply not going to change. I love the guy for who he is.”

Harlan and Glantz have always staggered the terms of Harlan’s broadcasting deals, so that he’s always working for at least one employer (if not more) when another contract is up. (His Amazon deal began this year and runs for three years; his current CBS contract runs past that.)

“It’s a triangle and no employer is more important than the other,” Harlan said. “Now they pay differently, clearly, but what has been great — and I got this from my dad — is I try to be as honest with each. I never compromise the other. I would never say to CBS, ‘Hey, I’ve got a game for these guys in this city. Can you assign me there?’ They don’t care and they shouldn’t care. When I’m on your time, I’m your guy, and I am 100% into that employer for that particular broadcast.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is that I’ve had long runs with every employer. I think sometimes in our business, that gets overlooked — longevity. To hold a job at that network level is a very difficult thing to do, let alone to do it at three different places. I take great pride in that.”

Harlan joined CBS’s NFL broadcast team in 1998 after four years of broadcasting the NFL on Fox Sports. When it comes to Harlan contractually, CBS is in “first position,” which means that Harlan sets his assignments first with CBS before moving on to his other employers.

“This is important to Kevin, to have the opportunity to call multiple sports for multiple media companies, and we’re supportive of that,” Berson said. “He’s a big name and a big voice for CBS Sports. Working for Westwood One or Prime Video — or, in the past, Turner Sports — we don’t think that takes away from the incredible work he does for CBS Sports. If anything, it probably helps build his profile, as more people on more platforms are exposed to his incredible work. His ability to do it underscores his work ethic.

“We see the bigger picture and have such admiration and respect for Kevin that we want to work with him, so that it works for his schedule, for his personal life.”

Jared Stacy, vice president of global live sports production for Prime Video, said the company’s relationship with Harlan began with a long Zoom call among Harlan, Stacy and Amina Hussein, the head of U.S. sports on-air talent and development at Prime Video. The company targeted Harlan and Ian Eagle because they knew the broadcasters would give them a “foundational element” for Prime Video’s NBA coverage.

“We don’t have a one-size-fits-all mentality when it comes to people working on other networks,” Stacy said. “We wanted Kevin Harlan to be on our air talking to NBA fans. One thing that’s helpful is that he’s free and clear, and his focus is the NBA toward the end of the season and into the postseason. We try to work with Kevin on what’s best for him because we want him in the best shape, and we don’t want anybody to get overworked.”

‘A good man’

Harlan, 65, is traveling less these days than he did earlier in his career. He has four kids and seven grandchildren, and he and Annie decided he should pare down his schedule early in the NBA season so he could be home more.

“Now we are at the point of the NBA schedule where I’m ready to crank it up,” Harlan said. “It has been a gift to continue with the NBA and to be part of this new company’s enthusiasm and vigor for the sport.”

Every executive Sports Business Journal spoke with offered unprompted praise of Harlan as a thoughtful person who is family-first. Said Hussein: “Two things that always stand out about Kevin — what a good man he is, and the voice.”

Harlan said his biggest challenge over his 40 years of broadcasting isn’t performance or travel. It’s the residual guilt that builds having to leave home so often.

“When I was young and doing this, the family had all sorts of things going on, just chaos; everybody was going 18 different directions, including me,” Harlan said. “Somehow, we were always able to connect the dots. As I’ve gotten older and read more about men that have had a degree of success in their lives, the thing they talk about most is the casualty of not being around their family. Our kids always said they can’t remember me traveling because I was at their events.

“The challenge for me has not been preparation, the performance of the broadcast or navigating between radio or TV. It has been dealing with the guilt of that emotional departure from home. Some guys love the road and can’t wait to leave. But that’s not me. I can’t wait to get back after the game has concluded.”

FREQUENT FLYER

Over his five decades of calling games in the NFL, NBA and college basketball, Kevin Harlan has accrued some eye-popping numbers when it comes to frequent flyer programs.

• Annual travel: 150,000 miles
• American Airlines (lifetime): 2.6 million miles
• Delta Air Lines (lifetime): 4 million miles
• United Airlines (lifetime): 2.4 million miles

By the time the next national champion cuts down the nets in Phoenix, women’s collegiate sports will reach its yearly pinnacle of interest and attention. The next three weeks offer a celebration not just of basketball, but of growth for women’s sports at that level.

Yet, new research shows progress has plateaued in some ways.

A new report from The Collective offers a fuller picture of the state of collegiate women’s sports, one that gives insight into how far they are still from reaching the vision of equity under Title IX, the 53-year-old landmark law.

NCAA women’s sports have grown, with more than 242,000 athletes today. But they have also not kept pace with the rate that women’s undergraduate enrollment has increased, with opportunities for female athletes proportionally lagging compared to their male peers and potentially in violation of Title IX. Beyond the legal requirement for schools to provide equity, the stalled progress has an impact on the pipeline from collegiate athletic careers to pro sports and the C-suite.

“We are seeing investments in women’s sports and we’re very happy to see those investments in women’s sports, but there’s more to the story than just growth,” said Jacqueline McDowell, associate professor of sport management at George Mason University and one of five academic researchers behind the report.

“There is growth. We commend it. We’re very happy about it, but there are definitely barriers that are resulting in women’s sports not growing to their full potential.”

With the support of The Collective Think Tank, researchers revisited the annual report compiled by R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter from 1977 to 2014. That study assessed equity over time, and The Collective’s report uses 2024 Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act data to look at women’s participation and representation for athletes, coaches and leadership.

Among the latest findings:

• Across all divisions, women make up about 43% of NCAA varsity athletes despite women accounting for 55% of the female undergraduate population. That lack of proportionality has held steady over the past decade since the last Acosta-Carpenter report.
• Despite the growth of some emerging sports, women’s team sponsorship has largely stagnated since the late 1990s, at 8.89 per school.
• With women virtually excluded from coaching men’s teams, they account for just 46% of head coaching positions for women’s teams. That’s despite a more robust pipeline of assistant coaches (54.5%) and reflective of a continuing trend with women not making up a majority of head coaches for women’s teams since the 1980s.

“There’s so much conversation going on right now and so much visibility and so much hype around women’s sports,” said Thayer Lavielle, managing director of The Collective. “With all of the recent conversation around women’s sports and women’s collegiate sports, particularly in the past several years, there really hasn’t been as big of a movement on participation or gains in coaching.”

As higher education has shifted from majority men undergraduates when Title IX was passed in 1972 to majority women today, that participation gap persists. Schools can show compliance with Title IX regarding participation opportunities in one of three ways — through proportionality with the share of the undergraduate student body, with a history of continued expansion or by meeting the interests and abilities of their students.

“There is growth. We commend it. We’re very happy about it, but there are definitely barriers that are resulting in women’s sports not growing to their full potential.”

—  Jacqueline McDowell, professor and a researcher behind The Collective report

The Collective report speaks squarely to proportionality. Earlier this month, the NCAA highlighted a 14% increase across championship and emerging sports in the past decade.

“When you are not presenting a narrative that there should be more women participating in sports and more women coaching sports, when you’re just sharing a narrative of, ‘We’re seeing major increases,’ the decision making is not going to be in alignment,” McDowell said.

That decision making has included shifts in which sports schools sponsor. While basketball, volleyball, soccer and softball are nearly universal for women across the NCAA, the researchers noted sports such as tennis, swimming and diving have faced cuts even as schools add some emerging sports, including golf and lacrosse.

The NCAA noted growth to acrobatics and tumbling, stunt, triathlon and rugby, but those collectively make up around 1.5% of all participants.

“There’s no judgment been made about one [new] sport versus another [traditional] sport,” said attorney Arthur Bryant, who last year launched his own firm and has sued schools for Title IX violations for decades. “At the same time, when you see schools eliminating longstanding, successful female Olympic sports and instead trying to substitute something that has never been a sport before, only to save money and say that they have as many women as possible involved in what they’re calling a sport, that’s discouraging.”

So, too, is the state of coaching for women.

The report found a “ceiling” of about 50% for women holding head coaching roles in women’s sports, with only a few sport-specific exceptions — like field hockey, lacrosse, gymnastics and equestrian — reaching 1970s levels that saw women coaching 70% to 90% of women’s teams. With schools not putting women in those roles in men’s sports, the hiring patterns have confined them to a limited number of positions.

A slight uptick of women holding 46% of those head coaching roles could be reflective of a trend, the researchers note. A pipeline exists with women making up close to 60% of assistant coach positions.

“That’s not a problem of their ability,” Lavielle said. “That’s a problem of why aren’t they being hired into these positions?”

Cue the lawsuits

A problem decades in the making existed before the House settlement, which since its implementation last summer has seen ever more money funneled to football and men’s basketball while women’s sports and men’s Olympic sports face potential cuts.

Schools now can share revenue — $20.5 million this year — with athletes. With a majority of those dollars going to football and, to a lesser extent, men’s basketball players, female college athletes face not only a lack of revenue sharing but a threat of program cuts.

Already, some have started. Bryant has ongoing cases against Stephen F. Austin and Concordia universities, in which federal courts have required reinstatement of women’s teams those schools cut while the cases proceed. Both schools had cited financial reasons for their decisions to cut teams.

Bryant also settled a case with San Diego State this year that marked the first time plaintiffs recovered monetary damages ($300,000) for disproportionate athletic financial aid. An ongoing case Bryant filed against Oregon asserts several kinds of gender-based discrimination against female athletes, including that the school provided greater NIL resources to male athletes.

The persistent participation gap highlighted by The Collective’s research highlights the potential for ongoing Title IX litigation, showing risks for schools even before significant changes under House.

Further Title IX challenges to NIL and revenue sharing are expected and Bryant, who first sued a school under the law in the 1980s, expects more firms to devote attorneys and resources to those cases.

“There is a growing tension between Title IX and its basic principles and where college sports is going, and ultimately you’re going to see the courts will have to resolve it, but you have schools blatantly violating Title IX in terms of NIL payments and revenue-sharing payments and the distribution of that money, and at the cost of millions of dollars, and schools are going to end up having to pay,” Bryant said.

“It’s just a question of how fast and how quickly and how many women understand what’s going on and are willing to fight.”

As the industry awaits clarification from the courts and national legislation to bring stability to the model, The Collective report highlights a greater role for brands to play.

The report notes that brand sponsorship dollars can support research and participation, including travel and equipment grants, scholarship opportunities and amplifying leadership pathways. That kind of support is critical in women’s sports, said Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Danette Leighton.

“We’re just scratching the surface on brands’ engagement in women’s sports at all levels,” Leighton said. “It’s about intentional investment and understanding each layer of how the business models work.

“At the end of the day, we want to make sure we don’t go backwards. We want to make sure those opportunities are there.”

Total advertising spending during last season’s WNBA live telecasts was more than triple what it was in 2023, according to iSpot.tv data, a trend expected to continue as the league’s new 11-year media rights deals begin.

State Farm and Nike, two of the league’s most-tenured sponsors, were the top ad spenders over the past three seasons.

Disney, ION, CBS and Amazon held the national TV rights during those years.

ESPN, NBC and Amazon in 2024 collectively committed approximately $2.2B over 11 years, or roughly $200M per year, for the league’s media rights.

Additionally, Versant, part of Comcast’s $7B spin-off of NBCUniversal’s cable channels that also includes Golf Channel, signed an 11-year deal last fall that gives USA Network the largest tonnage of games each season.

DirecTV is on the warpath this week in hopes of overcoming an existential threat: an announcement from NFL-backed EverPass Media that it would no longer distribute “NFL Sunday Ticket” to bars and restaurants via satellite and would now require all end users to adapt its streaming system.

This day has been coming since March 2023, when the NFL ended nearly three decades of “Sunday Ticket” in commercial establishments exclusively via DirecTV, instead creating a new company with RedBird Capital Partners and TKO Group — EverPass — to hold the right to distribute “Sunday Ticket” to bars, restaurants, casinos, etc. (YouTube won the residential rights three months earlier.) The timing also underscores one of the biggest strategic questions facing everyone in sports: Exactly how fast will linear give way to streaming?

With DirecTV’s residential business in stark decline in the steaming era, bars and restaurants had been a relative strength for the satellite business due to the greater bandwidth and technical challenges of many TVs at once. But on Tuesday even that dynamic was upended: EverPass informed subscribers that starting this season, it would be the only authorized means of showing out-of-market NFL games.

EverPass would not renew an expiring deal to also distribute “NFL Sunday Ticket” via DirecTV, it said, and to stay in the every-game-on-Sundays business, establishments must buy EverPass streaming hardware or use the EverPass app on Spectrum hardware.

In the big picture, this step is not exactly a surprise. The idea behind EverPass is that, eventually, enough sports will be shown on streaming instead of linear that bars and restaurants would require a new system. Furthermore, with the rights to “Sunday Ticket,” EverPass is positioned to do more than simply wait for the transition — it can accelerate it by leveraging its exclusive control of NFL games to force reluctant establishments to make the switch.

But is 2026 the right time for this?

DirecTV is betting it can force EverPass back to the negotiating table, where there’s a significant economic gap, by rallying its customers.

DirecTV says the world isn’t ready, and that by forcing the transition now, EverPass will ultimately hurt fans, encourage commercial establishments to find illegal workarounds and undermine its own revenue stream. The problem for DirecTV is that EverPass is likely well-positioned to accept some subscriber decline, at least in the short term, if the result is a faster transition to streaming. “Our commitment remains unchanged: to modernize how premium live sports are delivered and ensure commercial establishments navigate this transition with confidence,” reads an EverPass corporate statement.

Who’s reading the commercial marketplace right? Hard to say. “Sunday Ticket” is incredibly important to anywhere that promotes itself as a destination for sports viewing. But the industry has enough problems already, and some proprietors will surely resist.

Neither side is ruling out a deal that would retain the status quo for the 2026 season, but given the dynamics in play here and Tuesday’s communication, EverPass wouldn’t do that lightly. You could argue this is exactly how the NFL drew it up, as it continues to leverage its business-kingmaker capabilities.

Sports marketing is as old as time. Wealthy benefactors in ancient Rome advertised their sponsorship of elite athletes and sporting events, chiseling their names into public announcements, honorific statues, and victory odes to bind athletic prowess and success to their own individual prestige.

These methods embody sports marketing as patronage, and it was the dominant mode until the late 1800s, when corporate sports marketing as we know it emerged along with the formalization of teams and leagues in soccer, baseball, rugby, cricket, boxing, horse racing, and tennis.

By the turn of the last century, sports marketing as patronage started shifting to what it is today: sports marketing as an invested and long-term partnership. As modernity and economic growth blossomed through the decades of the 20th century, corporate advertising surged as a primary mechanism to fund the development of athletes, teams, and leagues. Traditional print and then television advertising remained the foundation for brand awareness and the funding of sports, while marketing teams pushed beyond traditional advertising paradigms and found more novel and engaging ways to manifest brand associations.

It wasn’t just about conferring legitimacy from above, with logo lockups on posters and stadium signage. Companies started working alongside sports brands to co-create value. In the 1870s, tobacco companies stuffed the first serialized baseball cards (with players’ faces, names and stats) into their cigarette packs. In 1903, French newspaper L’Auto (now L’Equipe) created the Tour de France to boost its circulation, collaborating with the era’s premier cyclists and bicycle manufacturers. British railway companies began to offer game-day excursion trains with discounted fares encouraging fans to travel, allowing teams to gain larger audiences. During this time, brands such as Spalding for baseball and Slazenger for tennis began to work directly with leagues, teams, and athletes, becoming foundational contributors to standards, rules, and “official” endorsed equipment.

Since then, the most innovative sports marketing hasn’t just found new spaces to advertise — it’s co-created new properties, brands, and storytelling platforms. It’s been about partnership in the most creative sense. Consider the role of sneaker companies in 1980-2010 basketball culture. Jordan and the Bulls. Energy drinks in action sports. Football and Gatorade. Finance, data and analytics brands with all manner of leagues and teams in the past decade. For example, Mastercard has been a sponsor for the UEFA Champions League for 30 years. These deep and enduring relationships have inspired new content, new competitions, and shared IP. In the last half century, brands and sports teams have become bound together in the cultural zeitgeist and in dynamic ways that have allowed sport organizations to have a global fan base and increased revenue.

With the 2026 World Cup fast approaching, clients across sectors have been asking us for insights on sports partnerships. And while every brand has its own distinct set of angles and opportunities, we thought we’d share some macro patterns that apply to all brands. Below are three high-level themes that anyone within brand and marketing should be looking for and discussing, especially if you have your eye on a sports partnership this year:

Creating iconic moments

Instead of looking for more space to advertise your brand, think about moments in time — opportunities within a game, broadcast, or fan experience — to create a clear, unforgettable brand association. Obvious scenarios for World Cup partnerships include penalty shootouts, halftime tactical breakdowns, and Man of the Match awards. But think creatively about framing, visualizing, and owning other moments in time, such as international derbies, player debuts, team records, and historic parallels.

Building experience ladders

Fans want access to move from casual observers to deeply invested insiders. Brands can provide that access by facilitating in-person experiences around the game and creating behind-the-scenes digital content. Think about what kind of access you want to provide (e.g., behind-the-scenes vs. behind-the-game) and how you can introduce scarcity into the equation (e.g., private Discords vs. memberships). World Cup moments you can provide access to include certain players’ pregame mindfulness rituals, tunnel fits or champagne-soaked locker-room celebrations.

Save-worthy content

Partnership implies bringing creative and production value to the table, in addition to financial backing. If you’re agonizing over what kinds of content your brand might create or support via content creators, go beyond what the sport can make on its own. Additive content deepens understanding, extends the story beyond the match, and gives fans a reason to care between live competitions. Some thought-starters for WC 2026: How can you lend some coherence to a sprawling, multi-country tournament? Explain what may well be the most complex World Cup, strategically and logistically? Spotlight unsung heroes like goalie coaches, physios, and VAR refs?

The 2026 World Cup gives us another proverbial turn-of-the-century moment to redefine further the relationship between sport, brands, and the tenets of what partnership means. It’s a unique time for future-forward marketing as we negotiate our post-pandemic hunger for IRL culture and connection while we continue to make sense of the powerful machinations of AI, deeper personalization and real-time data.

The macro patterns of creating iconic moments, building experience ladders and save-worthy content all work in an interrelated manner and serve as the foundation that redefines partnership for fans, brands and sponsors.

The brands that work proactively with sports by embracing our unique media channels and fan behaviors will ultimately build more lasting connections. This work will not be one-off stunts but far more nuanced, iterative, and personal. The big budget marketing moments will always be there and will continue to capture momentary headlines. But it is the brands that leverage AI, tech, story and the visceral on-the-ground experience to define new ways to engage fans and build trust that will be even more integral to the game. Because that is what is central in all of this: the love of the game. And we know that this visceral connection we have to sport is built one goal, one penalty and one story at a time.

Matt Colangelo is senior strategy director at brand innovation studio Athletics.

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• In this week’s Talent Pool agency roudup, SBJ’s Irving Mejia-Hilario notes that Packers CB/WR Bo Melton and Bears DT Gervon Dexter Sr. signed with agent Drew Rosenhaus of Rosenhaus Sports for representation.
• The Hornets retired Dell Curry’s jersey No. 30 on Thursday night in a Spectrum Center halftime presentation attended by his sons Steph and Seth Curry, Hornets co-chairmen Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin, President/Business Operations Shelly Cayette-Weston and President/Basketball Operations Jeff Peterson, notes SBJ’s Tom Friend.